Valve Multi-core benchmark

Notes

Valve is one of many game developers that plans to incorporate support for multi-core in their latest games. In fact, multi-core optimizations will be incorporated into the next Source engine update just ahead of Half-Life 2 Episode 2.

Before this occurs though Valve has created a set of benchmark applications that are designed to take advantage of multi-threading. The test above, Valve’s particle sim benchmark, runs a series of particle simulations inside the Source engine entirely on the CPU. In one scene, rain is falling heavily in an empty room. The rain drops splash on the ground, which is covered in water.

The benchmark spits out a score based on how quickly the CPU is able to render the scene, with higher scores indicating better performance.

As you can see, Intel’s Core 2 processors deliver better performance in this benchmark, with both quad-core CPUs outperforming AMD’s 4x4 platform. If you’re a big fan of Valve’s titles, you may want to keep this in mind if you plan on upgrading soon, as quad-core support is just around the corner.