Whats the most value for money comp CPU today?
 

Thinking of getting a desktop again - a single laptop screen isnt enough. What 2-4core CPUs would you recommend? Thx! :thumbsup

Probably the i7's with Quad cores. You can get this in the low $200 range (very good value there considering the Core2Duo Quads are still around that price range). However, AMD has some six core processors out and I've seen some of their Quad cores on Newegg for as low as $100 new.

Make sure not to focus entirely on the CPU. A good GPU can make a crappy P4 machine rival an i7 when it comes to playing h.264. Memory bandwidth and capacity is also important. Look for a good motherboard that has room for all of this.

pre-configured HP machines in the $400 range are good enough

Yeah I was surprised a hexa cpu cost like 250 or so here, though I am not sure if I will ever fully utilize all 6 cores.. ? Four might be enough. How about Athlon X4 II? You can pick one up for like 100bucks

Make sure to pay attention to clock speed as well as cache, not just the number of cores. Both can make a big difference. More applications are able to utilize all the cores these days and your OS likely also tries to utilize them as much as possible. Chrome and h.264 utilize them, Firefox 4.0 is working on (in development) fully utilizing them with their Electrolysis project.

I got the Athlon X4 II and it is very solid. Does video encoding very well. It however doesn't have any L3 cache. Their Phenom however does have the L3 cache.