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Overclocking Tool for the Mac Pro

slackpacker said:
Never an exact science...but XBENCH does not show any improvement at all...
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Am i crazy in suggesting that XBench would actually be expected not to show any improvement?

One side effect of this utility is that it causes the Mac clock to speed up. The clock probably increases in speed proportionately with the increase in proc speed. If XBench relies on the Mac clock to calculate results, those results will remain the same as one of the constants used in those calculations has now become a variable. Calculation screwed!!!
 
KevanDual2.5 said:
Am i crazy in suggesting that XBench would actually be expected not to show any improvement?

One side effect of this utility is that it causes the Mac clock to speed up. The clock probably increases in speed proportionately with the increase in proc speed. If XBench relies on the Mac clock to calculate results, those results will remain the same as one of the constants used in those calculations has now become a variable. Calculation screwed!!!
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What an awesome find. Ha your probably right.
 
Nice to know it's there, but no way I am going to try this on my 2.8

A marginal speed upgrade with big risks. It might be stable for some time, but I'm sure it will shorten the life of the CPU considerably.

If you want faster fps in games, get a faster video card. A slightly faster CPU won't help at all, as all newest DirectX 10 games have GPU bottlenecks.

But, again... it's cool that it is available. Just not for me. ;)
 
EDIT - Never mind. I misread the part about not increase FSB and memory bus voltages as to say they were not increasing the FSB or memory bus speeds, which they are.
 
frankfurter said:
Most people who have never used PC's don't know what this even is.

Most people who have used PC's and switched to Mac's did so to avoid crap just like this from the PC world.

Personally, I use both on a fulltime basis, and can hardly recommend this. The potential to hose up your Mac or even potentially permanently harm it far outweigh the barley noticeable speed increase.
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Fanbois....Gotta love em...oh wait. No I don't. :rolleyes:

kabunaru said:
Are Nvidia 8800 GT and ATI Radeon HD 3870 not good enough for you? :p
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No.
 
Are the Mac Pro's need a speed update or something?

Though this would be nice to use towards the end of your systems life to get another 6 months or something out of it.

But hey, at least it is an option, which is cool. iPhone overclocking next! :p (really shouldn't be that hard with the ARM chip and I think it is underclocked anyway).
 
reallynotnick said:
Are the Mac Pro's need a speed update or something?

Though this would be nice to use towards the end of your systems life to get another 6 months or something out of it.
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It will not harm the machine, it doesn't touch the voltage and the Mac Pro has enough fans to keep this machine cool. It's a matter of monitoring the temperatures and keeping it at stable speeds. My Quad 2.66 can OC to 3.1 and be stable. It's just my ram that sucks apparently.
 
I built a few Core 2 Duos back in late 06' early 07', and they were all able to overclock from 2.4Ghz, to 3.0Ghz easily without any extra voltage to the CPU core. I wish they would come out with a program for all intel macs. My iMac runs incredibly cool, and with the addition of SMC fan control, I'm sure I would be able to get another 400Mhz out my Mac.

I wonder if they booted into Windows and tested stability using Orthos or Prime95.

Seriously, I wish I had the programming knowledge to make a similar program for all Core 2 Duo macs, that would be awesome. They have so much over clocking headroom, which is what made them the chip to get for PC builders and gamers.
 
jonkemerer said:
I think it's awesome, although it just sucks Apple's other computes are so compact that even if an overclocking tool became available for an iMac or Mini, it'd overheat anyway. Cool for the Mac Pro's, though :)
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Download SMC fan Control and put every fan to the maximum RPM on the iMac. You will be surprised how cool it can stay.
 
I have a 2.4GHz Q6600 based machine that's been overclocked to 3.0GHz. I've also boosted the RAM timings to 4-4-4-12 and upped my 8800GTS a bit. I've cut the CPU and GPU back to shop standard though as it's running a bit hot and I need a better cooling solution.

But yeah, it's fun - some guys have clocked their QX9 series CPUs to well over 4GHz!

As for a gaming machine, the Mac Pro is fine but kind of like using an elephant gun to kill a fly.
 
Makosuke said:
Is that standard in PC overclocking apps? I was under the impression that that usually just involved messing with bus timing, and that the "real time" system clock was based on a separate internal clock, not processor clock speed. Not so, or is this doing something different?
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The Windows system clock definately does not rely on the processor cycles. In fact, if any operating system didn't rely on a clock integrated into the motherboard I can't see how they'd be given the right time when powered back on and not connected to the net. I'm almost certain my Windows install takes its time straight from the BIOS. So I too would like to know what is going on here?!?
 
I remember my old Beige G3 had a series of DIP switches that set the processor and system bus speed and could easily be changed. I overclocked my 266MHz G3 to 333MHz and it ran like that for many years with no ill effects. At the time the fastest processor you could get was 300MHz and that one was significantly more expensive than the 266MHz model so it worked out very well for me.

I also overclocked my original Powerbook G4 from 400MHz to 500MHz by removing a tiny resistor from the motherboard with a tweezer iron.
 
What they really need is an imac overclocker. The MP is already too fast. Core 2 Duos can be overclocked like crazy which could easily give more value out of the white imacs with the better screens.

