PC gaming has one big problem as opposed to consoles, due to the wide variety of components and hardware configurations that are used by gamers across the world. That is why developers who create games for the PC need to take into consideration a base level of the PC and then improve the title for people who have more high-end configurations.

Lately, quite a lot of people have adopted multi-core processors because they easily split the work between two cores of the microprocessor and almost double the power of the CPU. Due to their efficiency, a lot of gamers have also used them in their gaming rigs in order to get the maximum quality of their favorite titles.

The development team at Valve, the creators of Team Fortress 2, one of the most popular online shooters, have recently decided to aid gamers with multi-core CPUs and have released an update to the game that will allow multicore rendering, and thus improve the performance of the title on their computers. Here is the complete list of changes that this patch brings, as posted on Valve's content delivery system Steam.

Added Multicore Rendering

This initial release is aimed at testing compatibility, so the option is OFF by default
To turn it on, go to the Options->Video->Advanced dialog, and check the "Multicore Rendering" option

Other Changes

Several performance improvements to decals and client bone/flex setup
A variety of alt-tab and mode switch fixes
Improvements to the way the engine initializes surround sound, fixing some specific hardware cases
Fixed a crash on exit in Vista 64

All in all, a lot of gamers will certainly be happy to see this patch released and their performance issues resolved. Don't forget that it will be downloaded the next time when you start up Team Fortress 2 from Steam.