MSI's overclocking competition in full swing

Selection for the MSI Master Overclocking Arena North American qualifiers begin today and MSI is inviting overclockers from USA, Mexico and Canada to sign up and participate in this online tournament to determine the best overclocking team from their respective countries.

Phase I competition is open to everyone and the qualifiers will run from June 29th to July 19th. All you need to do to take part is submit your highest overclocking score online. The top 10 winners will be selected for the Phase II which runs July 25th to August 2nd. The top two overclockers from that round get to choose a guest to accompany them to the MOA 2009 Grand Final in Beijing. So head on over to the MOA 2009 site and check out the rules and submit your best overclocking score.

Qualifier event details announced for North and South American region

We gave you a heads up about MSI's Master Overclocking Arena a week ago and now MSI has the site ready in preparation for the regional competition for overclockers from USA, Mexico, Canada, South America.

Phase I of the competition runs from June 29th - July 19th and is open to everyone; all you have to do is submit your best overclocking score online. The top 10 winners will be selected for Phase II of the competition which runs from July 25th - August 2nd. The 10 teams will be whittled down to the top two and each winner can invite one person to head to the grand finale competition pitting winners from other regions around the world to be held in Beijing, China this August with hotel and airfare paid for by MSI. To sweeten the pot a little more, the top 3 finishers for North America will walk away with $6,000 worth of prizes and components,

You don't have to be an overclocker to join in the fun as you can stop by the official MSI MOA 2009 website to check out the rules and cheer on your favorite team.

American competition to begin soon

MSI is putting together its U.S. web site for the MOA overclocking competition which is set to begin soon. While final details are a little sparse, there is some early information you can use to begin preparing yourself - that is if you think you have what it takes to compete against the best from the U.S. and around the world.

Here's what we have so far:

• Phase 1 elimination round – 6/29-7/19 (scores will be submitted online.  Top 10 will continue into Phase 2)
• Phase 2 showdown round – 7/25-8/2 (scores submitted online.  Top 3 will receive hardcore X58 systems.  Top 2 from the top 3 will move on to Grand Tournament in Beijing China with paid flight and hotel)

The official U.S. Sponsors are OCZ and Thermaltake and there will be over $6000 in prizes and a free trip for the top two teams to Beijing, China. The MSI MOA site should have more details very soon so take this as an early heads up to get prepared; you can check out the MOA Arena web site and read up on the rules posted for the European and SEA competitions to get a feel for how things work.

All it takes is a BIOS upgrade

Owners of MSI X58 motherboards will finally be able to run multiple Nvidia graphics cards in SLI mode simply by downloading a new set of firmware from MSI's web site and flashing the BIOS using the built-in M-Flash tool; users also have the option to upgrade the MSI X58 mainboard in Windows using MSI’s Live Update tool.

All of the MSI X58 boards currently support ATI's CrossFireX but, prior to this, you had to be using one of MSI's Eclipse boards if you wanted to run multiple GeForce cards on your Core i7 system.

Now maybe enthusiasts with one of MSI's X58 boards can challenge Eclipse owners for overclocking supremacy -- a new world record of 5.7Ghz was recently set using the MSI Eclipse SLI and the Intel Core i7 975.

Team USA1 takes first place, breaks 3DMark Vantage world record

It's one thing for a company to tout the ability of its products to be pushed to the limits, however it's an entirely different matter when it actively promotes the use of them for overclocking around the world as Gigabyte does with its GO OC competitions. The competitions begin with events in 26 countries around the world that lead to four regional events to determine which teams will compete in the world finals in Taiwan. This year teams from the U.S., China, Sweden, Belgium and Australia met June 3 for five hours of head-to-head competition to see who would walk away as this year's champions.

When all the liquid nitrogen vapors cleared, Team USA (Fugger and Vapor) came away with the first place position and in the process broke the 3DMark Vantage world record for GTX 260 Dual Card SLI with PhysX disabled with a score of 28,093. In addition to worldwide fame and guaranteed groupies (OK, maybe that's stretching it a bit) Team USA also received $5,000 and products from various sponsors.

The Belgian team, PT1T and Massman, won the SuperPI competition with a score of 6mins 40secs in SuperPI 32m using an Intel Core i7 975 Extreme Edition processor and Gigabyte's GA-EX58-UD5 motherboard overclocked to 5.634GHz. This just goes to show that not only does Gigabyte promote overclocking around the world but backs it up with products like the GA-EX58-UD5 which managed a 76% performance boost over the default 3.2GHz with 4 cores, 8 threads.

