I have a 3200 venice which admittedly has remained at stock ever since i bought it and 1gb of ram. I tend to run quite a few programs at the same time, nothing too heavy like media encoding but I often have 40 -50 processes running. Whilst I know that I could pare some back I will always be running a lot of stuff, it's just the way I use my pc so i'm wondering whether to get a dual core processor.
I think I'll probably be one of the relatively early adopters of vista so I have 2gb of ram on the way and i'll be selling the 1gb that I have now to recupe costs. I've had an offer of £40 for my 3200 and this has made me look st the x2s. I don't have so much time to game these days but it's definitely a factor in my choices.
Essentially:
On a limited budget is it worth selling my 3200 and getting an x2 3800 for roughly £100 to improve the responsiveness of my system?
Is it worth stretching slightly higher to a 4200 etc?
I'm not interested in motherboard swaps or bigger upgrades to core 2 duo, this may be my last upgrade for at least a year. I have to admit Zak33's recent post on how a 4800 improved his frame rates in some games has me intrigued, not sure i could stretch to a 4600 unless there were was quite a bump in performance form getting one.
Any thoughts?