Conclusion

How real can Unreal become?

As you read this article, a team of game developers somewhere in China, the U.S. or Europe is probably slaving away in a PC game development lab. These developers hope to one day harness the true eye-candy physics potential of multi-core CPUs, which will be coupled with the best of the best yet-to-be-launched ATi or NVIDIA graphics card.

However, it remains to be seen whether dual- and multi-core processing will indeed usher in a new age in PC gaming as soon as this year - as vendors claim - or whether noticeable and tangible improvements in your PC gaming experience due to dual core processing might not happen for a couple of years, as our intelligence suggests. As it stands now, we have plenty of fodder in the way of performance improvement promises from vendors. But we must wait to discover whether we will be truly dazzled, disappointed or just satisfied enough to invest in a dual-core CPU platform and next-generation game and graphics card with only incremental at best improvements.