12" iBook underclocked?

guarthoguartho
Posted:
in Current Mac Hardware edited January 2014
I'm oscillating between a 12" or 14" iBook, mainly because of the extra 133 Mhz. It occurred to me the other day that the 12" may just be underclocked for marketing reasons, so as not to compete with the 12" PowerBook for instance.



Then the other half of my brain kicks in and says that the chips that are tested and fail at 801-932 Mhz or so probably just go in the 12", and so on up the product ladder.



Does anyone know for certain? Has anyone tried overclocking one of these up to the 933Mhz of it's big brother? What are the risks involved, other than voiding my warranty? What kind of precautions could I take to insure that my yet-to-be iBook survives the attempt?

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 5
    ribotribot Posts: 14member
    I'll enquire tomorrow for you - as I have a friend who overclocked his 500Mhz iBook to just over 600.



    I somehow think it would invalidate your warrenty. I don't think apple would be that stupid.
  • Reply 2 of 5
    kecksykecksy Posts: 1,002member
    I wouldn't worry about the speed difference between the 12" and the 14". 133MHz won't make a huge difference. Just go with whichever form factor best suits your needs.



    My 14" spends most of its life on a desk, so size isn't an issue for me. If you're going to carry it around a lot though, go with the 12".
  • Reply 3 of 5
    guarthoguartho Posts: 1,208member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Kecksy

    I wouldn't worry about the speed difference between the 12" and the 14". 133MHz won't make a huge difference. Just go with whichever form factor best suits your needs.



    Yeah, I'm not too concerned with it, but I want to squeeze every drop of performance out of it obviously. Plus there's the psychological implications of 1 1Ghz. Although, even in my wildest dreams, I'm sure they're underclocked 933s and not Ghzs.
  • Reply 4 of 5
    moliumoliu Posts: 42member
    Personally I don't think overclocking it is a good idea. yes it voids the warranty, but the most important thing is the heat overclocking is going to generate. On of the the big plus for mac is how quiet it runs. My ibook runs a lot quieter than my previous pc notebooks. However that's only true when the fan doesn't come on. If you overclock it, I suspect the fan's going to come on quite often if not all the time. Then you'll be hearing all the fan noise all the time.



    Being able to listen to itunes while working without the fan is a big plus!!!8)
  • Reply 5 of 5
    mmmpiemmmpie Posts: 628member
    Id be surprised if Apple were the ones underclocking the cpu's. They will be buying the cpu's as 800's.



    Given the stories that we hear about Motorola's manufacturing its hard to call them on the topic of underclocking.



    In practice what it means is this - the products coming off the line are all capable of a certain speed, but if the manufacture ( see AMD and Intel ) sold all of their cpu's at this speed then there would be no range of speeds, and no way to sell a really expensive version. So they artificially create a speed spread by marking down most of the product.



    Moto may be doing this, or not, hard to say because they arent really the focus of a strong overclocking market.



    Good examples of this are Intels Celerons, and PIIIs, which could often realiably be overclocked to the speed of the fastest part, and AMD's Duron, which overclocked well beyond the speed of the fastest available parts ( my 650 Duron runs reliably at 900 after years, and with agressive cooling it can push 1ghz ).



    Given Moto rumors, and the speed at which they have pushed their manufacturing, I think it is likely that rather than getting better yeilds to get faster cpus they have improved the finesse of their testing.
Sign In or Register to comment.