New computer specs? (again)

[gptech]

I'm sure it is documented somewhere, and I'm also certain Derek posted info about dual core support before the upgrade, but I can't find it

[ttjph]

I have a dual-core CPU, and RW3 appears to use about one-and-a-half cores (with the GPU floating along around 90%).

[archiea]

For Railworks, very little actually.
The i7 has 4 cores, and hyper-threading which effectively means you get 8 cores available, the i3 is a dual core CPU with hyper-threading so that equates to 4 cores. RW only uses 2 cores in it's present form, and unless a program 'knows' how to make full advantage of hyper-threading that feature is of little use.
The i7 has a much larger level 3 cache, which can give a small benefit when gaming and of course the fact that it's running at a faster speed will boost performance slightly but the gains to be had don't justify (in my opinion) the extra cost over an i3 or i5.
If you do any serious video editing, or anything else that really pushes a CPU then the i7 would be a better choice, but for just running day to day stuff and RW your i3 is just fine.

A quick google search will bring up oodles of benchmarks proving the i7 blows the i3 away in terms of performance, but these will mostly be synthetic tests and not 'real world' observations.

It's not just a difference in cache, clock speed, and number of cores. They are not the same types of cores and core per core the i7 is faster.

It's true that in gaming you generally don't see a huge difference like in some of these other programs but there will be a difference.