good advice from birdcat,

good advice from birdcat, but if you’re not in the mood to spend, i’d just push my cpu a bit by overclocking. you might find that your performance is faster with a higher clocked dual core than a slower quad core. i’ve overclocked my dual core with good results

if you’re buying new, by all means spend the extra few hundred on a faster cpu.

but why not wait until you need it because your renders are taking too long? that’s when you’ll appreciate it 🙂 in computers, the longer you wait, the more you get for your $$.