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I haven't made many posts here on InsanelyMac, but I'm a huge fan, and I'm hoping that the community here can help me in ways that Google has failed.

 

I'm about to purchase a new Black Macbook @ 2.0ghz C2D w/ 2gb of RAM and a 160gb HDD. I'm very excited about my new machine, and having used (and eventually uninstalled) OS X on a Hackintosh, I can appreciate how much nicer my life will be with the Macbook. However, I do have a big issue, not so much a problem rather than a question: Can you overclock a new C2D Macbook? If so, how?

 

Coming from a PC enthusiast market, I'm very familiar with overclocking, and that's why I'm having a problem figuring out how to do so on a Mac: on a PC, all my FSB, VCORE, etc. settings were accessed and tweaked from the BIOS. Since Apple uses EFI, where do I find out how to tweak these settings in EFI, if that is even possible at all? I've read that there is no native app to tweak these settings, and no 'F8 at boot' option to take me to the EFI has left me at a dead end.

 

Core 2 Duos are amazing processors, as well as amazing overclockers. There is no reason that I can't take my little Macbook to 2.11 or 2.33 with a miniscule VCORE jump. (Note that I am aware of the risk this poses, but from what I understand, Macbooks are not as plagued by heat issues as their collective big brother, the Macbook Pro. It's a risk I'd be willing to take for the mhz jump.) If I get really daring (read: stupid and reckless) I might take it up to 2.5 or 2.6. But I can't if I'm not able to edit my FSB and VCORE!

 

Got any help, friends?

Since the MacBook uses EFI instead of your traditional BIOS, that poses a problem. Pretty much everything will be controlled by the OS.

 

There's no default EFI "shell" included with Macintoshes. You can get an EFI menu by looking at this page http://nak.journalspace.com/?cmd=displayco...amp;entryid=407 but I don't know if that will help you any. Probably not.

 

There would have to be utility for OSX to configure the FSB/timings/voltages/etc, and perhaps change it in the NVRAM, if stored there. Who knows. So far, nobody has developed such a tool as far as I know. It sounds very possible though, and I'm sure someone will do it eventually.

 

I know you are aware of the issues of over clocking - and while I've never, once, ever, never broken anything by over clocking too much (it'll just lock up and then cool down) I'd be willing to bet that over clocking the notebook won't be very successful assuming you get a tool to do it. They just don't have enough cooling to handle it. They're usually designed with fairly tight heat tolerances.

 

But good luck, and make sure you report back here if you find anything.

Thanks guys. I appreciate your comments. As far as I can tell, there's no real way to overclock natively on Mac. I am interested in an idea a friend of mine posed: can you use Boot Camp to boot into Windows and then use native Windows overclocking apps to notice a speed increase on OS X? I'm trying to keep M$ products off of my new laptop, but if I can overclock with it, I wouldn't hesitate.

 

As for heat.. if you can't handle it, get out of the kitchen. :unsure: Seriously though, I'll be suprised if 133mhz increases it 3-5 degress Celsius.

 

What are your thoughts on that?

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