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Overclocking A MBP in OSX/EFI

Y

yaddam205

macrumors member
Original poster
Mar 20, 2008
91
0
I know overclocking has been addressed however I have yet to see if it's possible to OC either from OSX or EFI

Now before I get post left and right about "Melting" and "voided Warranty's" let me dispel a few common misnomers.

1. Melting will almost never occur in this day and age. There are many temperature sensors with thresholds that are in place to advert such things. (The "almost" part is for us who use DI/l2n0 etc)

2. Voided Warranty's;There is still nothing on the die of the cpu to tell weather or not something has been overclocked. While these "black boxes" are coming we will not see any this year from intel.


Now that we have that cleared up, please share.

[cTx]Yaddam205
XtremeSystems.org Staff
 
I'd like to know if this is possible as well. It would be nice to OC' that 2.5 to a 2.6 so I wouldn't have to pay extra for the performance, and the thermal impact of a 100Mhz OC would be negligible.

From what I've heard, Apple uses locked-down clock multipliers, thereby making it impossible to overclock, but I'm not absolutely positive.
 
I'll just put it out there that OC'ing your MBP is the dumbest thing anyone can do.
 
alphaod said:
I'll just put it out there that OC'ing your MBP is the dumbest thing anyone can do.
Click to expand...

Only if you don't know what your doing. A 100~ish Mhz OC would be fine. Push it further, and you'll run into heat and stability issues.
 
I'm sure it's possible; there simply seems to be a dearth of people interested in writing the necessary software. Case in point: there aren't any free underclocking applications available for OS X. In Windows, of course, there's Notebook Hardware Control. For overclocking to take off, someone will have to do the leg work first.
 
alphaod said:
I'll just put it out there that OC'ing your MBP is the dumbest thing anyone can do.
Click to expand...

Let's not get OT and start thread crapping.

heatmiser said:
I'm sure it's possible; there simply seems to be a dearth of people interested in writing the necessary software. Case in point: there aren't any free underclocking applications available for OS X. In Windows, of course, there's Notebook Hardware Control. For overclocking to take off, someone will have to do the leg work first.
Click to expand...

Well what are some of these "underclocking" applications. It's not too hard to reverse the application.
 
Radio Monk33 said:
Does anyone know how safe it is to OC the GPU vs the CPU?
Click to expand...

There are many varying factors that go into answering a questions like that.
You can get an average for a certain CPU/GPU however, it will not tell you specifically what yours can do. It comes down to the batch and stepping of the CPU/GPU. Also as we have seen some notebooks come with way to much/not enough TIM. This also plays a factor in overclocking.
 
OC'ing is fine if it's in small amounts, so OC'ing the GPU is perfectly fine. However, I'm not sure how you'd go about OC'ing the CPU- like I said earlier, everywhere I've read says that the clock multiplier on the MBP's motherboard is locked, so you can't adjust the clocks.
 
if you're going to void the warranty i suggest applying arctic silver instead of using the crap that comes from the factory. That will definitely help in reducing temperatures resulting from OCing.
 
e12a said:
if you're going to void the warranty i suggest applying arctic silver instead of using the crap that comes from the factory. That will definitely help in reducing temperatures resulting from OCing.
Click to expand...

True, but that requires one of the most complex MBP surgeries ever. Seriously, you have to take the thing completely apart to get to the heat sinks. Not really worth it to me.
 
yaddam205 said:
Well what are some of these "underclocking" applications. It's not too hard to reverse the application.
Click to expand...

Coolbook is the only one I know of in OS X, and it costs $10 more than I'm willing to spend trying it out. In Windows, there's NHC, which is free, but it's only for XP/Vista/2k.

If the clocks are locked, though (as JWest says), then you'd only be able to underclock, and not overclock the CPU. I think Dell does (or used to do) this with some of their laptops.
 
Well.. often the silicon that make the 2.6Ghz C2D's also make the 2.4Ghz CPU's, they're just rated lower because they've failed some test. So I don't think over closing is such a dumb idea..

However I'm curious as to how you'd do it using the EFI.
Are you thinking about Soft-Bios like settings, like you'd do on a regular PC?
 
JWest said:
True, but that requires one of the most complex MBP surgeries ever. Seriously, you have to take the thing completely apart to get to the heat sinks. Not really worth it to me.
Click to expand...

if you can find a manual and the tools, its really not that hard. Just keep organized and follow typical procedures (antistatic straps, etc.) but its up to you.
 
ive looked into it, ive yet to find someone that can OC the cpu on a mac laptop. the EFi just doesnt allow user access like a BIOS on a pc. if maybe you could boot into BIOS mode on a mac (somehow???) then maybe it could be done thatway. it would probably involve changing firmware or something.

gpu OC'ing is easy enough, i just want to give my CPU a 10%-20% increase.
 
DoFoT9 said:
ive looked into it, ive yet to find someone that can OC the cpu on a mac laptop. the EFi just doesnt allow user access like a BIOS on a pc. if maybe you could boot into BIOS mode on a mac (somehow???) then maybe it could be done thatway. it would probably involve changing firmware or something.

gpu OC'ing is easy enough, i just want to give my CPU a 10%-20% increase.
Click to expand...


How? Well.. look here:

caution:
you can leave your system in a state where Mac OS X won't start up again. You can fix it by booting with the install CD (hold down C as you turn on your computer) then using the Start-up Disk utility.


Now, on to the instructions.

1. Download the EFI Sample Implementation from Intel.

2. Unzip the file to /efi (or anywhere else, but /efi is what I'll be using)

3. In terminal do 'sudo bless --folder /efi --file /efi/Binary/BIOS32/Bin/GraphicsConsole.efi --setBoot'

4. Reboot your computer.

5. You'll get the familiar chime and gray screen, wait about 10 seconds then hit the spacebar.

6. You're now in EFI!
 
Unfortunately EFI is all command line based (from what I know), which makes it less user friendly than BIOS. And even with that little trick, I'm pretty sure you can't OC simply by getting into EFI.
 
JWest said:
Unfortunately EFI is all command line based (from what I know), which makes it less user friendly than BIOS.
Click to expand...

That's very true but it'll never stop a curious user from poking around in there... I guess the question are, how much damage you could do?
 
DoFoT9 said:
no restrictions really, you have complete access to possibly the lowest level of access on the computer - quite dangerous to the novice lol
Click to expand...

Ah well, i'm not about to dive into Unix Shell commands and low level coding for the sakes of extra 100~200Mhz. I'll leave that to you folks.. Besides i need my mac for making money. :D
 
Hey, if we can get some experienced UNIX coders here we could have an official "overclocking the intel Macbook Pro's" thread.
 
Lol you overclockers are so funny, espicially laptop overclockers :D

You say that a small OC (like 100 MHz) will not harm you system, but what these 100 MHz will do to you? Will you go home from work faster or what?

This is so funny when some people break their heads (and MBPs) searching for a way to overclock under a risk of something happening to their 2000$+ Macs just to get those extra 100 MHz? LOL
 
eXan said:
Lol you overclockers are so funny, espicially laptop overclockers :D

You say that a small OC (like 100 MHz) will not harm you system, but what these 100 MHz will do to you? Will you go home from work faster or what?

This is so funny when some people break their heads (and MBPs) searching for a way to overclock under a risk of something happening to their 2000$+ Macs just to get those extra 100 MHz? LOL
Click to expand...

oi lol i said an extra 200mhz :p . its like putting a turbo in your car... makes it go faster, makes you seem cooler.
 
lol i wouldnt exactly call a computer clocked 100 MHz more a bragging right. :D
 
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