The trick used in AAA is to see each frame as an aggregation of core-independent jobs that can be queued up, and then to buffer several frames ahead. So you aren't working on just "frame A", but also finishing "frame B" and "frame C", and issuing the finished frames according to a desired pace, which allows you to effectively spend more time on single-threaded tasks.

The trade-off is that some number of frames of latency are now baked in by default, but if it means your game went from 30hz to 60hz with an frame of delay, it is about as responsive as it was before, but feels smoother.