Okay here’s another gem of software, directly from the stables of AMD. It’s been in its beta stage for a while, but nonetheless, it’s worth giving a try. For those of you people, who like to squeeze out every last bit of power from your machine for gaming, I give you AMD Fusion. It’s an ingenious product, and best of all it’s free!
I, for one, am among those people who turn off all the background apps and keep only the bare minimum running while gaming. But still there are plenty of services in Windows, as well as the processor that we are not aware of, or are not needed at all, while gaming. This is where Fusion comes in.
It’s a software that is designed to disable the various process that are run by windows and the CPU routinely, but are not needed at all while gaming. Like, for example, the process related to internet, or networking, or even indexing, is not needed when one is gaming. So, why not turn them off? After all that’d be a boost. Fusion simplifies the task by giving the user the freedom to do that all through just a simple, but awesome, interface at the click of a button. Then after gaming just turn Fusion off, and you’re back to the way you started before Fusion was turned on.
Now, coming to the mechanics of the software, it’s divided into two types of boosting: the Hardware and the Software, although you can mix up both of these to get your sweet performance point. The Hardware is further divided up into AMD Boost, AMD Overdrive (CPU), ATi Catalyst AutoTune (GPU) and Hard Drive Acceleration.
Now as the name suggests, the software parts are related to processes that are windows specific and specific to some software’s. Overall it’s very efficient and powerful. It even turned off the volume icon from the tray, along with the Anti-Virus and Firewall, when I selected all of the options available. So, beware, choose wisely here, if are going to use it for Multiplayer games.
Now for the Hardware part:
AMD Boost: It’s specific to AMD processors only. It turns off some of the processes that are built into the processor which are not needed when gaming. Hence, the freed CPU cycles can be better utilized for the game’s number crunching.
AMD Overdrive (CPU): As the name indicates, it needs you to install Overdrive before applying this. It tunes up the frequency, automatically. So, no need to panic, as it’ll go nowhere near the possible limit of the overclocking, but will do a decent and safe overclocking.
ATi Catalyst AutoTune (GPU): Again a specific to the AMD family, don’t try with nVidia’s hardware. It uses the Catalyst to automatically and intelligently overclock the GPU clocks.
Hard Drive Acceleration: It’s just as the name suggests. It’s the only part of the Hardware, which can be used without any specifics.
Now coming to the interface, I’ve got one word: Awesome. The minimalistic interface makes me feel like I’m running some kind of sci-fi software. There’s even sound to accompany the starting of the software. Very well thought out. You just click on the interface once, and it starts spinning while it applies the patches, and then the AMD sign glows green. After the gaming, click once again to start the spinning once again as it undo the patches. It recommended that you leave the mouse and keyboard when it does that. Then the AMD sign goes fade and everything stops, you’re good to go. The making of new profile or even existing in-built one’s are really easy. Although, you won’t be needing a new one, unless you are a little bit curious or you know what you’re doing. Just click Edit or New and select the patches you need applied, give a description and a name and save it. Check the Make default at the bottom to make it your default profile. There’s just one bug that I noticed. While in the profile management window, if you close the window, the app exits. You have to press the concentric circle thingy, to get make to the main interface.
This software really boosted my rigs performance by about 15-20% overall. And I did notice a frame rate increase in my games. But there have been complaints about people’s machine hanging. But a restart solves everything. It never messed up a single machine. As for me, even after using it for sometimes, I did not face any problem at all, not even a single hang.
All said and done, here’s the page of info over at AMDs, and you’ll get the thing for here.
Now enjoy some screenshot of the same below.
And here's a video of it in action (you'll find it at the page mentioned above too :), but anyways):
And my comments boxes are open, just drop by a line.
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