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I was just wondering how much faster is emulating a C2D @ 3ghz using SSE4.1 and such compared to a Phenom II x2 @ 3ghz using SSE2?
Should be a little faster, but not by much. The SSE4.1 plugin comes in handy in some parts in some games but it wont be a general speedup either.
The instruction set itself matters very little. The fundamental design of the CPU however matters a lot more. Core2 CPUs have better out-of-order instruction execution, better branch prediction, an extra execution unit, and faster execution units in general (especially for SSEs) compared to PhenomII's. The Core2 also has the "Denormals are Zero" optimization, which is a huge speedup for PCSX2 in certain games.

Thus, even without SSE4, the Core2 chips, clock-for-clock, are always much better at running PCSX2 than PhenomII's. (edit: in PhenomII's defense, they tend to come with higher stock clocks -- though tend not to overlock as well either. Man it's hard to defend them right now.)
Well this kind of makes me regret my decision of going AM3, but then again the price offsets this, thanks for the info.
with the latest svn version of pcsx2, probably the most a game will benefit from sse4.1 is about an extra ~5% in certain scenes.
that's an extra 3fps if the game was running at 60fps initially.

that's if the game uses alot of VU and vif unpacking.
so ssse3 its something similar to sse4 in terms of performance?