MacBook Pro x1600 is underclocked

[Solr_Flare]

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=1848

 

People have found out that those x1600s in the MacBook Pro's are actually significantly underclocked. To be exact, instead of running at the default 470mhz core and memory, it is instead running at 310mhz core and 278mhz memory

 

End result? Your MacBook Pro has less fillrate than if it had a Radeon 9600 inside it. People have managed to unlock it in Windows XP(no luck in OS X yet) with some interesting results. The card works perfectly normal at its default specs, although after an hour or so of graphics intense work it does get a touch hotter. The big thing though is you lose roughly 30 minutes of battery life with it set to default speeds due to the internal fans spinning up more.

 

So, it *is* understandable why Apple underclocked the x1600. But, that said, they never made any mention of it, so you are buying your MacBook Pro expecting to get x1600 performance, but you are actually getting performance more on par with a Radeon 9600.

 

This underclocking does not happen in the new iMacs, it is MacBook Pro Laptop specific on all current models. Again, I can understand why Apple did do this. A little more heat and 30 minutes of battery life is pretty significant. But, I am very disapointed that they are basically advertizing one level of performance but selling you something less because they don't specify anywhere that they are doing this.

[Cyman]

Well, from what I read, I thought it's also concerning the new iMacs (running at 400/400MHz because of the heat dissipation).

Anyway, if you want to "overclock" the GPU, you could try it with ATIccelerator. Or under Windows (with BootCamp) just use the famous ATiTool.

 

So you get control over the GPU clock which is very useful in my opinion, especially when you use your MBP for "excessive" gaming (recommended to connect your MBP to the next power plug, though).

[asticinzano]

As I understand it mobile GPUs are generally variably clocked. Both ATI and Nvidia allow their customers to use a range of speeds and call it Geforce Go 6600 or Mobilty Radeon x1600, even if specifications are way down the scale. I bet some manufacturers are also underclocking these parts to make their notebooks quieter and get better battery runtime

Somewhat disappointing to get an x1300 (clockspeed) but paid for an X1600.

[stangri]

well, given the progress of the hackintosh community in getting the ATI drivers running on a hacked osx -- anyone has tried to use those hacked drivers to unlock higher clock speeds?

[MacX]

I just bought a macbook pro. And that sorta pisses me.

[Fluc]

I read on a Dutch forum that the (now previous) C2D Macbook Pros with X1600 GPUs are a lot less underclocked then the ones in the article. Also notice that the article dates from April 19, 2006, which was around the release of the Core Duo versions. Supposingly the C2D X1600s are clocked around 420Mhz which is significantly faster.

 

I'm not sure on the possibilities to overclock in OS X, but I know there are ways to do it in Windows. However keep in mind that it might overheat and ruin your machine if you overclock too high. I might try this out sometime while gaming in Windows, however I'll be using a notebook cooler. I don't have a cooler yet but I'm planning on getting the Zalman MC-NZ1000 (http://zalman.co.kr/eng/product/code_list.asp?code=030).

[EFI]

The C2D Macbook Pro's (oct rev) had the Mobility Radeon X1600 clocked back to normal speeds at what is recommended by ATI. It was the original Core Duo MBP's that had the GPU underclocked.