AMD just released a beta version of their Fusion for Gaming tool. This application is targeted at the not-so-hardcore gamer who still wants to get the most out of his or her system. The idea is that at the press of a button that sits on your desktop, you could engage a system state that is more ... let's say ... gaming friendly.
One of the major features of this software is that it automatically overclocks both the CPU and the GPU. Because of this, AMD will only allow the tool to run on all-AMD platforms, meaning that people who run AMD GPUs on Intel CPUs and AMD CPUs with NVIDIA GPUs will not be able to benefit from this applications.
For an overclocking tool, we'd say it does the job, but there's something else that's even more interesting in this application. A little special sauce, if you will, that we would very much like to see available to anyone running Vista these days. But we'll get to that in a second.
The automatic overclocking for the GPU is just as simple as enabling overdrive, except you do it from a button on your desktop. Simultaneously automatically overclocking the CPU is a welcome addition for people who want to safely increase performance but don't know how or don't want to chance overclocking manually. While AMD does offer an overdrive equivalent for their CPUs, combining both CPU and GPU overclocking into one utility is convenient. But this aspect of the tool isn't really for people who already know how to overclock.
But the biggest benefit to the average non-enthusiast consumer would probably be shutting down background applications and restarting them. Things like Windows Defender and virus scanners and messaging programs and email programs and all the little random stuff people like to have up and running while they are surfing the web or getting work done. Any one of these programs might not really impact performance, but having a lot going on just increases the chance of stability and performance issues. An easy way not only to shut all this down, but also to bring them all back up, would go a long way in helping average gamers get more out of their system.
