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  • ATAT - Sunday, October 12, 2008 - link

    A trick I leared for clearing background issue that i know works for at least games like World of Warcraft is to have WMP up in the background not playing anything and it automaticly reallocates all resorces to the game you are playing improving performance. This is some thing that i found out on wow insider that does close to the same thing with the background info as this program seems to.
  • nezuko - Friday, October 3, 2008 - link

    Well, AMD would never build this software or anypart of this software for other platform, coz, that would be suicide in my opinion.

    And licensing its ATi technology of CrossFire is such an idiot decision, coz, that makes people can buy GPU for their Intel CPU. If ATi didn't licensed its technology to Intel, then NVidia would never come in, too. And Intel will be suck for their poor Graphic Core.

    I think it would be better if AMD make a platform which only all AMD product are allowed, like Intel does with its Centrino notebook platform. that will make increasing in earnings.
  • Wwhat - Friday, September 26, 2008 - link

    I'm amazed that a anadtech writer is unable to throw together a simple batch himself to stop some services and start them again.
    And incidentally, are you sure this AMD thing can stop your viruskiller? some of them are quite particular and don't allow it so easily to stop their services, understandably so else any old simple virus/script could turn off the viruskiller and it would become almost useless.

  • gochichi - Sunday, September 21, 2008 - link

    I am amazed by how little money it takes to blow games out of the water these days. Crysis runs alright in my system but not great, other than that it's 1920x1200 all options maxed (Gears of War, COD4, Bioshock, Mass Effect, and on and on). I only have a $700.00 computer. I can't overclock the CPU so I'm stuck at Q6600 stock 2.4Ghz x 4 (not bad AT ALL). I have a 4850 and four gigs of RAM... that may sound like a lot but it's very little cash. Ram = $80.00, Radeon 4850 = $150.00.
    I think what we (PC gamers) need a lot more than anything else is more COD4 quality games. The hardware is there, and honestly, I hope they design games for this level hardware. I don't mean that selfishly... but it's a lot of hardware and a lot of graphics horsepower. I mean, I'm basically at the level where I can run XBOX 360 games with more detail, more fluidly, and at 1920x1200 res... I'd say that's enough.
    More than trying to get an extra 10% out of this hardware, I want some Blizzard games to jam to. Starcraft 2 should run fine on this setup, and Diablo 3 or whatever probably would too. Those guys are such an important factor in why PC gaming is still the very best in spite of all the extra hassle.
    This product feature sounds like a bunch of hype to me. I see no need for it. MY Radeon 4850 is super easy to overclock and I don't b/c why do it? Either a game runs PERFECT or the game is Crysis. My motherboard blows, but the intel chip overclocks "for real"... so anybody that would care about overclocking knows that Intel is still the way to go by a wide margin. I frankly see no need for a faster chip, 2.4Ghz Quad is a whole lot. If a game can't run right on that, it probably can't run right period... and needless to say I'm probably in the top 25% (if not more) in terms of hardware right now... so who would these games be for exactly? I very satisfied with my hardware, if you're way behind the times and waiting around for the "next big thing"... don't, despite the hoopla there's very little (nearly no need) need for more. Now waiting to upgrade until your favorite game to release is a different thing altogether.

    Life is short, and $150.00 for "too much" graphics power is a steal. Do it now, you'll feel like you have a $500.00 video card... you'll even feel guilty about it until you do a double take and realize it's super reasonable. Bluray acceleration is perfect, not good, not decent, but perfect.
  • nubie - Monday, September 22, 2008 - link

    Point ---------> Up Here


    Your Head -----> Roughly this altitude.

    The article mostly focused on maximizing performance simply on a bloated windows platform.

    The integrated overclocking functionality is clearly not needed for you, as you own a current-gen video solution and a decent mid-range quad core (so shutting down background apps likely wouldn't matter much to you, unless they access the HDD or fill up the lvl2 cache).

    Most of the users here have friends or relatives that don't keep up with current hardware and also use tons of background software, but still want to play a game or two without using task manager to kill everything.

