old dual CPU vs new dual and quad CPU workstations

i am still on my trusty dell 530 dual 2.0 xeon workstation. i know that only certain plugins and software (such as 3DS MAX) when rendering actually use both CPU's at once.

question is, does the new generation of dual and quad CPU's make better use of system resources? In other words, if i get a dual CPU system with quad processors, will all the processors work with normal system operations or single threaded applications or will the multiple cores only help multithreaded applications as in the past.

thanks,
d

It's the same as before, but you may be underestimating the level of multithreading going on in your system. Open up task manager and go to processes. If you enable the threads column you'll see a lot of processes with more than 1.

Also keep in mind that the OS itself is largely multithreaded.