Souce 2007 - isn't it supposed to use more than one core?

[Operational]

A couple of weeks ago I upgraded to a multicore system. I'm very happy with it but I noticed while playing Team Fortress 2 and Episode Two that they only ever use one core. I remember Valve making a fuss about their Hybrid Threading for multicore support, I would have thought that it would have been in the Orange Box. So for all you multicore people out there, is it normal for Source 2007 games to only be single threaded?

 

[AtomicSpark]

Try the following in console:

r_threaded_particles [0,1]
r_threaded_renderables [0,1]

According to TweakGuides.com, both of those should be set to 1 on multi-core systems. Only "r_threaded_particles" was set to 1, by default, on my system.

 

[PimpinPenguin]

I remember hearing that it's not fully implemented that's the reason it doesn't use all the cores by default.

 

[Operational]

Thanks for the replies. Atomicspark, those commands by themselves didn't help but they did help me find this which listed all the commands which do.

r_threaded_renderables "1"
r_threaded_particles "1"
r_threaded_client_shadow_manager "1"
cl_threaded_bone_setup "1"
cl_threaded_client_leaf_system "1"
mat_queue_mode "2"

Interestingly while this did work and CPU usage went from 25% (max single core) to around 70%, performance went down significantly in Episode Two while in Team Fortress 2 I did get a little performance boost.

I should point out that they run just fine on the single core on max details at 1920x1200 with the exception of the large physics shows in Ep2 where it slows to 30-40fps so I think I'll just wait for Valve to officially get support going for multicore (yeah Penguin, those commands aren't "fully developed" apparently).

 

[kacation_man]

yeah, i had noticed this too. I was excited when i heard about it a while back, but it kinda doesn't matter because It can be ran on highest setting with good frame rates on what would even be considered a low end to mid pc these days.