I've seen it said that if an app 'freezes' it will only effect the one core
and the sys should continue, on the rare occassion I have had a freeze it is
sys wide as before, requiring a hard boot / reset
There are still few apps that are optimised for dual core, no MS Office apps
are optimised for dual or multi core.
If your primary apps are 'office' apps there is very little in the way of
performance enhancements in going from a socket A chip to the latest AM2
dual core
My primary use is with MS office apps, and I have seen no real time
performance increase in going from a skt A amd pre barton 512mb, to amd dual
core 3400+ with 1gb corsair dual matched memory with a supposedly 'fast'
mobo and decent drives
The apps may open slightly faster but actual usage speed is the same.
If you run games or other video type (photo/autocad) apps you may well see
performance increase, but then your vid hardware come into play also.