AMD Fusion for Gaming revisited

[Tim Riches]

Awhile back (patch 1.0.2.0 days!) I installed AMD Fusion for Gaming to see if I could get better performance from GTAIV, and was I ever surprised! It boosted performance significantly, allowing higher settings and resolutions to play jitter-free!

 

With the press of a button, Fusion automatically closes non-essential services, enhances the hard drive performance and even overclocks GPU and CPU! There was a catch though, and it sucked ass!

 

Unfortunately for many, the AMD Fusion for Gaming utility is limited to only systems with an AMD processor, although that limitation is artificially imposed by AMD.  The good news is, overcoming such an artificial limitation is often a trivial matter, which we will now demonstrate.

I followed the procedure described in this Tom's Hardware guide article, which amounted to changing one value in the executable using a hex editor. It worked like a charm! My Brother's Intel was able to run it and experience a similar boost in performance to mine! His CPU wasn't involved, but the reduction in OS overhead, especially in the RAM department made a big difference!

 

I learned recently that all users can simply install the latest Fusion, but running it on non-AMD systems would cause it to fail. All that's needed is to extract the zip (below) to your install directory.

 

Running AMD Fusion for Gaming

 

The warning that appears lets you know system stability, or more precisely game stability may be compromised. It also points out that security features of the OS may be shut down (they are) so be careful with Fusion running! If you're concerned about this, you can simply run your security software again after fusion finishes.

 

When you first start Fusion, you see this little round gadget. To activate it, just click on the center. First, we need to make some changes though! Click on the asterisk-looking icon at the top left to access the settings.

 

Choose the Expert profile and click Edit.

 

Select this profile as default and click the save button. There really isn't any way to modify the profile here, so to make changes you need to edit the config file directly.

 

Since the config file is just txt, you can use notepad edit it, deleting sections that you want to leave running. Also, you can add items to be shut down, as long as you use the same structure. Just copy and paste an entry and change the details. Use Task Manager to decide what to yank.

 

Toward the bottom of the file, you find what's pictured above. After running Fusion, bring up Task Manager and view processes. Decide what you can part with and include it in the xml. Don't use the extension, just the name of the service or program when you add it.

 

NOTE: The original Expert (aka performance.xml) config shut down networking and some other necessary services in Windows 7, so the one I modified doesn't have this problem.

 

Download AMD Fusion for Gaming here!

Download the modified files here!

[WTFX]

OH NOEZ, TEH H4X!!!

 

 

 

.. on further note, this only boosts ur performance if ur pc isn't very well maintained, e.g. lots of bg services & apps are running. [since this kills them]

Edited November 23, 2009 by Fuc|<'d

[Tim Riches]

In other words, it'll help unless you just did a fresh install anyways.

[sapped]

New to "AMD Fusion for desktops", but I chose to use On-line gaming, however this disabled my wireless internet. Can someone tell me how to set up a profile that does not disable steam or my d-link pci adaptor?

[Brawly]

Does this work for Nvidia GPU's?

[ikt]

Does this work for Nvidia GPU's?

EVGA thingy to oc your card

[heat84]

I used this a couple times, but I couldn't tell if it was making a difference. Or maybe the placebo effect was kicking in.