Silly question... What hardware changes would benefit CC the most? I only ask this because I have a game that runs without using the video card, thus making the CPU do all the work. Is CC kinda like that? And does it take advantage of Quad Cores?

CC is not multithreaded, but dual core (minimum) processors generally do better because the game will end up consuming an entire CPU core when running at full speed.

Your best acquisitions in terms of CC performance are CPU clock speed, and RAM.

More RAM = longer, more stable, more fluid CC play.

EDIT: Oh yeah, and CC doesn't use the GPU at all. It's only going to be a bottleneck if you run at gargantuan resolutions.

Thank you Grif. I am going from a 2.5ghz Dual core amd to a 2.5 quad core amd. Also, running xp, I will go from 2 gigs to 4 gigs of ram.

I sure hope its enough to make 4-player split screen run smoothly.

You can also try increasing the CPU priority of the game to squeeze more juice out of your processor. On a multicore system there's not much danger doing that with CC because it'll only ever run on one core. If you've tried everything in this guide and are still getting lacklustre performance, you should also take all the logical steps, like playing on smaller maps with fewer mods. Larger maps are not only more RAM-heavy, as you've got to store all the terrain data somewhere, but also more CPU heavy, as the game iterates through every pixel of the terrain each frame.

On that note, as an aside: could a developer poke Data about perhaps putting the terrain into a quadtree and then only doing terrain pixel checks inside the quads that contain a MO? I'm not suggesting this as a now thing, I'm suggesting this as a project for an optimisation build. A similar thing should be done to the MO collision system anyway, rather than indexing all of the hittables.

Ok that is exactly what I was looking for... Agh annoying! so the quad core basically will be no benefit? oh well.

Quad core vs dual core won't be a huge benefit, but 2 to 4 gigs of ram will.

Try increasing the CPU priority now and see how much that helps with your woes. In case you're unsure of how to go about this, open task manager (ctrl+shift+esc) and go to the processes tab, then right click "Cortex Command.exe" and set the priority to high.
Also, as Grif says, more RAM will help quite a bit.

Don't get the computer for another week or two. but I will tell you guys how it works out. Thanks!

Offtopicish: Meanwhile, any video card suggestions?

For CC or in general? As it doesn't affect CC, I'm going to guess in general. I'd suggest making a new topic in offtopic for that, but I'd suggest a 1GB 5670 from Gigabyte for about ~$125AUD. If a mod could move these posts to another thread to that would be nice, I'd like to keep this one clean.

Video card depends on what you want to do with it. Just CC and the other CPU only game: Take a cheapish card. Some real gaming: Take a newish card, an Ati would be best since you have a quadcore and won't be needing a physics core.(and they are cheaper, and I'm 100% sure it won't cause any glitches with your CPU.)

EDIT: BTW, wtf are you talking about? 2.5 should be more then enough for CC on reasonable resolutions.(It's meant for 800x600 with a reason....)