If you're a gamer, you're really NOT going to need a Core 2 Duo to play games nicely at high settings. It may be better to just wait until AMD's 4 Core processors hit the market. I like to play my games at high graphics settings, so the new Intel processors just aren't worth it in my opinion. And if you ARE playing at minimum settings, then buying a new GPU rather than a CPU will help you much much more.