The crew from Gear Live slipped through the doors of AMD's performance testing labs and recorded their latest show of The Bleeding Edge over there. Mark Welker, who is the chief of the Client Analysis Performance Management department, explained in-depth what he and his team are doing. They showcase a Quad FX system running several applications and games at the same time, explain what you need a dual or multi core CPU for, how to properly benchmark a system and what will change if you switch from a single to a multi core CPU. Welker further adds details about the purpose of such a department, thorough testing of current hardware, the latest applications and games and as a conclusion the monthly summaries he has to deliver which you can find over here for example: AMD Processor Performance Evaluation Guide.
During such an investigating on Supreme Commander, one of the first few games that is stated to use four cores, they found out that it is not utilizing more than two cores at the moment in their labs. It remains to be seen if it's the fault of the AMD guys or a software glitch which has to be fixed by Gas Powered Games.
While you might think I am joking to bother you with a 40 minute video I can guarantee you it's worth every single one of it. The best thing is that you can download it in several formats in order to get a compatible file for your mobile video player:iPod-formatted H.264 (M4V) | Apple Quicktime TV High Resolution (MOV) | DivX (AVI) | MPEG-4 (MP4)