CRYSIS is only dual core optimized... and yeah, equal die size, duo owns..
Then you consider the fact you can get a wolfdale for the same price as a conroe and hits 4.1Ghz easy. There's no reason to get a conroe now that the wolfdale is out, it's only going to increase the duo's lead on the quad until the 45nm Q's come out, and even then, duo will still be ahead until quad core games come out, and by that time we will have octo cores and you'll be saying get one of those. Besides, there aren't any quads in his specified price range of under $200. The E8400 is a monster for under $200.
He didn't say how much photo/video/audio he does, but it sounds like it's less than gaming. For what little photo video editing people usually do, who cares about a few extra seconds rendering or encoding. Gaming is where you see the performance. Besides, the duo performs better and COSTS LESS, so you can put the extra money towards a better GPU and really pull away.