Overclock the CPU and/or GPU

[solarnoise]

EDIT: I'll update this first post to show how to overclock the CPU/GPU as we figure it out.
EDIT: 12/5/09 - updated to account for two ways to modify the ASROC.ini file

CPU Status: good to go!
Credit for solution and modified ini: burn_error
Credit for instructions: blaznonion and burn_error

Instructions:
1. Download and install the OCTuner software from this link
2. Go to the install path (IE C:\Program Files\ASRock Utility\OCTuner) and open the file ASROC.ini
3. Add this line under [Support Model]: 3651=ion.ini
4. Download the attached ion.ini and put it in the install path folder (same folder as ASROC.ini)
5. Use the program (at your own risk) to overclock your Atom!

Option for Step 3:
If using the modified ion.ini file does not work well with your overclock (instability, blue screens, etc..),
change "3651=ion.ini" to "3651=AMCP7A.ini" under [Support Model] in the ASROC.ini file.


GPU Status: good to go!
The GPU, being a nVidia chip, can be overclocked using nVidia System Tools, available on this page:
http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us
This installs the System Tools into your nVidia control panel. You can then change the clocks for the GPU, and opt to have these settings applied at Windows startup. People have reported success overclocking in the range of 500-550 MHz

[NINE]

I would suspect that little effort goes into overclocking because most of the time netbooks are running at lower speeds in order to gain that all important battery life. Power management code for portables is specifically written such that the cpu is only allowed to speed up for intense processing and then it is throttled back down to conserver power.

It would be interesting to see data on power consumption of the 270 and 280 minis.

NINE

[solarnoise]

Also, I wanted to add that I've read comments around the net stating that people were able to OC their Atoms to 1.8 or even 2.0 and remain very stable... these were on MSI/Acer machines

[NINE]

Were they doing the over clocking via software or hardware? Did they list any battery data?

NINE

[solarnoise]

Were they doing the over clocking via software or hardware? Did they list any battery data?

NINE

NINE, I'll try to dig up the articles I found, but I can tell you that MSI released a BIOS for their netbooks that unlocked the CPU settings, so the overclocking was done at the hardware level. Does HP have these settings locked?

[NINE]

Solarnoise,

I don't know - which is why I asked about the MSI. The way MSI has it set up is likely the why the HP will be set up since most of these boards have a significant part of the design done by Intel. The mini is the first non-Apple machine I've bought in many years - Apple isn't going to make a netbook - probably ever - anytime soon (because it isn't economically viable for them to make one), and I see the advantages is having one for my current needs. Being abel to Hack a netbook into OS X submission makes for an intriguing project.

The 311 I ordered from HP is the slower machine. Battery life will reign supreme for my uses of this machine and a slightly slower unit is likely to have more endurance - or so my thought process led me to believe. If that's not the case, or I find that I need the faster machine I'll have 21 days to figure that out and exchange for the faster machine.

NINE

[sproyd]

Hi Guys

New member here. Just ordered the low-end Mini 311 model off Amazon. I'll sell it and upgrade to the higher end one once its released but not in the mood for waiting after waiting SOOO long for an Ion netbook.

I used to run the netbook website http://www.electricvagabond.com/ but unfortunately I only update very infrequently now because of other life commitments. Anyway... I'm not trying to plug my site but what I wanted to say was that I was on the forefront of MSI Wind overclocking scene (see article here http://www.electricvagabond.com/2009/02 ... e-10b.html ). The posts above are quite right, MSI did release an experimental bios that amongst other things allowed for overclocking the MSI Wind's Atom at either 8, 15 or 24%. The overclocks were made at Bios level but could be disabled/enabled when in Windows which was pretty awesome. Those running onboard OEM memory had issues with crashes at even 8% overclocks but those running exclusively on 1/2GB high quality memory (Kingston etc) could run at 24% with no issues. I benchmarked the 24% overclock which gave a 30% overall boost in power (and got linked on the frontpage of Gizmodo which was good). I ran my Atom for a year at 24% overclock without any issues - clearly it can handle it.

If we can petition HP to release a bios like this it would be great. Clearly the Atom can handle it, only the memory is the bottleneck for overclocking in this case. The only thing is HP is much more of a conservative company than MSI so I'm not sure if they would wholeheartedly endorse overlclocking - and they'd likely need the buy-in of NVidia too. It's almost too easy for them to just say no. Any gurus out there want to develop a custom bios?

[solarnoise]

Thanks for the great post, sproyd =)

btw, I checked out nVidia System Tools and it seems they do work on the GPU, so I believe software-level GPU overclocking is possible, though not entirely necessary.

When I attempted to increase the CPU FSB, though, it gave me a "HT Bus Modification: Failed" error.

You can can nVidia System Tools from the nVidia site's driver page:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/nvidia_sys ... _6.05.html

[shredu2]

First post! anyway, I just ordered my 311 as a replacement to an msi wind I had. I was wondering if anyone has tried setfsb on the atom processor's to speed them up. It's already been shown on the wind, that these things can dish out up to 1.9ghz without reasonable accommodation.

[SHiN06]

Maybe something for us on this article:
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9139642/5_ways_to_overclock_a_netbook_really_?taxonomyId=15

Does someone know what's the model of our motherboard?

[SHiN06]

I found (with CPU Z) that the model of our motherboard is a Quanta 36.51 V49.15
Unfortunately it's not present in the list of setfsb website...

[solarnoise]

Yeah I'm not sure how to get setFSB working for us, BUT the nVidia tool does work with Windows 7... I set my GPU clock to 480, opened up GPU-Z, and it showed 480 for the clock =)