Quad cores?

To my understanding, yes. I know for sure it helps with rendering and it should help with previews. I'm typing this on my Q6600/PremiereCS3 machine and it sure feels like a big difference. I know Premiere is multi-threaded, though, and that's what allows it to take advantage of the processor. I checked it out while I was rendering and it used up about 90% of the CPU. An application not made for multiple cores will take a maximum of 25%. I tried encoding from premiere and then at the same time encoding with another application while listening to music and having my e-maill app open and my browser open and the machine was still fully responsive.

To conclude, if Premiere usage is important go for a quad core.

Check out this link to see the gain in performance with encoding (not with Premiere but with a multi-threaded benchmarking application):

http://www.hardwarezone.com/articles/view.php?id=2169&cid=2&pg=8
 
Does a Quad Core include a utility that would let you switch off a couple of cores? If so, you could test and compare.
 
Well you can set the affinity (which cores the process uses) in task manager, but if each core is above 25% utilization, disabling the use of the other core for Premiere CS3 would certainly make a render take longer.
 
Yes, more cores make things faster, because Premiere is properly multithreaded.

I'm not sure how far the optimisations have been implemented though, and you may find that some filters may be faster than others, which may mean they're only written for a single core (or are really processor intensive).

There's a tool on Adobe labs that takes advantage of SSE4, which is standard on 45nm intel core2 chips. It makes rendering colour correctors a lot faster.

http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Adobe_Premiere_Pro_Update_for_Intel_SSE4.1

I don't have an SSE4 chip, so I haven't tested it, but it should make certain filters a lot faster. I think it takes advantage of the MPSADBW instruction (Intel paper here) which accelerates motion estimation. MPSADBW does a macroblock in 7 cycles. Incredible.
 
I am working in a dual core but premiere cs3 won't use both cores when rendering. Do i need to change any settings?
 
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I have Premiere Pro 1.0 and my system uses both cores for RT previews but when I render it only uses one. If there is a setting to get both cores to work it should be stated right on the front of the box. I realize PP 1.0 may not be optimised for dual cores.
 
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