Am I Understanding Multithreading?

[Hairetos]

I've been reading general stuff about computer hardware for when I build my college computer. From what I have read, quad-core processing is useless because very few applications actually have multi-threading coded for more than 2 processors, making dual-core the only viable investment.

So my question is, are quad-core processors (and above) as useless as the internet makes them sound? If not, what are their uses?

 

[Elhueno]

They have their uses.

Im not quite an expert yet, but i have tinkered around with my quad core. Basically, most applications can only use 2 cores at the most. The thing is that they only do that when they have to. which isnt very often.

To make use of the extra cores, there is a setting you can access through ctrl+alt+del. Right click on a task and "set Affinity". my understanding of this is it sticks that task to a particular core, thus sharing the load.

For example, set Game A to run on core 1, Web browser to run on core 2, Operating System tasks on core3, all others on core 4.

Im not 100% if that works like i think, but thats how i use my quad core.