Until the recent price drop, a AMD dual core 5000 now for 169us(Newegg) I've run fx55 single core cpus with an ATI x1950xtx. Oblivion, and G3 ran fine at mostly high resolutions, shadows off or low. I love eyecandy, being a shallow gamer,so this is the rig, I think. I had a dual core Athlon 4800 but sold it, single core seems smoother to me. I don't know if windows xp utilizes the dual core sufficiently. My task window never went over %50.Single core is smoother for me but I have a AMD 6000 ($269) for later. Great prices at the moment for new self built rigs.