It all depends on the money you want to spend for the system and what you want to do with it. It is not only important which software you run, but also how you use that software.
To run the adobe software an 700 dollar comp is good as well as a 800 dollar one will get you enough for ah2. I am talking of only the computer here without monitor, flight gear, trackir etc. since you have those costs no matter which pc you buy.
But if using that stuff professional I want data security, more hard disk capacity and an UPS. And i want that a lot more than i want whizz bang super CPU. So instead of spending 500 Dollar extra on the cpu and get nothing on AH2 and a 5 percent gain overall i rather buy an 3 Hard disks, a small ups and a quieter case.
If i use the system personal i want, instead of a extremly cool cpu which only gives slight improovements in ah2 over a normaly cool cpu (E6800 over E6600 ), CH Joystick & Throttle, TrackIR 4 and pedals.
When you want to work a lot with images and videos a lot of ram and big disks in a raid 5 (or 6) array will bring you further than the absolute best cpu. So if you plan on spending 3000$ you can get it all, otherwise its wiser to step down the CPU a bit and get a better Graphic / Harddisks / Quality System instead. Comparing equal price systems currently intel conroe core 2 duo are best, if on the high end market, that is if you buy a 6400 or better. On the low end as already discussed in other threads AMD or other Intel processors have some places.
Now, after writing some general stuff which probably nobody reads anyway, to the initial posts of megadud and handy169. When comparing the best AMD and the best Core 2 Duo the intel comes out far on top. When comparing Conroe 2 Duo 6600 to the fastest AMD (FX-62) the intel is still on top, with a whooping price advantage (~400 dollar on cpu... 320 dollar figuring in the more expensive intel motherboard). That is at stock speed. Now others might say they can overclock their AMD / Intel Pentium D, but nothing currently available overclocks like a conroe, giving it eaven more performance advantage.
So the Intel you listed is faster, eaven a cheaper conroe is faster AND leaves money for other stuff.
On CPUs one of the limiting factors is the memory bandwidth. So as long as you use dual channel DDR2-1066 memory 4 cpus arent going to give you double the performance of 2, since they are starving. Worst case the two CPUs do nothing for your application since it is not multi threaded enough to feed all of em, best case it has 4 or more threads but they still have to wait for each other to prevent total chaos. So apart from the coolness factor you get 2 to 40 percent... for a lot of money. I rather hope for a drop in the dual core processor prices with the release than for getting a 4 cpu system.
4 Graphic cards in one system? Cool but i can't eaven afford the best single GPU graphic card and it is not worth it combining 2 or more graphic boards which are not top of the line. The gain of getting one better chip is much higher.
