Here is a short list of programs that actually use all 4 cores of a quad core chip. If you know of others, please post them to this thread, and I'll update it.
THE LIST:
Real-World Applications
3D Studio MAX using Mental Ray Renderer (>99 % of 4 cores)
Adobe Premiere Elements v3.0.2 (52-85 % of 4 cores depending on source type, filters, etc.)
AutoGK v2.40 (30-53 % of 4 cores depending on source type, filters, etc.)
Cinema 4d Rendering (>99 % of 4 cores)
Dr. DivX v2.0.0 (47-65 % of 4 cores depending on source type, filters, etc.)
DVDShrink v3.2 (~90 % of 4 cores)
Lightwave 3D (>99 % of 4 cores)
Nero Suite 7.x (>90 % of 4 cores when encoding)
Noise Ninja v2.13 (~80 % of 4 cores when doing the noise reduction on an image)
Sony Vegas 7.0e (83-100 % of 4 cores depending on source type, filters, etc.)
TMPG XPress v4.2.3.193 (65-100 % of 4 cores depending on source type, filters, etc.)
Winrar v3.70 (~85-90 % of 4 cores on benchmark; ~75% in practice)
x264 v0.55.663 (>99 % of 4 cores when doing the 2nd pass of a 2 pass encode)
Benchmark/Distributed Computing Applications
BOINC Clients (most of them) (>99 % of 4 cores)
Folding@home SMP client (>99 % of 4 cores)
Muon1 DPAD (~85 % of 4 cores)
OCCT (>99 % of 4 cores)
Prime95 v25.3 (>99 % of 4 cores)
wprime v1.50 (>99 % of 4 cores)
Games
none that I know of yet
If you'd like to contribute an application or game, please post the following:
1) Program name
2) URL to homepage of the program
3) The percentage as shown in the Windows task manager of the CPU's that are getting used @ peak or thereabouts along with a screen-shot of the task manager.
Here's an example screen-shot of my task manager during the Noise Ninja noise reduction:
Also, please limit the replies to quad chips only (yeah, I know this will limit the amount of replies, but this is after all what this thread is all about).
Thanks!
Note: I don't think this thread really belongs under the software section since it's specifically about software for quad core chips.