[thatmariolover]

The Quad is nice for some stuff, not so nice for others. Bottom line, though, is that Quad is the future and most applications will end up supporting multiple threads. Parallel processing is really where the quad core shines. I can be zipping a file, encoding a video, and doing a virus scan without it interfering with the game I'm playing. However, until more applications are multithreaded you won't notice a huge difference between two cores and four.

As for surround sound, you can get decent (usually not digital) 5.1-7.1 with an onboard solution. I've had particular success with the ALC88x sound boards. I did end up investing in a Razor Barracuda AC-1 and there's a notable difference even with a headphone jack (quite a difference with a digital jack). The onboard sounded fine, don't get me wrong, but there is quite a difference if you're an audiophile.