Powered by Intel's latest Core i7 975 Extreme Edition processor

CyberPower is introducing a pair of high-performance gaming computers based on Intel's latest desktop CPU, the 3.33GHz Core i7 975 Extreme Edition. The Fang product line consists of the Black Mamba and the Cobra and include features targeted at gamers and enthusiasts starting with a special BIOS designed to allow for higher overclocking including real time readings of CPU speed and additional options for QPI signal and CPU Clock Skew features.

The Black Mamba pairs the Core i7 975 Extreme Edition processor with a Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD5 Intel X58 motherboard and 6GB of DDR3 1600MHz memory. The unit comes with a factory overclock that pushes the CPU speed to 4.0GHz. CyberPower keeps the heat down with an Asetek liquid cooling system, all tucked inside a Cooler Maser Storm Sniper full-tower case with a Thermaltake ToughPower 1000W  power supply. That much power will come in handy as the rig includes a pair of  NVIDIA GeForce GTX285 1GB videocards, two 300GB Western Digital VelociRaptor drives in RAID 0 and a third 1.5TB data drive.

The Cobra is a more modest rig that uses the same Core i7 975 Extreme Edition CPU running at stock speeds on the Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD5 Intel X58 motherboard. The Cobra is also water cooled but includes a single GeForce 285 videocard and a single 1TB hard drive, all housed in an Azza Solano 1000 full-tower case with an 800W power supply.

The base MSRP of the Black Mamba is $3999 with the Cobra starting at $2399 and both systems can be ordered direct from CyberPower.

New Intel P55 and AMD 785G chipset boards on display

Gigabyte has a range of new motherboard products on display at Computex 2009 this week including boards featuring its 24-phase power VRM design along with boards based on Intel's upcoming P55 chipset and AMD's 785G chipset.

The 24-phase power VRM is designed to deliver power more efficiently to the CPU and spread the workload over 24 power phases allowing for greater heat reduction, better stability and higher overclocking ability. This new feature will be used on the X58-based GA-EX58A-EXTREME and the P55 GA-EP55-UD5 boards for Intel processors. Both boards support next-gen SATA running at 6Gbps and will be featured in live-demos this week.

For AMD enthusiasts GIGABYTE has the GA-MA790FXT-UD5P based on the AMD Dragon platform for the latest 45nm socket AM3 Phenom II processors. Also on display will be the GIGABYTE GA-MA785G-UD3H that with DirectX 10.1 gaming support with ATI Stream technology based on the latest AMD 785G chipset with ATI RADEON HD 4200 graphics.

No prices were disclosed, but GIGABYTE has revealed the following launch windows: Intel X58- GA-EX58A-EXTREME (July), Intel P55 GA-EP55-UD5 (September), AMD GA-MA785G-UD3H (Q3).

Normally we would see such things in magazines, but MSI made quite an innovation: a word scramble printed on a motherboard!

This morning I was tinkering with computer hardware when I grabbed the MSI 790FX-GD70 I had reviewed a while ago. All of a sudden, something I had never noticed in two months just popped out on me:

Can you guess the answer? If you inverse the two letters in the center, you get... "dial"!

But I'm joking. This is more likely a typo than a word scramble game. I am just amazed that nobody else had caught this typo. Sure it happens to everyone. We often see some typos in user manuals and more rarely in BIOS screens, but right on a motherboard!? This is a premiere.

This motherboard is version 1.0. Maybe it has been fixed on later versions? Also, I wonder if such a thing is covered under warranty...

Prizes include GeForce GTS 250 videocard and an AMD 790GX motherboard

Just in time for summer, ECS is offering a chance to win free stuff just by following ECS on Twitter. It's all very simple, no complex contest rules or forms to fill out. All you have to do is log on to your Twitter account and go to http://twitter.com/ecsusa and click on “Follow”. Next, send the following tweet (no quotes) “RT @ecsusa I want to win that motherboard or VGA #ecsusa http://tinyurl.com/gimmethatboard”. All that's left is to sit back and wait until June 12, 2009 at 5:00PM Pacific Time when ECS will hold the raffle and respond within 48 hours if you win. How easy is that?

