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AMD pushes magic button - launches Fusion for gaming
"HOW CAN we make the gaming experience better?" asked Brent Barry, AMD’s gaming strategist at a live webcast last night. AMD's answer is one word. Fusion.
Fusion, AMD says, is the “working philosophy that marries innovation with collaboration”, which is PR blather for ‘AMD is going to work with other people’.
But to go along with the ginormous ad campaign and PR hype, AMD obviously felt it should have something to show for all this “fusion” business. And that would be an app in the form of an on screen button.
Making a whooshing sound when clicked, the button – AMD’s Fusion for Gaming Utility - shuts down background apps so Vista users can play games faster. Yep. That’s it. No big CPU/GPU design after all, just a glorified ‘standby mode’ button.
In what could just as well have been called ‘overclocking for dummies’ – AMD prefers the term ‘overclocking on demand’ – the firm has basically created something which freezes background apps like skype, while you play Chrysis. Wow. We have seen the fusion future, and it is dull.
AMD says that although it does want its new app to be useful for heatseekers, it is aimed more at the gamer who wants great gaming performance without having to get the liquid nitrogen out of the freezer. And who can’t afford a super souped up PC.
Coming in several modes and customisable to individual preferences, the app offers various recipes for closing down background apps sucking at the CPU, supposedly also giving performance a little kick in the backside through various AMD acceleration technologies.
Using "expert" mode purportedly allows users to overclock both the CPU and GPU, to make the machine "leaner and meaner". How much leaner and how much meaner? Well, according to AMD’s tests, users can expect a two to five per cent performance bump in basic mode and ten per cent bump in 3dmark when using expert mode. And as far as frame rates go, AMD reckon that World In Conflict saw 50-300 per cent improvements when the magic fusion button was pressed. Woooosh.
The firm says it was surprised to discover the app had other uses too. A happy, and one would have thought obvious, side effect, for instance, was that using fusion for gaming made the battery life last longer on laptops and increased the lifespan of individual PC parts. Oh, yeah, and its energy efficient, which is great, because we all love to be green nowadays.
There is a snag though. The free software only works on AMD CPUs with ATI graphics, which sort of reduces it to the ranks of fairly naff Hybrid technology for the DAAMIT platform. It also only currently runs on Vista 32 bit, although the company is adamant 64 bit is on its way. Fusion is the future indeed. Eh? µ
See Also
AMD Fusion logo spotted
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"Making a whooshing sound when clicked, the button – AMD’s Fusion for Gaming Utility - shuts down background apps so Vista users can play games faster. Yep. That’s it. No big CPU/GPU design after all, just a glorified ‘standby mode’ button."

Hmm, but what about if they implemented alternative routines and a special processing environment for the GPU.

Wayne Morellini.
Now that would be smart and useful.

Don't wait for apps to get multithreaded, make the OS show the CPU's as 1 CPU to the software.

8 cores appearing as 1, would be cool.

Or having 8 cores split as 1 core and 7 cores, and having thosee 7 cores appear as 1 for the game, now that would be good for frames per second, graphics etc.

Do they do this already? If not then why not?
In the old days, IBMs had a turbo button for adjusting clockspeed for compatibility reasons.

So we're back in the 20 year cycle.. and expect the new innovative feature to appear: the Turbo Button(tm) at this rate we'll be running cassette drives too to replace SSDs..
Oh,Sure. Now Xp comes Begging. Niagra Falls, We Want it Too. FORGET IT.

This is Ultee' Solution to Unleash needed Power on Existing Systems.Ultee'64 Drools. Advances to Bite xp leg. Grrr.....

Forget NT5 entirely, go to thrift,Boy.
drashek
There should really be no need for a tool like this, if the operating system was up to scratch?

...horns!

I mean: If you play games, you try to avoid Vista (OK, you try to avoid it also if you don't play games). And the people seeking serious performance will go for an Intel CPU as it is:
a) the best bang for the buck
-and-
b) the better performing CPU
...at least in the medium to higher ranges at present.

I personally would have loved to try this tool - on Intel CPU with ATI Graphics using Windows XP or Linux.
Oh are they going to add this to their already 250% messed up drivers that won't even install on half the people's systems? How wonderful (for nvidia)
"Hold it boys, stop fixing and improving drivers, we have a better job for you, add crap that makes things even worse!"
Its much more like Blehsion. 

Vista service disabling? thats it? So why isn't this possible with all CPU/GPU setups? 

DAAMIT, I'm disappointed in you. 

please tell me this is just the start of fusion... that they have real plans to use the extra hypertransport links on AM3 for the GPU... right? inq would never mislead us (or is this just more irony that we yanks don't get)
you can already do this. I know the shell commands "kill -STOP [pid]" and "kill -CONT [pid]" work under OSX... probalbly linux too?
I'm glad that AMD is doing this marketing campaign. it is change for them in that it is forward thinking and it doesn't sound like a "me too" kind of campaign. I think the market has been too hard on AMD the last year. Hopefully, this will be the beginning of an up-turn.
By the time AMD comes up with Fusion , Intel will be far ahead. Instead of paper launches and wish lists , it should execute and produce more working products on the cpu side , now that the graphics divison is doing very well.
At first I was con-fused. But, yes this truly is an underachievement of the century!
I wonder if this is comparable to the ASUS NOS/Instant Crash Button.
Nvidia will have a button that causes your GPU to explode and fail - no wait they do that automatically..

....
last time I checked Skype isn't exactly tearing the CPU apart while waiting to do something. Lets see... while listening to MP3's, IM client, Outlook, RDP sessions, at least 20 tabs open, my cpu is bored at around 1-3 percent utilization. So what is this app gonna do... free up .5% cpu? Plus I'd probably close all of that stuff before I fire up Crysis. So this app is useless. You don't need it to OC, and I'd recommend other methods. Don't mention memory, cuz I have a swap file.
strangest vaporware in awhile.

if dammit is serious about a fusion chip, they would have opened up ati chips. there is no outside skills to speak of when it comes to gpus. getting even the registers documented is like pulling teeth from them. losers.
"...The free software only works on AMD CPUs with ATI graphics...Vista 32bit..."

Nice work pigeonholing your own software straight into oblivion.
Sending out a release before they had it running on mature operating systems like xp or linux gauranteed bad reviews. When will vista just die already!?
Great stuff AMD, Fizzle is a cornerstone of advancement.
how come i don't read the inq for a few days, amd confims its going fabless and it come back and don't see it on the inquirer? surely you should be laughing at the people who laughed at you when you suggested it

http://bigtech.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2008/09/08/re-engineering-amd/
20 quid on 24 hours after release "they" will have it running on Intel Nvidia setups.
It works on Windows XP, too. 

And you dont need an AMD graphic card, just an AMD CPU.
Sounds like a good program.. iv downloaded it and installed it.. I would use it but you have to run it as admin.... It would be OK if VISTA!! DIDNT ******* crash when i right clicked on programs!!
What happened to the snazzy cpu/gpu direct interconnect 'Fusion' ..i don't hope it was canned for this!?!
A 50 tot 300% increase in performance? By shutting down a few services? What the hell?
of like the concept of one button to kill them all, save me some hassle when taking the laptop into enemy territory, anyone make that for XP?

Calling a nice little app like that the future of gaming is touching McClane, touching.
What a poorly written article. Obviously written by an Intel Fanboi. And no I'm not a AMD fanboy...before anybody starts.

Personally I think it is a great idea and why shouldn't it only work on AMD/ATI platforms when it's their product??? DUH.

I bet if this was an intel story, it would be written as though it was the biggest thing this sliced bread.