Dual-Core Benefit for Gamers?
Is there any benefit to be realized from having a dual-core CPU when there is only one application (game) open, such as Half-Life or Call of Duty? I understand the principle of the dual core in relation to multitasking. I imagine that future software will be written to make better use of dual-core or even quad-core processors, but I'm talking of the here and now.
The answer is, it depends. Some of today's games are already multithreaded. Your example of Call of Duty 2 is one such game. If you download the 1.01 (or later) patch and install it, Call of Duty 2 moves a lot of the work of communicating with the graphics driver to a second core. This may not sound like much but can result in a significant increase in frame rate. Many of the games that are shipping this holiday season are multithreaded and will take advantage of dual-core CPUs.
If your system runs a lot of background tasks (BitTorrent, virus scans), dual-core CPUs can improve game performance by offloading those tasks.
Half-Life (the original) wasn't designed in an era of dual-core CPUs, and you may see little or no gain. A few older games won't run properly on dual-core CPUs because of inadequate programming.
Quad-core is a different issue. You won't see substantial benefit from it until newer game titles ship. Games such as Alan Wake, Supreme Commander, and others are multithreaded. Most game developers are becoming adept at multithreaded programming because of the prevalence of multicore processors in the new generation of game consoles.
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