Both Intel and AMD have confirmed that dual-core has stayed on the market more than both chip giants had hoped for. The real plan was to transition fast from dual-core to quads and to continue to grow in order of geometric progression.

Moving from single core to dual definitely changed a few things and made multitasking much better and more enjoyable, but going from dual to quad-core will only boost performance of a few selected benchmarks. It only drastically improves rendering, something that only a few people do. Both Intel and AMD have a huge problem that people don’t need more than two cores and they are hesitant when it comes to buying a new PC.

People didn’t really like Vista, as it needs more resources, but I would be happier if there were more applications to justify the purchase of an additional 2 or 4GB memory and a quad-core; but so far Intel and AMD didn’t solve this problem.

The bottom line is that dual-core CPUs will stay for a while and they still account for the majority of CPU sales.