need help picking cpu

If PC as in desktop, neither cpu, the M means mobile, for laptops.

It's an HP Touchsmart. They use laptop cpu's.  This is a PC for a kitchen so it will not be a hard core gamer machine (while it will run some games) and run general wordprocessing apps etc along with Adobe Indesign and photoshop

Then get whatever's cheapest. If it's not for running heavy design software (like c4D) or for playing graphics heavy games, you won't need the power provided by either one of those, really.

Also, as far as I know, cores are just for multi-tasking. 4 cores can tackle more active programs and processes at one time than a dual core. But in terms of speed, a single core processor @ 3.0 GHz would probably run Crysis better than a quad core @ 2.0 GHz.

So yeah, if you won't be doing that, I'd go with whatever you can get for a song.

Indeed... based on what you say you need, this is a HUGE overkill with either chip.  Save some money and geek a budget pc here.  If you are spending more than 300 on everything outside of a monitor, you are paying way too much for no good reason. 

Do you have to go with an Intel chip???  The reason I ask is that you can get a decent AMD CPU for a smaller cash outlay, and being that you're not needing huge amounts of processing power for gaming or graphics, there are some nice dual core Athlon II's at reasonable prices that'd suit your needs... and no overkill.  If you think that you may need more power later on, however, the Phenom triples and quads are quite inexpensive as compared to Intel equivalents.

Just a thought.

I don't mean to imply I don't need any graphics or performance.  I will not be pushing the envelope with games but I do work with Adobe Indesign, Illustrator and photoshop along with another vector program called xara.  I will look at the amd and see if i have that option.  very good thought.  I appreciate all the help.  It seems pretty clear to me that i would be wasting my money on the quad right now based on my usage.

You will find that most CPUs in the dual core AMD Athlon II range will provide more than ample power for your Adobe and vector programs, no worries.

Why Intel?

they only offer intel with the larger screens.  I can get AMD but the screen size is only 18 inches.  Not sure why they limit the AMD's to such small screens but that is an issue for me.

thats not entirely true. i dont know about crysis but multiple cores do not only speed up running mulitple programs or processes at the same time but also multiple threads! for instance in games you can have the main game thread running on one cpu while the physics or the ai runs on another cpu. of course this requires the programs being developed for these circumstances but today that applies to many if not all games and also many other applications.

if you run many old games or applications then get a dual core because each single core is faster. if you want to play todays games or run new versions of applications like photoshop or whatever cpu intensive app you need i bet they run faster on quad core cpus.

I am leaning toward the quad now.  Keeping in mind this is a kitchen pc so the form factor is a consideration, i can get the biggest, beefiest quad HP offers for the all in one PC for right at $1500. This includes 1Tb of Hd storage, 6g ram, and 1g of dedicated vidao ram (can't remember the video card at the moment but was nvidia).  It's not touch screen but the more I think about it...who needs that?  especially in the kitchen.  I do not want greasy finger prints on the screen.  It seems to me that for the price, I might as well get as much pc as possible. 

Next plan...can i upgrade the components in my work pc (Dell Dimension 8400) and use that for more dedicated gaming?  hmmmm....I will have to think about that.