This week was dual-core week for the many Web sites that cover the latest and greatest processors from AMD and Intel. All of us dutifully reported our numerous benchmarks comparing the new dual-core processors from both companies. And while I am biased and think that our coverage from our editor Patrick Schmid is the best of the lot, I am here today to tell you that it doesn’t really matter which CPU you end up buying, because clockspeed is history.

But don’t take my word for it, you can read some of the competition from Anandtech , PC World and ExtremeTech here and make your own conclusions.

For the vast majority of the world, the speed of the CPU isn’t the bottleneck in delivering a faster computing experience. Most of us would be far better served in buying a better graphics card and sticking in whatever PC we have at the moment than trading up the MHz chart. And while the dual-cores do deliver impressive performance gains (and AMD seems to have a slight edge on some of the applications for the time being), there is more bang for your buck if you spend a few hundred dollars on a new graphics card.

We have reached the limits of what humans can do with PCs. The new multi-core processors aren’t about faster typing at the keyboards, shooting more missives via email or more missiles via some FPS game. These things run plenty fast with the current crop of CPUs. But they are about making it better to run multiple applications in memory to block spam, prevent intrusions, convert videos and run database searches.

Yes, AMD seems to have an edge over managing their power budgets on their chips and saving some kilowatts of power that would otherwise go towards warming your den or desk surface. And if you do go with their dual-cores, you can use them on more motherboards than the Intel version, which requires a completely new motherboard to match its new CPU. But here’s a better idea : just buy the latest graphic card and leave everything else alone. While you won’t have bragging rights about your CPU, your machine will probably run plenty fast enough for most of your applications.