The first prize is an ECS NGTS250-1GMU-F GeForce GTS250 graphics card that comes with 1024MB DDR3 SDRAM with 256-bit data bus. The second winner will receive the ECS A790GXM-AD3, a Socket AM3 board for AMD Phenom II processors supporting DDR3 1333 memory. Part of the ECS Black Series, the board also features an AMD 790GX-based integrated GPU with ATI Radeon HD3300 graphics.

Sounds like a pretty cool way to get your summer started.

Micro ATX AMD and Intel P55 Black Series boards unveiled

The weeks leading up to the annual Computex show in Taipei always bring lots of new product announcements. ECS has kicked things off with the announcement of two new motherboards it is unveiling at the show next week.

First up is the A785GM-M, a new micro ATX board based on the AMD 785G and SB710 chipsets. The board supports AMD's 45nm Phenom II processors and DDR3 memory. With the 785G chipset and the integrated ATI Radeon 4200 GPU, the A785GM-M is ideally suited for digital home entertainment applications with its D-sub 15 pin/ DVI/ HDMI rear panel connectors. That doesn't mean the board is lacking in performance features though -- take for instance its 5-phase power design supporting up to 125W TDP processors, all solid capacitors and ECS-exclusive M.I.B. II overclocking utility.  

The second board being introduced is based on the Intel P55 chipset. The ECS P55H-A motherboard is designed for the upcoming Lynnfield/Core i5 processor and comes with dual PCIe 2.0 slots that can run in either single x16 or dual x8 mode. The board also supports Intel Matrix storage technology through its 6 SATA 3Gb/s ports and has 14 USB 2.0 ports as well.

Both of these boards are part of the ECS Black Series and as they are just being introduced, ECS has not yet released any information on availability or pricing.

Republic of Gamers line marches on to Phenom II's

Asus released a new higher-end motherboard today, aimed at the gamer and enthusiast crowd. Part of the Republic of Gamers line, the new Crosshair III Formula motherboard looks like it is ready to turn a few heads.

It is a socket AM3 790FX chipset, supporting the new Phenom II's. The motherboard comes with a SupremeFX X-Fi sound card, compatible with the ROG OC Station (a big fan a system status LCD display that fits into a drive bay and attaches to the motherboard that allows for on-the-fly overclocking and more), and the new MemOK! feature, which is a button right on the mobo that resets the memory to run at default speeds if there is a problem when POSTing.

Overclocking setup featured in The Proving Grounds video

When you set out to break a world record you need a few things to ensure your success including the right equipment, experience and a willingness to push things to the limit. In this case overclocker Brian Mclachlan, or chew*, has what it takes when he takes on the 3DMark06 world record.

Pairing an AMD Phenom II X4 955 with a GIGABYTE GA-MA790FXT-UD5P motherboard, chew* took a run at the record using air, dry ice and liquid nitrogen cooling. Taking full advantage of the Gigabyte's Ultra Durable 3 Technology, Brian was able to break 3DMark06 records for dual Radeon HD 4850 and HD 4890 in dual CrossFire setups. Brian also claimed the #2 spot using a single HD 4890 videocard. For the dual ATI Radeon HD 4850 class he achieved a 3DMark06 score of 28,831 and hit 32,281 in the dual ATI Radeon HD 4890 class.

For more on this feat you can check out a video AMD produced called The Proving Grounds.

Ban of broken hardware exports goes public

Quick though we may be to jump on cases of corporate misconduct, those involving doing good on consumers and the environment deserve equal praise, too. Though Dell does appear to have accepted bribes from Intel, they are willing to rectify environmental hazards if they can help it, we learn today.

As it were, the computer corporation has been exporting broken computers, monitors, and hardware to developing countries in response to opposition due to insufficient enforcement of environmental and worker-safety regulations in the regions, resulting in an "often hazardous electronic-waste recycling industry." Turns out many of the people aren't so grateful for the gear and would rather smash and/or burn it instead of putting it to use; the behaviour exposes citizens to mercury, lead and other toxic chemicals.

The revised policy is not necessarily a huge deal in itself, but the fact they're making this news public could go a long way in the bigger picture, say environmental organizations, since US regulations are non-existent and Dell is the world's number two computer manufacturer. According to reports, they're doing a very thorough job, too, auditing each one of its 25 recycling partners and tracking the electronics from the point of collection to their final destinations.

