Well let's take that 'windows balancing the load': If that was true then both screen shots would show load across all 8 vcores and in roughly equal amounts. Meanwhile in the screen shot prior to combo its got 4 vcores running at about 50% and one at 27% and most importantly 3 doing nothing. Then in the combat one its got all 8 running pretty evenly. Yes the threads are getting spread out but that's not load balancing single threads across multiple cores, that's tasking the threads to run within which ever core is most available. This ultimately does not do a thing to detract from how under stress Skyrim can and will use more then two cores and in sufficient quantities that no dualcore could deal with it without saturating and bogging down.

ED: Oh and not to mention that arguing that windows will spread a thread's load across multiple cores would utterly destroy any argument that smaller counts of faster cores beat out higher counts of slower cores. No it doesn't work like that, threads are assigned their core and they do their thing, how fast/occupied that thread is determines how fast the thread can do its thing.

Skyrim seems to really only use two cores most of the time. On average during system intensive spots in Skyrim, my Core 2 Quad has one core at 100%, second core at 80%, and the other two cores never go over 15% and are usually at around 5-10%. That said, what really makes a difference in Skyrim is CPU speed. You'll want at least a dual core no matter what, but the faster the speed the better. Cache and FSB speeds are important as well. An i5 or i7 quad core above 3GHz is the safest bet. I have a Core 2 Quad 2.4GHz (Q6600) and out of box (vanilla), my game runs terrible. I have a Geforce GTX470, 8GB DDR3 @ 1600 MHz, FSB @ 1600 MHz & Win7 x64. The game defaults at medium settings, and I get framerates as good as 120 fps (I have a 120hz monitor) and as low as 12 fps! The game is unplayable like this, as I get frame rate drops everywhere and they are usually below 15 fps. This is all because my CPU is pretty terrible at running Skyrim smooth. Skyrim is incredible CPU intensive. All that said, when I up the multiplier and vcore on my CPU to overclock it to 3.6GHz (I have great cooling), my lowest frame rates are around 20-25 fps. Huge difference from 2.4GHz to 3.6GHz on my Core 2 Quad. Now that I'm using Skyboost r4, my frame rate never drops below 30 fps at ultra settings and beyond. I have 8x AA, 16x AF, 4x SSAA, Quality SSAO @ 1080p and am using tons of texture mods, uGrids @ 7, and .ini settings that make everything better.

Basically, I think a quad core is the way to go. Processor speed is the biggest determiner of good frame rates in Skyrim. Also, using Skyboost is a must for better CPU optimization. The reason I say quad core is the way to go over dual core, even though two cores in a quad aren't used much is because you still need some CPU resources to run Windows, Steam and such in the background. You'd be safer with a quad core. Go for an i5 or i7 over the Core 2 Quads though. Sandybridge CPUs are great for Skyrim, and of course you should be using Windows 7 x64.

I'm not talking products failing.. i'm talking about how long the cpu will generally be able to be used without having to dump it for a newer one...

For example.. anyone with a super powerful single core cpu is pretty damn useless..... reason dual cores are still prevailent and around and useable up to a point... lets just take the amd x2's when they first launched.. THEY still are producing relatively good results.. but are failing quickly in favor of 3 or 4 core cpus in modern situations.

life span is useable lifespan.... i don't see the chips failing at all... i still have some 486dx4 intel chips floating about working dandy.. not to mention the flawless TRS-80 model 1.

To add... no the facts state otherwise.. a higher frequency dual core with HT is actually performing on par or worse then a marginally lower clocked quad core...

the only way to put the dual core in favor is to crank up the bus/clocks .... but that can be done to the quad which will show a bigger improvement.