More power, Mr. Scott

So I’ve got this pretty powerful computer. But I run windows, (hyperbolic complaint) so about half of my system resources are tied up doing pretty much nothing. So every time I play a game that should look amazing, it looks like garbage, even though I exceed the recommended specs (and far exceed the required specs).

The solution to this problem has been sitting in my quicklaunch menu since I assembled this beast. The piece of essential software to which I refer is AMD Fusion for Gaming.

Here’s what it does. To get all the juice it can out of my RAM, CPU and video card, it basically shuts down everything in Vista that I won’t need while I’m playing a game. All those pesky “essential services?” Bye bye. COM+? Bye bye. Shell Hardware Detection? Bye bye. Terminal Services? Windows Driver Foundation? Telephony? Bye bye.

That’s all the functionality I use. The software also wants to use AMD OverDrive and ATI Catalyst Control Center to overclock my hardware to scare up a few more horses. Once I’ve fooled around with those utilities individually, I might use that option as well. But for now, actually having 4 gigabytes of RAM and 4 2.3 Ghz CPU cores available just for gaming is all I need to run just about any game wide open. I can even turn on dynamic shadows (Dynamic shadows? Surely not!).

So if you’re a gamer, or just somebody who wants a little extra power for a specific application, check out AMD Fusion for Gaming. I’ve only tested it on my machine, but I would be surprised to learn that it doesn’t work on Intel/NVidia hardware, since really all it does is pick up broken glass.