    This is an intriguing article that brings anand's focus onto "run-level" for windows, hopefully we will see this functionality from the OS as windows matures, especially as they try to sell it as a game platform (games in general usually try to use all available resources, and windows in general tends to use more and more resources).
  • Griswold - Saturday, September 20, 2008 - link

    All 3 of you are tools for various reasons, just zip it already.
  • bitethebullet - Friday, September 19, 2008 - link

    AlacrityPC shuts down everything, even explorer.exe. No desktop, just your chosen app running, and the AlacrityPC DOS window, so you can restart your desktop and apps. Works great and is free.
  • nubie - Monday, September 22, 2008 - link

    Thanks for this you guys, I am investigating it right now.

    It looks to be a very good app that will help with my range of old PC's the family uses for light gaming (and my brother who still manually kills explorer on his P4 1.5ghz)
  • CollectorZ - Monday, September 22, 2008 - link

    I read this article and thought exactly the same thing.

    Obviously neither Derek or Anand are flight sim fans.
    Though it works with other programs as well.


  • Finally - Friday, September 19, 2008 - link

    ...the tool you geeks are asking for is called "EndItAll".

    Although, it's funny how people admit - only thru the back-door- that Windowas is bloated with useless backgroundrunning crap, which sucks the performance of otherwise decent hardware.
  • Finally - Friday, September 19, 2008 - link

    ...I would kindly request a Windows Services shut-down guide to free up system performance once and for all. User-friendly explained and presented by ony of my favourite hardware sites. Think about it.
  • Rosaline - Friday, September 19, 2008 - link

    Originally developed for use with Flight Simulator, AlacrityPC offers to automatically cull unneeded programs, and restart them once you're done playing:

    http://alacritypc.kensalter.com/">http://alacritypc.kensalter.com/
  • Proteusza - Friday, September 19, 2008 - link

    I saw somewhere that Shanghai offers a 15-30% improvement in single threaded performance over Barcelona, if this is true, Deneb could be interesting.

    I think perhaps AMD had a bad 2 years with the 2900XT and then Phenom. But with the 3800 series, and now the 4800 series, maybe they have turned themselves around. So here's hoping that Deneb is worthy of my consideration when it comes time to upgrade in January.
  • yyrkoon - Thursday, September 18, 2008 - link

    "Our strong suggestion to AMD is to make a "lite" version of the software that only handles shutting down and restarting applications and services that would run on all hardware"

    Derick, this is something that I am 99.9% sure can be done with VB.NET, the .NET framework, and a weeks worth of toying around with both to do the same thing. I say '99.9%', because its been over a year since I have coded anything using .NET, and I have not really done much programming wise in Vista. Theoretically though, anything using .NET(properly) should be able to do this.

    I do not recall the .NET namespace, but the class objects 'process', and 'processes' can iterate, and manipulate any process as far as I am aware. Just as an example, I was able to kill even RPC services with this in XP a couple of years ago(kind of had a flashback of the RPC exploit when it happened).

    I would like to say that I could do this myself, but unfortunately I have been extremely busy, and will continue to be into the foreseeable future :(
  • DerekWilson - Friday, September 19, 2008 - link

    yeah, i've actually thought about using powershell (.NET scripting interface essentially) to try and do things a little more complex than batch files can handle. It gives me some neat tools for process monitoring, but i'm just not familiar enough with .NET to know how to get the most out of managing and manipulating processes with it. and i don't really have time to learn right now :-(

    thanks for the suggestion though.
  • yyrkoon - Friday, September 19, 2008 - link

    Well, MS' web pages has some vb.net learning videos, try googling 'vb.net at the movies'. These videos are pretty good for showing you what several class objects are capable of(very quickly). Anyhow, what you learn of the different .NET class objects, could then be applied in MSH.

