It won't exactly provide an
Ion-level boost in performance, but it looks like the GMABooster app that's been floating around for a little while does indeed deliver on its promise of providing a small helping hand to the stock Intel GMA 950 graphics found in the majority of netbooks out there. More specifically, the application boosts the clock speed from the standard 133MHz or 166MHz to a full 400MHz, or the same as the non-low voltage chipset found on standard laptops. According to the folks at
UMPC Portal, that translates to about a 20% gain in Crystal Mark benchmarks, although you can also unsurprisingly expect to take a slight hit in battery performance as a result. Better still, the app is even available for OS X and in addition to Windows and Linux, so folks that have already been busy tweaking their netbooks in other areas aren't out of luck.
[Via
TweakTown]
posted Apr 30th 2009 1:53PM
Too bad Intel graphics still suck. Overclocked or not.
I don't care, I'm stuck with it on my laptop and I'll take whatever I can get! Maybe i'll even be able to play Halo Trial at ...*gasp* native resolution!!!! (1280x800)
My MSI has fucktuplets every time it gets over 40C, GMA sucks potatoes.
A gold plated turd is still a turd.
Koodos for trying to help though
Slick you made me lol.
what is Halo Trial?!
That's probably my biggest dissappointment with my netbook. Every little bit will help here. Good stuff.
Hmm... time to test quakelive.com on my Aspire again, though I'm not sure this'll be enough.
Would this work on all notebooks with the GMA 950, not just netbooks? I'd like to try this on a Sony Vaio TZ. I hope there won't be any heat or stability issues....
You would probably be better off than someone with a netbook, I'm guessing that laptop has good cooling.
I found out my Vaio TZ uses the lower voltage version of the GMA 950, not the standard chipset and so this program would help out.
What's the heat tradeoff is what I'm wondering. Plus, does this need a reboot to change? I don't wanna fry my balls with a netbook, but I figure if it's quick to enable/disable, it'd be very worth it. Enable on a table, disable when gonads are in danger.
I got it running on my eeePc and there is no reboot to overclock. You do have to reboot if you want to run back to stock speeds. Now I am able to play Half Life with the settings maxed! ^_^
And will it make it whine or even fry it like overclocking my old PDA did?
i got this yesterday for my may 07 macbook. it only gives me the options of 250 and 400. does that mean my default is 250? also i have been pleasantly surprised by this app. i like to connect my laptop to my 24 inch monitor and watch hd movies and it used to have random slowdowns and short freezes but after the bump i watched two movies in 1080 without a single hiccup.
Can you provide more details? I've always found my MacBook unable to play 1080p on an external display. Do you have it set up as an additional display, or mirrored, or do you have your MacBook display off? What sort of encodings for 1080p can it play? This would be a big step up if, with the booster, I could play 1080 on my MacBook. Anyone else tested it out on the mac?
I think this is intended for netbooks because they use an extra slow version of the GMA 950 that regular laptops don't. I'm not sure whether your macbook uses that same version so it might not be applicable.
@ v3xx
Yes it does. The Technote here:
http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Hardware/Conceptual/HWTech_Video/Articles/Video_implementation.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40003994-DontLinkElementID_13
confirms that it runs at 250mhz. I'm going to try it on mine now. :D
Maybe now I can run Half-Life 1!
overclock!!!
My GMA already freaks out when it gets hot, i dont need any more heating...
Why did i buy MSI... :(
Will I be able to install this on my HP mini running Ubuntu?
Yes, you can!
They have Mac, Windows, and Linux versions. I'm guessing... yes.
Thanks!
btw Hp Mini + Ubuntu = Sweeet
they are sexy sexy machines
I am very pleased with it.
BTW, has anyone tried this on their mini ubuntu style? Noticeable improvements?
this is old news. i guess it came out around march 3rd
the download site is SKETCHY (uses a megaupload type method)
word on the msiwind forums, it doesnt help much
Well I wouldn't have found out without Engadget so thanks!!!
I thought cosmos were smart.
I think it actually made my laptop slower....
umm.. i wonder if this will allow my eeebox to do 1080p now... as it is in ubuntu it drops a few frames every now and then and 720p is decent... *i'm ecited at the thought ^_^*
I will try this tonight. I was so close to being able to play 720p videos on my thinkpad but just lacked a bit of juice.
Thanks for the heads up!
Be careful, this has made my Mac Mini go fucking bananas,
CPU now running at 80oC!!!
My EEE PC 901 can almost chug through LoTRO when it is OCed to 2Ghz. now I can OC the GMA too! that would put me in the relm of playable. Thanks Engadget!
I never understood why they underclocked it in the first place :-/
So you don't have a laptop melted onto you after prolonged use
I like to think of it more as attached to my hip, than melted onto my hip :)
actually, the OC program I use also OCs the fan. so I just keep it elevated enough not to overheat too much. I'm not to worried about the life of the netbook because I plan on replacing it with an ION netbook once they come out :)
How did you OC the processor?
This is good news. Maybe now I can get Red Alert 3 to work on my Wind. Still though, how could it possibly run at 400Mhz stable?
I like how the fasted overclocking option had an exclamation point and the others did not...
Does this just work with GMA950, or will it also work with the earlier GMA915 (and maybe a few others)?
I was wondering the same thing, cause I have a GMA 965 and this would be EXTREMELY useful. I'm gonna try it out anyway.
No such thing as GMA 965. 965 chipset is either 3100 or X3100, or sometimes 3000.
Sweet! Can't wait to play Crysis on my NC10 netbook! Bahahah!
MSI WIND 100 Net Top - you sealed the deal.
330 dual core atom, full size hdd and now GMA overclocking. HTPC here I come.
any chance of one of these for a geforce go 6150?
my 2 year old laptop's achilles heal....I should have sprung the extra cash for something not so horrible.
KeegdnaB you can use a program called ATITool to overclock your nvidia Geforce Go 6150( Yes it can be used on Nvidia stuff too). I use it for my Ati Mobility Radeon Express 200 on my notebook. I can overclock to 400Mhz from 300Mhz. I can even underclock to 100Mhz to save power.
You could also use rivatuner to overclock, although it probably won't help much. I tried overclocking my Geforce 6150 and it made little difference and also made it unstable/hot.
I've had this since the very very first release. Engadget, you've been slow in catching this one!
Juan - quit holding out. Next time tell us.
Has anyone tried it with battery doubler?
Ive benchmarked this on my eee a while back, and these are the results I had gotten with crystal mark:
1.6Ghz/GPU stock
Mark 25069
ALU 5349
FPU 4600
MEM 4519
HDD 5152
GDI 1840
D2D 2926
OGL 683
1.6Ghz/GPU 400Mhz
Mark 26068
ALU 5349
FPU 4600
MEM 4519
HDD 5152
GDI 1926
D2D 3842
OGL 680
and in games I got maybe a couple frames here and there, while some games saw absolutely no benefit..
oh and it only effected my battery by about 15-25mins (out of about 6hrs) while idle. I didn't test it out under load..
would this be safe on the Dell Latitude series?