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 are limited by the available computing horsepower. Valve's particle system distributes the load across multiple CPU cores.

The QX9650 posts a gain of about 15% over the QX6850 in this test, even surpassing the dual Xeons.

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 games like Half-Life 2. This isn't a real-time process, and it doesn't reflect the performance one would experience while playing a game. Instead, it shows how multiple CPU cores can speed up game development.

Even when the QX9650 can't deliver major progress over the QX6850, it wins. Nothing AMD has to offer even comes close.