I am wondering if it is possible to overclock the CPU's a tad. A friend mentioned to me that the CPU's used in many of our MB and MBP's are the same, just apple sets the clock speed. Maybe I am totally wrong but I wanted to ask. Thanks for any help.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Overclocking the CPU's? Is it possible?
- Thread starter lavrishevo
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Your friend is correct. When intel manufacturers their cpus, the processors are rated and given a certain clock speed rating. Usually there is a lot of head room with these ratings.
On the PC side of things, most overclocking is done in the pc's bios. This is the very low level settings of the computer. Apple's new intel computers do not use bios and instead use EFI. This means there is no overclocking via the bios. I also do not know of any solutions that exist to overclock from within os x and windows programs probably wouldn't work either.
In short, its probably not possible. And its not really a good idea to do this with a laptop form factor. Overclocking your mbp will just make it hotter than it already is and no one wants that.
On the PC side of things, most overclocking is done in the pc's bios. This is the very low level settings of the computer. Apple's new intel computers do not use bios and instead use EFI. This means there is no overclocking via the bios. I also do not know of any solutions that exist to overclock from within os x and windows programs probably wouldn't work either.
In short, its probably not possible. And its not really a good idea to do this with a laptop form factor. Overclocking your mbp will just make it hotter than it already is and no one wants that.
I think you'd be asking for a lot of trouble if you overclocked the CPU in an Apple notebook. They're already hot as it is, and making them hotter won't do anything good. The rewards you may get if you find a way to overclock the CPU aren't worth the risks you take in doing so.
This may be true about the heat being to much. I thought a little fan control and bumping it up to 2.33 or 2.40 would not hurt really much. I have found a GUI app that can lower the clockspeed and reduce heat and increase battery life. Just can not find any instructions about bumping it up a little. I seem to be reading that people are doing it but no tools/apps that I can see.
You're stuck with frontside bus boosting only. You're don't have unlocked multipliers.
I clock my X1600 to 470/470 on my iMac 20". I think that's worth it.
I clock my X1600 to 470/470 on my iMac 20". I think that's worth it.
How do you go about boosting the front side bus? Is this for OS X? I do have ATI Tools for windows is there a way or need to boost the clockspeed on the X1600 for the Mac side?
http://thomas.perrier.name/index.html
I'm surprised that it still isn't Universal or Intel yet. I don't know where the FSB settings are in the EFI interface.