Unreal Tournament 3
UT3 normally isn't quite as CPU-limited as the titles on the previous page, so we concocted an interesting scenario by setting up a 24-player CTF bot match on the epic Facing Worlds map. We racked up frags like mad while capturing five 60-second gameplay sessions for each processor. The screen resolution was set to 1280x1024 for testing, with UT3's default quality options and "framerate smoothing" disabled.

The Phenom II X 720 comes out on top yet again, this time beating our cheapest processor in the perf-per-dollar chart—a rare occurrence—and lying awfully close to the top left of our scatter plot.

Admittedly, you're probably not going to notice the difference between 76 and 133 FPS on a typical LCD monitor. However, it's worth pointing out that the "median low" frame rates these processors generate aren't all above the 60 FPS limit—so you may notice choppiness in busier fights with a slower processor. Regular UT3 games without a gazillion bots will probably be less demanding, however.

Half Life 2: Episode Two
Our next test is a good, old custom-recorded in-game timedemo, precisely repeatable.

Here, we have a virtual toss-up between the Core 2 Duo E8400 and Phenom II X3 720. Considering the E8600 is almost neck-and-neck with the Core i7-965, we'll have to conclude Half-Life 2: Episode Two is more sensitive to high clock speeds and single-threaded performance than to parallel number-crunching power.

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

This test 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.

Valve's particle simulator really seems to take advantage of extra cores and threads—so much so that the Core i7-920 ended up third in our perf-per-dollar chart despite its high price tag. We should probably point out that buying a Core i7 involves blowing at least $200 on an X58 motherboard and paying a premium for triple-channel DDR3 memory kits, though. (We'll look at full system prices in a little while.)