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Overclocking the Intel HD 3000 on MBA

G

gladoscc

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jul 13, 2011
297
47
Has anyone overclocked it? The ULV (ultra low voltage) version of the intel i chips have the processor graphics clocked at around 1/3th of the normal ones.

I don't mind lower battery life, I just wish to be able to run games at a higher FPS. Can the MBA dispose more heat?
 
I wouldn't want to do anything that would bring more heat into the chip personally... but I'd be interested to hear someone's experiences.

The best thing you can do for performance is run a stripped down windows 7 in bootcamp, and do some config/ini tweaks on the game you want to run. You'd be very surprised just how playable you can get 2012 games that way.
 
Astrofox said:
I wouldn't want to do anything that would bring more heat into the chip personally... but I'd be interested to hear someone's experiences.

The best thing you can do for performance is run a stripped down windows 7 in bootcamp, and do some config/ini tweaks on the game you want to run. You'd be very surprised just how playable you can get 2012 games that way.
Click to expand...

You can barely play games with the HD 3000 on normal clock speed, ULV chips are really weak.
 
For any overclocking you'd need access to your Mac's EFI, which Apple doesn't provide, so no.
 
It is relatively easy to un-archive the EFI components.
If you know stuff, could modify them to bring the overclock.
But its quite difficult, no one has achieved it yet.
 
Someone should find a way to OC the Intel i5 processor instead:) I would love to push my 13" MBAir 1.7GHz beyond that....maybe up to 1.8/1.9.
 
Satnam1989 said:
Someone should find a way to OC the Intel i5 processor instead:) I would love to push my 13" MBAir 1.7GHz beyond that....maybe up to 1.8/1.9.
Click to expand...

It brushes 95C already...I can't imagine it would be safe to go higher anyways unless we can also undervolt.
 
Buy a pc lol

Best thing to do is like the reader above said, run windows 7 in boot camp and see if you can modify or edit config/ini files. As others have said, these chips already can run really hot.

In short, if you can succeed at overclocking you may ruin your mac over a period of time. I work with an ACMT and he replaces logic boards all the time because graphics or cpu's overheat because Apple doesn't pay enough attention to better cooling (because thin pc's are better)
 
gladoscc said:
You can barely play games with the HD 3000 on normal clock speed, ULV chips are really weak.
Click to expand...

Right, which is why the MBA is not the right computer if you want to play games. Even if you could OC it, you'd not get it fast enough to make a major difference but by doing so, you would almost certainly cook the CPU.
 
please could you elaborate on the config/ini tweaks for a bootcamped windows 7 that you mention?

i have a 2011 mba 1.8 i7 with 4gb ram and the intel 3000 graphics chip. it is not primarily for gaming, but it is my main machine and is always with me due to it's portability, so would be nice if i could occasionally play the odd game to kill a bit of time when i'm out and about.

at the moment i have windows 7 installed for games, but even running relatively old games with quality settings on low i get rubbish frame rates and occasional stuttering.
 
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