Dell's senior manager for environmental sustainability Mark Newton says they've seen the light, so to speak:

"We have suppliers lining up to work with us. There are plenty of reputable suppliers. It's just a matter of time before companies operating on the margins lose the business of companies that are serious about doing this the right way."

There are exceptions to the new rules, but they seem entirely reasonable. Assuming Dell is true to its word and isn't just greenwashing, we applaud them wholeheartedly.

Motherboard support incoming

NVIDIA today releases a set of nForce series motherboard drivers for those running Windows 7; these apply to most 5, 6, 7 and 9 series boards.

The 32-bit version is a 144 MB download, with the 64-bit at 165 MB.

Here are your release highlights:

• GPU Driver (v185.85) WHQL
• Ethernet Driver (v73.06) WHQL
• Network Management Tools (v73.05) "Sedona"
• SATAIDE Driver (v11.1.0.23) WHQL
• SATARAID Driver (v11.1.0.23) WHQL
• RAIDTOOL Application (v11.1.0.23)
• SMU Driver (v1.67) WHQL
• Installer (v7.01)

Without Easter, however, the industry slows down for the month

The NPD Group has released their monthly hardware and software sales report for the month of March 2009.  The sales period for this month is the five-week period from March 1, 2009 to April 4, 2009.  The industry as a whole slowed down this month as compared to last March, but Nintendo still leads the way in hardware sales.  New releases Resident Evil 5 from Capcom, Pokémon Platinum from Nintendo, and Halo Wars from Microsoft lead the way for software.

March 2009 US Games Industry Summary
Total Sales - $1.43 billion USD
Hardware Sales - $455.55 million USD
Software Sales - $792.83 million USD
Accessory Sales - $185.67 million USD

The games industry slowed down compared to last March, where there is a 17% drop in total sales.  Hardware, Software, and Accessories likewise saw a similar drop in sales.  Sales for the first quarter for the most part were flat compared to last year, but with small drops and increases across the three categories.  According to NPD's Anita Frazier:

"While it might be tempting to jump to the conclusion that the sky is starting to fall on the video games industry given this months results, it's important to remember that two very big things are different this year than last. First, Easter fell in March last year whereas it fell in April this year, and last March included the release of Super Smash Bros.: Brawl, which went on to become the fourth best-selling game in 2008.

You might not think that Easter is that big of a gift-giving holiday, but our consumer data shows that 8% of industry unit sales were purchased for the Easter occasion in March 2008, accounting for $121M of that months' sales. We expect that most of Easter sales this year fell into the April reporting period and we'll see that reflected in next month's data."

The Nintendo Wii and DS continue to sell well, but see a drop from last year, but the publisher still accounts for more than half of total unit sales this month.  Microsoft’s Xbox 360 is the only console to see an increase in sales from last year, posting a 26% growth with 330,000 units sold.  The PlayStation family sees a variety of drops across its hardware again, with the PlayStation 3 seeing a relatively tame drop as compared to the PlayStation Portable and PlayStation 2, which see drops of larger than 40%.

April 2009 should see better sales numbers than March, as Easter this year falls in April's tracking period.  April also marks the launch of the Nintendo DSi, and Rhythm Heaven for the Nintendo DS, which set the charts on fire over in Japan.  However, aside from these launches, there are no other notable releases in April.

Small, cheap X58? Sign us up

According to the Far Eastern Expreview blog, DFI, Asus and MSI are all working on microATX X58 motherboards.

Pictured above is one such mATX board from MSI: the MS-7593. This is a Core i7 ready barebones motherboard, with 6 DDR3 tri-channel memory slots, 2 PCIE (X16) slots (for CrossFire or SLI gaming), 7 SATA ports and 1 eSATA port. While it may not have any frills, this MS-7593 is expected to be affordable.

BIOS update enables NVIDIA SLI technology

Gigabyte announced today that its entire lineup of X58-series motherboards will now support SLI technology for users wanting to take advantage of multi-GPU support for Nvidia graphics cards. All that is required is a BIOS upgrade which you can download from the Gigabyte web site.

This is certainly good news for existing owners of Core i7-based machines who thought they might be locked in to using only a single graphics cards as well as users looking at a new build, but were hesitant due to the lack of SLI support.

Search giant has been building own servers for years

Google unveiled the secret of the servers at the heart of its search engine prowess today at a conference on data center efficiency. The servers it uses are not standard fair offered by the likes of Dell, IBM or Sun as one would expect. Instead they are based on a proprietary design which has been kept under wraps for years. The electrical engineer behind the design referred to the servers as Google's Manhattan Project.

