How To: Overclocking AMD Boards With 690G Integrated Graphics

Game Testing The Overclock

The games were run on Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit with an AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+ processor on the ASUS M2A-VM motherboard. The hardware was identical to what was used on our previous 690G article if you’d like to take a peak.

Company of Heroes:

Company of Heroes is set during World War II where the player follows a military unit, known as Able Company, as they fight their way through some of the greatest and bloodiest battles, including the D-Day landings at Normandy.

We set the graphics to what we would consider lower quality at 1024×768 and the performance results show that the game runs, but not at frame rates that would be easy on the eyes. The 125MHz overclock got us an extra 2.5 frames per second and while that doesn’t sound like that much, but if you do the math it’s nearly a twenty percent gain!

F.E.A.R.

Sierra; F.E.A.R w/ v1.0.8 patch:

F.E.A.R. (First Encounter Assault and Recon) is a first-person close-quarters combat game for the PC. The story begins when a paramilitary force infiltrates a multi-billion dollar aerospace compound, and the government responds by sending in Special Forces. The group loses contact with the government when an eerie signal interrupts radio communications–and when that interference subsides moments later, the team has been destroyed. That’s where you come in. As part of a classified strike team created to deal with threats no one else can handle, your mission is simple: eliminate the intruders at any cost, determine the origin of the signal, and contain the potential crisis before it gets out of control.

When it came to F.E.A.R. the IGP overclock on the AMD 690G got us an additional 4 frames per second, which is an 11% performance increase. With lowered quality settings, games like F.E.A.R. and Far Cry were found to be in the 30-40FPS area which is playable.