Games gurus given greater gunning power

For those of us in foggy old London town this morning, news from the San Francisco Games Developers Conference seems all but a misty dream. But inbox's must be opened and the voracious appetites of game gurus everywhere must be satiated.

So gaming aficionados will no doubt be keen to hear that Intel's latest Dual Socket Extreme Desktop Platform (the artist formerly known as "Skulltrail") is one of the first enthusiast desktop platforms to support two Intel quad core processors for a total of eight processing engines and a choice of multi-card graphics solutions.

If you're a gamer…

– this means you'll get the opportunity to enjoy the manifold pleasures of multiple simultaneous graphics card functionality … and it's easy to see how eight processing cores will be good news for 3-D animation, digital audio and high-definition video.

If you're a developer…

– this means you'll be able to make your games work faster, no surprise there. What, in theory, it should also mean is that you can "test" your game development faster – and in today's highly developed games business, that may be good news. Also, asset generation processes for games development can be one of the most time consuming elements of the job – again, in theory, this could be shortened.