CNET News has posted an article examining the impact of multicore processors and multiple processors on game design. Since games have to be written from the ground up to get the most from multiple cores it takes time for game makers to adjust to newly released hardware, although some have already released patches to update existing titles.

Over the past year, major game studios such as Blizzard Entertainment (World of Warcraft) and Id Software (Quake and Doom) have released patches to make their games multicore-friendly, although WoW players using Microsoft's Windows are still waiting for their patch.

But that's not the same as having designed the game from day 1 with multiple processors or multicore chips in mind, said Ted Pollak, an analyst at Jon Peddie Research.

"It won't give the same kind of performance, but it's going to help, and it's better than nothing," Pollak said.

According to lists supplied by Intel and AMD, just more than 25 games are available that were designed with multiple-core processors in mind.

CNET News: Game Developers Adapt To Multicore World

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