There were a couple of surprises that opened a few eyes of attendees at the conference, not the least of which was the fact that Google has kept the concept secret since it began using the design in 2005. The servers are now in the sixth or seventh generation and feature a 12-volt battery on each server in lieu of a centralized uninterruptible power supply. This design ensures servers have continuous power, but results in lower costs and eliminates any wasted capacity. Efficiency is raised from 92-95 percent for a large UPS to over 99.9 percent for the individual battery design. Google has obtained a patent on the battery design but might be willing to license it out to other vendors.

Each server is a 2U thick rackmount affair with dual processors and two hard drives. The motherboard is Google-designed and built by Gigabyte. Each board features eight DIMM slots and run either AMD or Intel x86 processors. Another surprise is in the power supply design which only supplies 12-volt power with conversions for 5V and 3.3V taking place on the motherboard. This allows Google to run the PSUs closer to rated capacity which means it runs at a higher efficiency. The design adds about $1 to $2 dollars to the cost of the motherboard but reduces the cost of the power supply.

Geared toward gamers, the Rampage II GENE packs a lot of power in a small size

Gamers looking to build a small form factor system have historically been left with few choices when it comes to motherboard features. Generally speaking, the mATX boards have been hobbled by design compromises necessitated by their smaller size. ASUS has introduced a new game-changing mATX motherboard, the Rampage II GENE, as part of its Republic of Gamers product series that's targeted toward gamers and enthusiasts looking for performance and overclocking capabilities normally found only only larger ATX form-factor boards.

To start off, the Rampage II GENE is an X58 chipset board which means it supports the latest Core i7 processors from Intel. As you know, the Core i7/X58 combination supports triple channel DDR3 memory using the built-in memory controller found on the Nehalem CPUs. ASUS has squeezed six, count 'em - 6, DIMM slots onto the Rampage GENE II that can support a maximum of 24GB of DDR3 memory at speeds up to 2000MHz. Not to give up anything to larger ATX boards, it also packs six SATA II connections plus a rear eSATA II port and onboard SupremeFX X-Fi 8-Channel Audio with EAX4.0 support. There's no wimpy integrated graphics on this board as it has 2 PCIe 2.0 X16 slots with CrossFire and SLI Technology support (supports dual X16). All that storage capability is coupled to a ICH10R chipset which gives you the option to run RAID 0, 1, 0+1, 5, and JBOD drive configurations. Throw in a Gigabit LAN connection and you have the makings of a impressive SFF gaming system or, perhaps, a real powerful HTPC. The Rampage II GENE can be found online for around $259US.

Fine and pricing restructuring may be in order

Microsoft isn't the only one getting slapped around by the EU Antitrust regulators (a.k.a. the European Comission) -- Intel is also on the bill for flexing its power a little too much, endangering fair competition. However, a bigger worry on the corporation's mind no doubt isn't a large fine (up to 10% of its annual revenue), but a forced new pricing model:

"Will the Commission impose something that would destroy their pricing model, open up the market to competition and new entrants or to AMD? That is what they would be worried about, more than their reputation or anything else," said Michael Tscherny, a former Commission official, now partner at European affairs consultancy Gplus Europe.

Part of the scheming, the Commission says, stems from Intel's rebates, which they cite as an attempt to suppress AMD's share in the industry. Turns out Intel agreed to give out the rebates to computer makers (Apple?) so long as they obtained most or all of their chips from the company. Intel has denied as such, saying its conduct has been law-abiding and beneficial to clients and customers.

A ruling will soon be made; analysts are leaning toward's the EU on this one, saying this fine could top the one laid on Microsoft for a similar offence in 2004 at $500 million. The figure isn't expected to slow down Intel much, but act more as a deterrent.

"They fined Microsoft. Yes, it hurt their image, but it didn't hurt their cash balance and their market share is still almost at the same level," said John Dryden, analyst at Charter Equity Research in San Francisco.

Of course, operating system choices are limited on the PC, whereas processors, motherboards and the like are plentiful. If people buy less Intel as a result, maybe reputation will become a big worry, despite what Tscherny thinks.

Public stretching its PC dollar longer, says firm

Research firm Gartner has some fairly shocking predictions for 2009: according to them, global personal computer sales will fall at the sharpest rate they've ever recorded -- the previous was 3.2 percent in 2001.

