As a matter of fact, we just got out of a meeting with Valve Software today and they indicated to members of the press that soon they will begin to implement multi-core CPU optimisations into the Source engine which will benefit all previous Source based games and new ones including Episode 2. Initially you will see improvements in frame rates but for Valve, that’s just the beginning. They want to leverage the multi-core technology (and we’re not just talking about four cores) and improve AI and the overall realism of the games to levels we’ve never seen before and they seem to be on track for doing it. From a gaming prospective, is it really worth upgrading to Quad Core right now? Probably not! Is it worth waiting a little while and seeing what all the software and gaming developer companies do? Yes! Right now the hardware is ahead of the software – keep an eye out on patches for your favourite games or applications and decide for yourself if you really need four
CPU cores inside your system at the moment.