Hi,

It is not necessarily true that the 5200 dual core AMD would be faster than your single core 3.4 Ghz.

The problem is that CPU and chipset design is a whole lot more complicated than just the megahertz speed. The speed is a good thing to look at first since it can (often) differentiate between two of the same type of processor, i.e. a Core 2 Duo E6600 is a bit slower than a Core 2 Duo E6700 because of the CPU frequency.

{TECHIE RAMBLE}
However, between different types of processor, you have to worry about size of CPU L1, L2 and possibly L3 cache memory, type of access to memory (i.e. dual channel operation, latency and how many memory controllers) and FSB speed, memory speed, instruction and pipeline depth on the CPU (some CPUs do much more work per cycle than others). To make matters even worse, different types of software respond in different ways to the features of different CPUs (i.e. things like rendering like really meaty floating point units to handle all that maths about how to display the faces). {/TECHIE RAMBLE}

How does this help? It doesn't but, it is a good idea to check benchmarks for any CPU/system that you intend to buy so that you don't buy another lemon or miss out on some really great performance for a small saving in money.

Fortunately, you don't have to do the bechmarking yourself because most of the geeks and techies in the world benchmark and review new CPUs as they are released. Although no-one (yet) benchmarks with Poser, sometimes POV-Ray, Lightwave, Cinema4D and/or Studio Max are used for benchmarking. These are a good first approximation for how "good" the machine will be for Poser since they are doing the same sort of computations. So if POV-Ray runs faster on Machine A than on Machine B then it is quite likely that Poser will too.

I usually go to the Tech Report to check out types of Processor.

Here's a link to a review of Intel E6700 vs AMD X2 6000. For rendering, at least, it looks like AMD has the edge.

http://www.techreport.com/reviews//2007q1/athlon64-x2-6000/index.x?pg=9

and here's and earlier review that has the AMD 5000 in it.

http://www.techreport.com/reviews/2006q3/e6300-vs-sff/index.x?pg=12
http://www.techreport.com/reviews/2006q3/e6300-vs-sff/index.x?pg=13

Hope this helps.

Regards,
Jovial.