Go dual core now or wait for quads?

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Should I go dual core now or wait for quads later in the year? That is the question.

Basically, my single core S939 3500+ has been fine for games right up until Supreme Commander, but now I'm seriously feeling the need for dual core. Also, I've just started encoding my DVDs for use over the network as I have finally got a media PC setup in the lounge, so a dual core will really help me out there as well.

I want to spend as little money as humanly possible and I'm not afraid to overclock it a bit either. This is pretty much a stop gap until Quad core becomes affordable and both AMD and Intel have their new chips out (so 2007-2008). When I move to quad core I would just move this dual system on to the media PC and let that take over encoding duties (it's currently an S939 3000+).

Considering that I have 2GB of DDR1 PC3200 already, and an X1950XTX PCI-E graphics card I wonder if it is worth me going for something like the ASRock VSTA board? Would the 4xPCIE cripple the X1950XTX too much? This way I would only have to get the following:

Asrock 4CoreDual-VSTA (Socket 775) £46.99
Intel Core 2 DUO E6300 "LGA775 Allendale" 1.86GHz (1066FSB) £117.49

Total £164.48

When this goes to become the media PC I'd just buy a cheap HDCP compliant PCIe graphics card (for about £30-£40) and that would be that.

Having seen the performance of a stock E6300 I would imagine that I will see a performance increase over my 3500+ in single threaded apps as well. Is this correct?

Can anyone think of a cheaper upgrade that would allow me an as good, or even better, performance increase?

 

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DX10 gaming isn't now and won't be here for a few months yet, at which point I may well be able to go for a quad core. I don't need 4GB RAM at home (would be useful at work...).

Would I *really* see much difference using DDR2 over DDR1 considering it's a minimum of an extra £75? Also, at that point I may as well go for a better motherboard (Gigabyte DS3?) and overclock - which is another £40 again? But considering the graphics card (which isn't getting upgraded any time soon), is it worth spending this extra £75-£105? I know it will be faster, but will I actually see a tangible speed increase? Games are the most important thing wrt the speed increase, the speed increase I'll be getting on the encoding will be sufficient for my needs anyway as I'll not be encoding and gaming at the same time.

I do not want to go quad at the current prices, no way. The aim is to compromise on a decent performance increase (going dual core) for as little money as possible.

 

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Hmm, I suppose the S939 X2 chips still work out cheaper... that's a damned good idea - now to find them...