    Now, when I said a week to learn to put it together, I mean by spending MAYBE a few hours a day toying with it. Being just a hobbyist programmer myself, I was able to pick up most things very rapidly using .NET(just a few hours knowing nothing of a given subject). Anyways . . . maybe I will toss together a rough skeleton in a few days, and you can pick through the source :)
  • Clart - Thursday, September 18, 2008 - link

    I think asking for AMD to enable this on Intel PCs is ridiculous, in the article Derek says his not a fan o marketing but then goes to suggest how great it would be for AMD to have a button in the desktop of each Intel+Nvidia PCs, but forgive me if I'm wrong but that would be exactly MARKETING!!!

    AMD is adding value to it's platform, unlike Derek's suggestion this is more than marketing it is an actual product(software), it's not like they are obligation someone to buy their product, if you want to buy DAAMIT you get this little extras, that's it, I mean itunes only works with the ipod and nobody complains...

    I think AMD should enable the program for ATI PCs, even if they are using Intel CPUs, i mean the Radeons are their strongest product right now and in some cases this could tip the scales...

    Question: What was the last product Intel released for free on ALL computers?
  • DerekWilson - Friday, September 19, 2008 - link

    yeah, what i was suggesting was marketing ... i was saying i don't like it both because i don't like what amd is doing and i don't like what i was suggesting (though what i was suggesting was less problematic to the consumer).

    it absolutely is marketing to tie this (by this i mean the stuff that is not overclocking) to the platform. it is nothing else but a gimmick to get people to buy amd hardware. all platform positioning is marketing.

    and centrino has really been the only platform marketing campaign that worked. the only real reason it worked was because of the inflexibility of notebook PCs. on the desktop it is much easier to find exactly what you want, but for mobile solutions, consumers knew they were getting certain basic things that they needed in a mobile platform (like good battery life and wireless internet).

    amd and intel have both tried desktop platform marketing campaigns that have failed. fusion is just the latest attempt.

    and while this type of marketing makes it so that people running intel cpus can't use this utility even if they have ati graphics hardware, our marketing suggestion is more beneficial to computing at large and also still maintains the fundamental idea that this utility is simply a marketing tool to AMD. that's not how i want it, but that's how it is.
  • kilkennycat - Thursday, September 18, 2008 - link

    All we need are versions compatible with Penryn and Nehalem and life would be great. Otherwise, yet another desperate quasi-marketing effort to claw some more business for the AMD CPUs. What dedicated gamer in his/her right mind would put up with a few more percent from a AMD CPU that is marginally overclockable compared with the vast overclockability of Penryn or even the base performance of Nehalem?
  • greylica - Thursday, September 18, 2008 - link

    More one review with Vista Bloatwarez bothering...

    If DX 10 is the only difference between XP and Vista, I´d prefer not to pay for a game with DX 10 only to not use Vista.

    OverBloat !!!
  • nubie - Monday, September 22, 2008 - link

    Agreed, I have not and will not in the foreseeable future buy a DX10 game.

    I was watching some of the "DX10 on older windows" attempts, but they seem to have been squashed.

    I find it highly ironic that me2 is the "games for windows" platform, ditching a speedy and stable win2k and xp base, without even implementing run-levels for games.
  • FITCamaro - Thursday, September 18, 2008 - link

    So don't use it and do us all the favor of being quiet. I happen to like Vista. Works great.
  • francoist123 - Thursday, September 18, 2008 - link

    You could create a script (simple batch file should do) that shutdown services at the command line and start up again when you are done playing ...
    Microsoft should implemented that in the next version of Windows 7 ;-) GamingBoost ...
  • Lobsang - Thursday, September 18, 2008 - link

    I've done that on XP with a batch file using the net command, it's really simple and let's you start and stop a whole bunch of services as and when you want. Never tried it on Vista though.
  • DerekWilson - Friday, September 19, 2008 - link

    yeah, i can write a batch file for this sort of thing (i've already got batch files for clearing prefetch and processidletasks, and i used to write batch files to automate some benchmarks ... though jarred is a lot better at that) ... but it's a headache -- i don't wanna deal with that.

    besides, i still think stopping and restarting running applications is a cool addition that i really wouldn't know how to add correctly.
  • thilan29 - Thursday, September 18, 2008 - link

    Derek or Anand, please forward your thoughts about the "special sauce" software to AMD...it really would be a neat little program that everyone could use (if it could work on any computer)...and I'm fairly sure a lot of us would.
  • BishopClem - Thursday, September 18, 2008 - link

    Hey Derek,

    Nice Memphis Raines quote. :)
  • DerekWilson - Friday, September 19, 2008 - link

    thanks!

