Valve Source engine particle simulation
Next up are a couple of tests we picked up during a visit to Valve Software, the developers of the Half-Life games. They've been working to incorporate support for multi-core processors into their Source game engine, and they've cooked up a couple of benchmarks to demonstrate the benefits of multithreading.

The first of those tests runs a particle simulation inside of the Source engine. Most games today use particle systems to create effects like smoke, steam, and fire, but the realism and interactivity of those effects is limited by the available computing horsepower. Valve's particle system distributes the load across multiple CPU cores.

The quad-core systems stake out the top positions here, finally getting to show their stuff. Overall, the Core 2 processors are clearly faster.

Valve VRAD map compilation
This next test processes a map from Half-Life 2 using Valve's VRAD lighting tool. Valve uses VRAD to precompute lighting that goes into its games. This isn't a real-time process, and it doesn't reflect the performance one would experience while playing a game. It does, however, show how multiple CPU cores can speed up game development.

This is a very different test from the last one, but the finishing order is quite similar, with the quad cores and Core 2s doing best. Apparently, the word "core" has magical powers.