On my PC I have a 1.8ghz c2d overclocked to 2.7ghz with stock cooling (and its still very cool, but anything after 2.7 and the temps rise sharply without a better heatsink). Needless to say I get a very big performance boost for free.
 
stainlessliquid said:
What they really need is an imac overclocker. The MP is already too fast. Core 2 Duos can be overclocked like crazy which could easily give more value out of the white imacs with the better screens.

On my PC I have a 1.8ghz c2d overclocked to 2.7ghz with stock cooling (and its still very cool, but anything after 2.7 and the temps rise sharply without a better heatsink). Needless to say I get a very big performance boost for free.
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I'm not sure that would be a good idea as I can't see the iMac having good enough heat dispersal to be overclocked.
 
For the guys saying this will shorten the life of your Mac, tell that to all the guys who bought the 3.0ghz Mac Pros, and the iMac owners who bought the 3.0ghz iMacs. They're the same chip, with a speed increase, or a multiplier increase. The biggest difference in temps would probably be 5C, something that happens normally on a hot day.

I have never, ever, heard of a CPU burning out due to a clock increase, even years at running at a overclocked, stable speed. Intels first quad cores where normally hitting 80c under full load, which basically where two conroe dies slapped together. Over heating? What about servers stacked together? I'm positive they run a lot hotter than the Computer you have at home.

The only problem with overclocking Macs is the RAM. Many of us use 4gb of laptop ram, which does not have the head room of Desktop RAM. If they discovered a way to allow us to increase the multiplier with out increasing the Front Side Bus, that would be solid. But if not, we have to increase the RAM speed, and that will most definitely limit us compared to the Core 2 chips.
 
I remember back in the day of the Celeron 300a chip. Over clock it to 450 and bump the FSB to 100mhz, and you had one heck of a machine. I had a machine (running FreeBSD as a workstation) with that proc, overclocked, until sometime last year. Worked fine, it was just time to retire it. Its in my Father's attic where it plays with the other old computers we will never throw away.

Over clocking, if done correctly, will not shorten the life of the processor. If you do not do what is required to keep it cool, THAT will shorten its life.
 
slackpacker said:
Never an exact science...but XBENCH does not show any improvement at all...
Click to expand...

That is what the article said. It seems that the processor clock is completely changed. So a benchmark that should take 60 seconds takes 50 seconds, but XBench still thinks it takes 60 seconds.
 
LoCarbHotrod said:
For the guys saying this will shorten the life of your Mac, tell that to all the guys who bought the 3.0ghz Mac Pros, and the iMac owners who bought the 3.0ghz iMacs. They're the same chip, with a speed increase, or a multiplier increase. The biggest difference in temps would probably be 5C, something that happens normally on a hot day.
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The Mac Pro uses Xeon chips running at 80w. The iMac uses modified Centrino chips running at 55w. In other words the iMac chip has already been boosted but uses less power and therefore generates less heat. In saying that, 55w is pretty heavy for what is essentially a notebook CPU. The Mac Pro obviously has much better cooling (because of case size and fan size) so you can do more with it.
 
Interesting to start.

Well, in a very quick GeekBench 32-bit test, my Jan-2008 Mac Pro (2x2.8GHz, 16G (2Gx8), 4x750 Samsung F1s, and the GF8800GT) showed improvements, but more at 3GHz than 3.2:

Overall GeekBench
2.8 = 8270
3.0 = 8480
3.2 = 8424

I need to do some real benchmarking with a clean login and after I pay for the 64-bit verion of GB, as I would expect about 8800 or so at 3GHz. I used to OC a lot of Macs and PCs (and even some more esoteric hardware), and I had a B&W G3 that's still running today (elsewhere) clocked from its stock 350MHz to 400MHz from day one. That's nine years in service.

The nice thing is that I'm happy at the stock 2.8GHz, as it's still bloody fast. At the time of purchase, I had the $$ to get the 3.2, but I could not see any reason to - 14% clock speed improvement for $1,600? Thog don't think so.

All I really hope is that this machine lasts me as long as my 1st-gen G5 did - right around 5 years w/o a hitch, and it's still running at the house of a musician friend.
 
bobertoq said:
:eek: OMG :eek: NON iPhone news?! I'm glad to see some MAC news on MACrumors.

This is cool. I'm just wondering if the new Nehalem Mac Pro's will have octo-core processors. When will we see 4GHz processors? I've seen one on an alienware, but it was overclocked
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Welllll....some would say that multi-cores improves performance versus pure clock speed, I see both sides of the argument. Multi-threaded games like UT3 would def. see an increase in speed from more cores, but a higher clock speed couldn't hurt too :)
 
operator207 said:
I remember back in the day of the Celeron 300a chip. Over clock it to 450 and bump the FSB to 100mhz, and you had one heck of a machine. I had a machine (running FreeBSD as a workstation) with that proc, overclocked, until sometime last year. Worked fine, it was just time to retire it. Its in my Father's attic where it plays with the other old computers we will never throw away.

Over clocking, if done correctly, will not shorten the life of the processor. If you do not do what is required to keep it cool, THAT will shorten its life.
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Just make your gaming room in your basement like me! :)
 
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