    ... and, i was wondering if any one would catch that :-)

    very nice.
  • Megaknight - Thursday, September 18, 2008 - link

    I wonder why the overcloking results show no improvement for Crysis...
  • Anand Lal Shimpi - Thursday, September 18, 2008 - link

    So here's what's interesting - the Crysis results were taken after the system had been running for a little while, presumably the GPU was too hot to actually overclock - which is the problem with temperature based overclocking.

    -A
  • SurferGeek - Thursday, September 18, 2008 - link

    You can manually change the GPU and CPU overclocking settings. The autotune stuff is for people who aren't familiar with or comfortable overclocking their systems. For this group though, manual is probably your preference.
  • Ryanman - Thursday, September 18, 2008 - link

    You didn't quite specify whether we could use this utility if we have an old 939 on a Nvidia Motherboard with an ATI Video Card. I'd assume not, but I'd love to be able to have this tool besides.

    Frankly, I'm a huge AMD fanboy but they're going to need to step up their game, utility or not, to be in my next build. I've built a ton of low end computers with AMD processors for clients, but for a gaming machine I just can't justify it.
  • nubie - Monday, September 22, 2008 - link

    I have several AMD processors from 754 to AM2 and would much like to use this, but have nvidia/via motherboards and video cards.

    There are apps that close programs, a quick google turned up this:

    http://www.online-tech-tips.com/computer-tips/how-...">http://www.online-tech-tips.com/compute...l-runnin...

    I know there are better apps, a kid I knew 2 years ago had one and used it before gaming. I never took a good look at it and I am not sure the proper keywords for Google to find it for me.

    Rest assured the programs exist (and Windows should do this as part of its "games for windows" push, they still don't understand many basic parts of an OS as it pertains to users, Unix/Linux has had runlevels for years, and programs can request the runlevel AFAIK.)
  • nubie - Monday, September 22, 2008 - link

    I found what may be the app: http://www.softempire.com/app-killer.html">http://www.softempire.com/app-killer.html

    If all you need is a GUI to help you or the user to shutdown and bring back running apps/services then this might be good.

    As I say, the OS should have this built-in so that the game can request it to start with. (if that is far too complicated MS should make it simple to start a game-enabled light version of windows, "XboxPC", of course that would mean admitting how bloated it is . . . Either way we lose.)
  • SurferGeek - Thursday, September 18, 2008 - link

    Should install on a 939 system, as long as the graphics are ATI. The CPU overclocking is only supported on 7 series chipsets.
  • mmntech - Thursday, September 18, 2008 - link

    I'm thinking the same thing. I have a 939 board but with ULI (nVidia) chipsets. I think this would probably require you to have an AM2 board given that 939 has been phased out at this point. I like the ideal of manual control though. I noticed with Catalyst Overdrive's automatic settings, it was setting the clocks too high causing graphics tearing and freezing. The Vista auto-bloat killer is handy. I wonder if it works with XP.
  • Anand Lal Shimpi - Thursday, September 18, 2008 - link

    AMD told us the only requirements were an AMD processor and AMD graphics card. AMD also mentioned however that full support for all platforms isn't implemented quite yet, so your mileage may vary.

    -A
  • FITCamaro - Thursday, September 18, 2008 - link

    I'm wondering if this will work on my new HP laptop with a 2GHz X2 and HD 3200 graphics. Would love to be able to set the CPU and GPU to a lower core frequency when I'm doing something like watching a movie.

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