AMD Fusion for Gaming
Fusion debuts... as a software system speed booster
Review AMD has been talking about its Fusion technology, which will combine the CPU and GPU in a single unit, for some time now. It's not due until next year, so we were taken aback when the first incarnation of Fusion turned out to be software, not silicon.
It looks as though AMD has taken a leaf out of Google’s book as AMD Fusion For Gaming is a Beta version at Release Candidate 1, so the usual caveat, that this is software still under development, applies. You can get the 20MB download here.
AMD Fusion For Gaming: on the desktop
The idea is that FFG increases the performance of your Windows PC by automating a number of tasks that you could perform manually. So, it doesn’t do anything new, just saves you time. By default the software runs in Basic Mode so you simply click on the silver button to turn it on and AMD Boost shuts down a short list of applications, including your browser and Windows Updates, to get your PC ready for gaming.
Basic mode
It's a very nice idea, but does it actually work?
COMMENTS
Yawn
No x64 support. You'd think that onsidering the majority of their desktop CPU's are now x64 they could at least manage that.
FAIL!
Yet another biased report
HI, AMD still rocks! Yes you need a Phenom, ATI Chipset board AM2+ board. The 780G or 790GX with Hybrid Crossfire. Why would AMD write it for Intel??? Does Intel write software for AMD? NO!!!!!!
Nothing new here...
Ken Salter's FSAutoStart was doing the single click shutdown/restore of extraneous processes years ago.
And as Steven Knox pointed out, it makes little difference on a top spec machine. But it makes a big difference on a slow, memory limited, PC when running a big game...
Promoting something with an epic fail...
I agree that this would only be useful in trying to tweak a marginal system to reach an acceptable performance level - but in the context of Vista's resource requirement, I'd be very surprised if it were any help at all.
Switching back to XP, on the other hand, would bring tangible improvements in performance.