The numbers dictate 257 million new PCs will ship this year, a decline of 11.9 percent compared to last. The drop-off in demand is expected to come from a lack of PC renewals, which have been responsible for approximately 80 percent of new sales in the West.

"The PC industry is facing extraordinary conditions as the global economy continues to weaken, users stretch PC lifetimes and PC suppliers grow increasingly cautious," commented Gartner research director George Shiffler. “Slowing GDP growth will generally weaken demand and slow new penetration, lengthening PC lifetimes will reduce replacements, and supplier caution will keep inventories low until confidence in a recovery eventually firms."

The dual-channel version of Nehalem sports a new chipset: the P55

The lower-end Nehalem chips will be available soon. The new socket 1156 motherboards have invaded CeBIt show. This is great news for those who the price on Nehalem systems retained them to make the switch; these will likely cost less than the X58 tri-channel motherboards.

What you see here is an MSI G9P55-DC P55 board and a Biostar I55 P55 board, each with only four DIMM slots. The socket is also different than its bigger brother in that it has only three retaining screws. And as you probably already knew, the number of pins also went down from 1366 to 1156; since the memory controller is now integrated into the processor for Nehalem architecture, the decreased number of pins is allowed because there are two less DIMM slots.

So how will this chipset perform? If I recall the P35 and P45 chipsets, these were excellent overclockers. Will their successor be all the same? This is what we will know soon, when the reviews start to pop up on the Internet.

More goodies for netbooks

I'd bet that the netbook makers have been pressuring Intel to bring out a chipset for the Atom that can do HD playback.

Digitimes reports that Intel will be launching the Atom N280 and the GN40 chipset earlier than previously thought - in the middle of this month.

The Atom N280 is a minor tweak of the N270 - it runs at 1.66GHz (instead of 1.6GHz) and has a 667MHz FSB (instead of 533).

The GN40 chipset has a better GPU than the 945GC and can reportedly play 720p video with an Atom.

More rumours...

Fudzilla says Intel has been telling its partners that Core 2 Duo's and Quads are here to stay until 2011 for the mainstream and value segments; and that it intends to do a refresh to some of its chipsets to support DDR3-1066 .

P45 already had DDR3 support, but G45 did not - so G45 is getting DDR3 and some more media support; however I personally think most people will stick to DDR2, as with an FSB based Core 2 system, there really is little gain with DDR3, so the lower cost DDR2 makes more sense.

In another bit of news, a 3.5GHz Core 2 Duo E8700 was apparently listed in Belgium for E259 - that is a seriously fast stock speed for a Core 2, and it has 1333MHz FSB, 6MB of L2 cache and 65W TDP.

"Smooth out" your PC gaming experience

AMD's Fusion for Gaming Tool was in beta for about four months, but now version 1.0 is out, so now is a good a time as any to give it a shot.

What the tool does is help make your game playing experience more smooth by optimizing system usage, essentially. Here are the features listed in the FAQ:

It has the ability to close open applications.

It will also shut down non-essential services.

It may speed up your HDD.

It will also disable the power save features of your PC.

It will tune your CPU and GPU.

The only requirement really is an AMD processor, though the more AMD stuff you have in your rig, the more advantageous this will be to you. Windows XP and Vista 32 and 64-bit operating systems are supported.

For further enhancement, ATI Catalyst Control Center with AMD OverDrive can be used in conjunction with it.

A few warnings to heed before trying this: antivirus/security software may be disabled upon activation of the tool while gaming (there's an option for it), and your computer could be damaged or have its life shortened (none of which is covered by warranty) due to the performance tuning. Hard stuff, but if you're feeling brave, try it out, and let us know your experiences in the comments. Results are great so far, however, with a 4.2 out of 5 rating based on 36 user reviews.

Here's a walkthrough video of Fusion for your viewing pleasure:

Bugs and other technical information for the tool can be found via the AMD link below, which should be read before installing.

Update: Our experience running a system with just an AMD CPU proved more negative than positive. The tool cut out Windows Firewall each time upon enabling, though it could be enabled again while still running Fusion for Gaming. While performance did seem slightly improved, one of the sound effects in the game (Prince of Persia) no longer triggered. Testing was with the Basic mode -- Advanced cut out all kinds of things, and for us anyway, was more hassling than helpful. Custom profile experiences may vary.