So I figured I'd pick y'all's brains a bit.

Intel Pentium N3540 2.16 GHz or Celeron N2840 2.16 GHz? Which is the better CPU?

http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Pentium-N3540-vs-Intel-Celeron-N2840

A Quad Core vs a Dual core. If performance is the required one, the N3540 is the way to go, but that still just small numbers, besides price both are pretty much on par.

http://ark.intel.com/products/82105/Intel-Pentium-Processor-N3540-2M-Cache-up-to-2_66-GHz
The n3540 has 4 cores & 4 threads & DirectX* 11.2 Support.

http://ark.intel.com/products/82103/Intel-Celeron-Processor-N2840-1M-Cache-up-to-2_58-GHz
The n2840 has 2 cores & 2 threads & no DirectX* Support.

Like neurasthenya said N3540 is the way to go. Hope the links give you more info on the cpus :)

They still make those things?

don't get a dual core now.

get the pentium. I'm assuming it's more expensive but really as others have said, the extra cores are important. the clock speeds are not high and in fact the celeron is somewhat close to the performance of the pentium at this level but in some cases those extra threads will make a difference.

Thank you all, I'll pass these along.

The Pentium and Celeron brands were recently revitalized to stand in for the missing coverage of the low-end processor market left after the dissolution of the Atom processors. They're basically lower-end variants to the i3.

A book.

Best thread topic ever?

the one with more mhz

How are they on power consumption?

Sure, brats never go out of fashion.

I usually just put spicy mustard on my brats.

I just hand them over to a spicy mosh tart. That'll teach 'em.