4 replies to this topic

[Costanegra]

Hey guys.

So, I've been trying to understand how OC works on hackintosh. So far, I have not learned much. After spending a lot of time reading threads in various forums, I'm still at square one. I've yet to find a simple, clear explanation of what is required to achieve stable OC'ing on Macs. I am, of course, a total noob. I've came across mentions of SpeedStepper and AppleIntelCPUpwm, but I still have no idea what they are (or what they do), and if I need them or not.

I've only been able to OC my system to a stable 4.4GHz on my Win7 drive just by messing with the BIOS. I have two other drives, one with Snow and one with Lion. Both Snow and Lion were made bootable with Andy's Boot CD 5. With the mentioned OC configuration, I can boot to Snow with no problem, but I don't know how to test if Snow is recognizing the OC (or if those settings are actually applied to the OS). I downloaded Geekbench, and my scores with and without the OC are the same.

My Lion drive, on the other hand, does not boot with my 4.4GHz OC configuration; I get a nasty kernel panic right after Chameleon. Again, I have no idea why. Do I need SpeedStepper for this? Is poking around with the BIOS not enough for Lion?

If anyone here can share their knowledge on this topic with me, I would very much appreciate it. So please, if you have any suggestions or if you can point me to a good OC'ing guide, I bed that you do.

Thanks in advance.

PS.- You'll find my system configuration on my signature below.

[PookyMacMan]

I've overclocked my Pentium D from 2.66 GHz to 3 GHz; in Snow Leopard it is recognized and utilized.

I would try reinstalling Lion with the overclock enabled during the install. If the installer panics, post a pic here.

[Costanegra]

PookyMacMan, on 02 December 2011 - 11:23 PM, said:

I've overclocked my Pentium D from 2.66 GHz to 3 GHz; in Snow Leopard it is recognized and utilized.

I would try reinstalling Lion with the overclock enabled during the install. If the installer panics, post a pic here.

Thanks for responding. Do you think there is another alternative? I would hate to have to reinstall Lion, because I've spent the past 3 weeks installing apps, syncing mail + address book + calendar + keychains + itunes + etc, installing plugins, copying all my files, and so on.

I'm hoping this could be resolved by a simple patching or addition of kexts, or maybe even by a better understanding of SpeedStepper (see this thread). Yet again, I'm lost in that regard.

But let me ask you something: how do you know SL recognizes and utilizes you OC? Is there a command-line that can tell you the accurate speed of your CPU? Or do you use one of those benchmark programs? In either case, can you please tell me what you use?

Thanks again.

[rorydaredking]

Overclock working fine for me. Just OC'ed the usual way, with bios. No speedster or any of that rubbish, running native appleintelCPUPM, and speeds detected in bios boot up screen, and about this mac.
Your problem might be you need a different bus ratio. I remember when the first i7's came out, different ones needed a different number, think it has something to do with the multiplier, so have a look not that.

[Costanegra]

Thanks for responding, Rorydaredking. I finally got my Lion drive to boot with working OC. Since there was the remote possibility of having to reinstall Lion, I decided to test messing with SpeedStep. It turns out my Lion drive did need it. My Geekbench score went from 12XXX to 15XXX. I followed this thread:

http://www.tonymacx86.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=21564

Since it worked on my Lion drive, and since my geekbench scores on my SL drive were also around the 12XXX, even if I could boot up with OC, I decided to test this same method on SL. For some reason unknown to me, this method did not work on SL. My geekbench score dropped down to 5XXX. I replaced the modified kexts from the method with my backed up ones, and geekbench score is at normal with 12XXX.

So, to sum up, Lion has working OC. Snow Leopard boots with OC but geekbench scores don't reflect the OC. I'm doing most of my work on Lion now, so as long as it works on this drive, I can't complain.

One last note: My "about this mac" does not reflect the OC on either drive. I will try adding this string to my smbios.plist:

<key>SMmaximalclock</key> <string>4000</string>

Thanks again for responding.