in my experience with pc games, even when the game ran well it still didnt have the constant smoothness that a console had, always a stutter or hiccup but thats just my experience.
Sounds like your hardware is not good enough for the games you're playing at the settings and resolution you're running them at. Either lower your settings or buy new hardware. Simple as that. I can play games like Batman AA and Just Cause 2 @ 1080p and 60fps. These games look significantly better and run much smoother than the console versions of these games. My computer is by no means top of the line either.
and wanna see a game asking of quad cores?? take a look at the new BULLETSTORM from epic games. same UE3 engine asking for a quad core.
Seems you're right; yet I don't even understand why this is a problem. Why is it a problem? Quad core CPU's are not exactly expensive these days. They're not exactly new either. I should know, I have one in my computer that was released back in 2007.
and just curious what do you consider a half decent gpu. i wanna look into one =P
I bought a AMD HD6870 recently. A good mid-range card that will run pretty much anything you would want it to. Around $US200 IIRC. Even my last card which was an 8800GT (that I sold for $40 on eBay) offered better performance than any console.