Well, for encoding yes 9and if you are heavy into encoding etc, you should chose the i7), but any dual core at 3.1+ can run any emulated ps2 games (that the emulator will run of course) just fine. Also, the emulator does not use more than 2 cores, so a quad is not important. The i5, clock for clock, is faster than the phenom II, but again, phenoms are a better value and the emulator is fine on a $100 CPU. The HD resolutions are based on how good your GPU is.

Where quads are becoming important is newer games. Look at Dragon Age. A quad runs it significantly better than a dual, which I believe gets bottlenecked at 40ish fps (have to look up exact numbers). Newer games will start using 3+ cores more and more as it is definatly trending that way.

As for the graphic card bottleneck Casey, I am not quite getting your argument. Your saying that CPUs are bottlenecking high end cards, which is right for some games, but then go on to state that those resolutions abover 1920X1200 are hard on the gpu, which is also right. CPU limits minimum frames and if it is the bottleneck then you will get the same fps if you are running at 800x600 or 1920X1200, but if gpu is the bottleneck, you will get lower fps as you add better detail settings and increase resolutions. But, the op is not gaming at even 1920 X 1200, so he is more likely to run into a cpu bottleneck with something like l4d.

Someone said that future AMD processors will work on the AM3 Motherboards.

IF I buy a Core i5 motherboard, will it work on future Intel processors?

the price is fucking wrong on i7 lol, I don't care how much faster they are, it's plain wrong. I live stream PS2 emulation at full speed =P it's the streaming part that's tricky since that actually takes more CPU power at 640x480 in H.264 at real time lol. Use AMD for that and you pretty much get murdered.

same for dragon age, I live stream video games, and i5 does the job so well at it's price that it's simply incredible, it doesn't even go above 40% for the most part for me with the game, and I use the rest of the resources for live streaming at about 704x400 in H.264 as well.

I've never seen a bargin vs performance like the i5, or I haven't seen it since the original Celerons lol.

they are both just as much of a pain in the ass on the socket change, I got totally screwed with the 939 socket with AMD, then there was AM2, 2+, 2+ compatible with 3, etcetc, so that's really a non-issue imo.

I think you've been getting a lot of misinformation here NJ5!

I'll do this with the 1-2-3 method.

1. Windows 7 + Direct X 11 gives you multi-threaded rendering and a better threading model for the operating system. More threads = better, always! So don't bother with X2 CPUs and don't bother with a slow CPU. This driver model works on recent Nvidia hardware even if they can't implement the hardware features.

2. To run at 120 FPS you'll need a powerful CPU and GPU because you're always limited by your lowest denominator and the higher you push your framerates the more you're likely to run into a CPU limitation. An HD 5870 is CPU limited in many instances by a Core i7 overclocked.

3. Console ports from the Xbox 360 can use between 3-6 threads so plan accordingly. RE5 for example loves more hardware threads and absolutely creams on an i7 processor. Expect them to use more threads as time goes by.

4. The 965 Black edition was recently with a product code of HDZ965FBK4DGM http://www.guru3d.com/article/phenom-ii-x4-965-be-revision-c3-review-test/ which has a 15W lower TDP. Now AMD and Intel TDP are not comparable directly but overall it shaves 15W off for power consumption.

5. You may be better off looking at an SLI style system and hooking up two GTX 260+ GPUs as the games which implement 3d properly are likely TWIMTBP titles and therefore will scale well with SLI. Remember that SLI hits you with a CPU penalty so plan accordingly.

6. My reccomended specs for a 120FPS performance PC is Core i7 with the X58 chipset and two GTX 260 216 GPUs in SLI OR one GTX 295 if you want to build now.

7. oops I messed up the font. Anyway with the general purpose compute and new design the Nvidia Fermi GPU (GF100/GTX 300 series) they may implement 3d more efficiently on a hardware level so you don't have to render the game at double the framerate.

Actually, no. It's confirmed that the midrange (>$120~150) AMD parts in 2010 and 2011 will use Socket AM3.

You have gotten many good advice NJ5, but the single most important thing in my opinion when buying a new system is to answer this question:
- how many years will I keep this CPU until the next CPU upgrade (or even a completely new system)?
(and this in relation to possible GPU upgrades too to some extent)

Personally I aim for 3 year cycles on the CPU and 1.5 year cycles on GPU, while some people may prefer for example 2 year CPU/2 year GPU cycles or any other combination for that matter. Partly I choose my strategy because I find it irritating to have to upgrade motherboard and RAM together with the CPU, but then it's a good strategy because of better-bang-for-your-buck too.

Oh, and please buy AMD and not Intel.
(not because they're better but because I love AMD lol)

so they say lol =)

can we not be fanboys about computer parts? ^^;;; a better part is a better part in the computer world lol. I'm Intel now but I was AMD for a good 8 years before and Intel before that and AMD before even that and then Intel...... it's what's better for the individual at the time that counts, not brand loyalty.

This.

And like others have said, the i5's and i7's just blow everything amd has away. 

I also build my PCs for a 3 year or more life expectancy, and there is nothing AMD puts out that will give you that. I've been running a Q6600 since release date and have FINALLY upgraded, and I still didn't really need to in all honesty, gaming length like that could never be received from AMD. 

Yes, you may be able to get phenoms a bit cheaper, but the few extra dollars you spend on an i5 or i7 is absolutely worth it. And the new chipset intel is staying with for some time will be the 1156, so in a year or two from now if I decided to buy a much better video card (260 gtx core 216 currently), i can easily upgrade my processor with it now. 

Also it's my understanding that Intel makes much more use of the DDR3 ram compared to AMD, as AMD just recently started using it.

Lets face it, AMD / ATI  are bargain shopping at Goodwill compared to Nvidia and Intel.