Question about threads

[monster64]

I know that supposedly games arent multi-threaded, and that why Intel's HTT or Dual Core cpus in general don't perform better than their single core equivelents. Yet while running HL2 task manager said that it was using 15 threads. Wouldn't this infact mean that HL2 is multi-threaded and that dual core cpus will perform better that single core ones at the same clockspeed and amount of cache, such as the venice 3500+ and X2 4200+. Every review I have seen however, shows that in HL2 dual core cpus dont perform better at all compared to single core cpus. What am I missing?

 

[monster64]

Bump

 

[n7]

I somehow don't think whatever it was you saw had anything to do with the CPU...

 

[bersl2]

Not all threads run at the same time, and not all threads are as CPU-intensive as others.

Threads share a common data area with each other. This creates a problem if a thread can possibly change the data while another might read it, especially when talking about complex data structures; this can produce race conditions (certain tasks must happen in a certain order, but nothing is forcing them to do so) or give the appearance of corrupted data. So we introduce the concept of the mutex (from "mutual exclusion") which locks access to a piece of data to one thread, requiring others that want to access the data to stop executing and wait until the first thread is done and breaks the lock. Threads can also wait of their own accord, until some high-level task is completed, and then are signalled to continue executing.