AMD has silently released a utility that fixes time stamp counter (TSC) issues with dual-core AMD processors such as the Athlon 64 X2 and Opteron. The AMD Dual-Core Optimizer utility is a driver that synchronizes the time stamp counter on both processor cores and improves game compatibility and performance. Time stamp counter issues occur in older games that are incompatible with multithreading and would run too fast or out of sync.
It seems that this could have been around for a few months at least, but we’ve just stumbled on it now. It’s also compatible with Intel Dual Cores, which is another oddity.