2 ghz intel core duo vs 3 ghz pentium 4 ht for audition 2.0

i'm about to purchase a laptop for running audition 2.0 with a presonus firepod, and have these processor options (1 gb memory, 80 gb hard drive)...

intel core duo 2 ghz

or

intel pentium 4 w/ht 3 ghz

i've heard good reviews of the dual core processors in the home pc setting (looking at pictures and listening to music at the same time, etc) but nothing about their performance running one piece of demanding software (like audio production software). in my mind, a faster single core processor seems to make more sense for running one intensive program, unless i'm missing something here (can audition split the processing tasks into two cores? isn't that hyper-threading?)

thank you knowledgable ones...

All I can say about this is that AA2.0 runs fine on my laptop - which is a 3GHz P4 ht, with 1GB of RAM, with a MOTU traveler (Firewire). And Audition certainly can use the ht - but how effective this actually is is open to some debate at present...

I have a (new ) 3 GHz P4 with 1.5GB of memory and AA2 hums along sweetly!

i've heard good reviews of the dual core processors in the home pc setting (looking at pictures and listening to music at the same time, etc) but nothing about their performance running one piece of demanding software (like audio production software). in my mind, a faster single core processor seems to make more sense for running one intensive program, unless i'm missing something here (can audition split the processing tasks into two cores? isn't that hyper-threading?)

thank you knowledgable ones...

Dual Core processors are beneficial mainly for multitasking, but it also works well for programs that ultilize dual cores.

[RANT]Sonar 5 makes good use of multiple cores.  Audition will utilize multiple cores, although I cant see any benefit when AA2 is brought to its knees when only utilizing 60% of my cpu usage.[/RANT]

More speed does not equal better performance, as a Dual Core A64 running at 2.4 ghz will perform better than most dual core P4s at speeds well over 3ghz.

Two Cores CPU's perform nearly twice as fast as single core CPU (at the same clock speed) if both cores have there own dedicated L2 cache.
Intel's Duo Core CPU (at the moment) share's one L2 cache for both cores.

If you could wait until year, intel will release quad core CPU's each with there own dedicated Cache. (I can wait)    Then eight cores will come along etc.......

Intel's website has good flash demo's all about Hyper-threading.
Back to your first question I think the 3ghz CPU will be faster than a 2ghz
Duo Core CPU.

I am embarrassed to say but I am running an AMD 1.8ghz with 512 ram and I have yet to have a problem.  I will be upgrading soon but so far i havent had a problem.

I also installed AA2.0 on a p3 800 with 256 ram..  I recommend not doing this  it captures great but that's all I use that machine for anyways I tried to punch in and out on one track and it took 5 minutes to merge the tracks together