Question is in the thread title. Will i7 close that "clock for clock" gap between duals and quads that Core 2 has? The whole "duals are faster for gaming" thing.

Thats what Im wondering. Will duals perform as quads currently do? And, if so, whats the point of quads?

Yep, sorta like nVidia, sitting on 3 top cpus, like nVidias 2 gpus. Some people hate it when I say this, but it is close to the same story. Whats truly amazing to me is, i7's kill in server, yet those dont come til later as well. Anyways, Im thinking they think their old stuff can tow the line, just like nVidia did, and maybe so, but we all saw what the 4xxx series did to nVidia. Im NOT saying itll happen again, but I think its a sign of complacency

A dual will be promoted as the worse you can do, period by then. Windows 7 brings with it really nice MT handling. DX11 brings with it, really nice MT handling, even for shader ops, to a degree. Everything , and I mean everything, will be aimed at MT by then, its just having the public, the consumers sold on it

If this is true, then its even more indication that Dual-cores are being taken out of the performance/enthusiast(extreme) category, and also leans towards notebooks/HTPCs. Looks like the E8000's are the swan song for high end desktop duals.

There is no 'clock for clock' gap between duals and quads. The reason people say duals are better for gaming *right now* is that 1.) there really aren't games that take advantage of more than 2 cores (with 1 or 2 exceptions), and 2.) duals can usually be overclocked higher and easier than their quad core counterparts.

'clock for clock' quads perform exactly the same as a dual of the same generation at the same clock speed.