Today we are taking almost half a dozen games to see how they perform when using one, two and four cores. For this test we will be using not just an Intel Core i7 processor, but also the Core i5, Core 2 Quad and AMD Phenom II X4 processors, which will give us a good idea of just how core dependent each series is in order to deliver maximum performance...

Looking at the results it obviously comes down to which games you are playing, and plan to play, that will dictate how many cores you are going to need. As a rule of thumb we suggest all gamers look at making the transition to a quad-core processor, as we found more than half the games we tested with saw significant gains when going from two to four cores.