Got to agree on the irony of saying games need quads, do they? I'm still running a 2.2ghz Athlon X2 and am not CPU-bound in MW2, Bioshock 2, Crysis, STALKER, AvP3 at 1920x1200....sure I am CPU-bound in HL2 but the framerate is already significantly higher than playable...I would not recommend a quad core to any gamer unless they had enough money left over from a good graphics card because the money is best directed there first...not just for value for money but for FPS.
Yes they do. And there are countless benchmarks to prove it.
That's at medium quality and IIRC Far Cry 2 is properly mutlithreaded...it would look different on high quality or a different game.
How about this one...no tangible benefit to any new cpu
Or this, arguably the best looking game on pc, 60fps on an old E5300
I suppose you could say that's just an average, and during intensive scenes it might drop to below playable - but I still think that would be down to the GPU, not CPU, in my experience.
Fair enough, if the OP has loads of money, of course recommend an i7, but if there is a moderate budget, CPU cores/speed would come after GPU speed and having an SSD for me. For a gamer of course, not someone using properly threaded apps who would see a significant difference with a high end quad.
You mentioned false economy, but top end hardware itself is a false economy unless you *need* it as the price is not in proportion to performance.