The more cores, the better. I feel I'm really restricted from targeting the CPUs of tomorrow by lack of parallelism; if you're writing a piece of software you expect to possibly last 20+ years, you really shouldn't over-assume today's limited CPU count, in particular.
Work per clock cycle is improving at a not too shabby rate either. When I upgraded from a Q6600 to an i7 920, build times reduced by about 60%; Handbrake transcode times improved by even more.
Work per clock cycle is improving at a not too shabby rate either. When I upgraded from a Q6600 to an i7 920, build times reduced by about 60%; Handbrake transcode times improved by even more.