Are you planning to buy a high-end PC ?

if Yes then my advice would be to hold on for few more months as Intel has something really big coming up.

Let me educate you a little if your are a newbie(nothing wrong in it though),on the basic functioning and attributes of a processor and geeks just move ahead to the next paragraph.

What does a processor do?
A processor is the unit that reads and executes program instructions, which are fixed-length (typically 32 or 64 bit) or variable-length chunks of data.The data consists of number of instructions which specifies the work that is to be done. The instructions are very basic things like reading data from memory or sending data to the user display, but they are processed at a rapid speed that we experience the results as the smooth operation of a program.Processor consists of number of cores depending on it’s design(Dual core,Quad core,Hexa core etc). The number of tasks completed per second depends on these cores, if there is only one core in processor then instructions will be executed one at a time.

Intel’s 32 cores processor

Intel finally changed their way of thinking about processor speed, leaving the unreliable gigahertz numbers they are now concentrating on increasing cores. Intel is planning to develop processors with 32 cores available in the second half of 2010. Intel predicted 20GHz chips by 2010 a few years ago, but now instead of GHz, they’re looking forward for multiple cores that will result in a processor that will be 15 times faster than today’s quickest chips.

Intel has assigned name “Keifer” to the many-core processor project and “Gulftown” specifically to its 32-core processor that will be manufactured using 32nm process(The 32 nm process ‘also called 32 nanometer node’ is the next step after the 45 nanometer process in CMOS semiconductor device fabrication), and it will include eight processing nodes, each with four cores. Each core will run at 2GHz, but since there are 32 of them, processor will run at 64 GHz . Keifer is aimed take on Sun’s Niagara which is available in the market as UltraSPARC T1 processor.