Just Bought Macbook Pro 2.16Ghz

I have just bought a Macbook Pro 2.16Ghz Core 2 Duo for £1080 after much deliberation over whether to get the 2.33ghz or 2.16ghz model.

I figured that I could always upgrade the ram in the future and the difference in graphics is only about 100 points 3dmark05 score, and I would not notice the difference in processor speed as 2.16 is already blazingly fast.

Should be arriving on Tuesday!

Has anyone tried overclocking the 2.16ghz graphics card, if so what did you overclock it to, what was the heat like and what 3dmark score do you get?

thekingdavids

 

Cool, you really should be fine with that.

I tried doing some overclocking with ATItool, and was able to overclock quite a bit (well over 500/500). I don't remember how much it affected my 3DMark scores, but I think it did boost it a few hundred points at least.

Having said that, given how compressed everything is in a MBP, I wouldn't recommend overclocking. As it is, Apple still underclocks it a bit, and I think still for good reason. Even at stock speeds it can get quite hot after a gaming session, and I don't think it would be good for it to run at a serious overclock.

 

zadillo, I've believed that the MBP is underclocked also, but in light of this review http://www.barefeats.com/mbcd9.html
I'm beginning to understand it more as dynamic speed throttling (energy savings vs performance). I haven't seen a notebook spec yet that suggests stock speeds above 470/470. Barefeet shows the C2D 17" meeting this bench. Are we being to hard on the MBP C2D?? What do you think?

 

Well, yes, there's also dynamic speed throttling, but I just meant the actual clock speeds they are set at.

The original Core Duo MacBook Pros had dramatically underclocked X1600's (I think like 350/380 or something like that).

The C2D MBP is generally better though; usually about 418.50 core and 445.50 memory. I have heard of people who did use ATItool to bump those up to 470/470 without any problems, but I personally just wouldn't necessarily do it, since I figure these clock settings were derived for a good reason.

I believe the 17" MBP might not be underclocked (which would explain why it would be set to 470/470 by default), since the larger case probably makes it unnecessary.

 

I wonder if these extra 50Mhz actually make any difference in real gaming? I pity the time when the gaming world accepted 3D Mark as a standard and developed a "benchmark culture". Gaming is supposed to be fun, not about having a higher 3Dmark score than your neighbour - just like folding@home or seti@home has became for a lot of people, just a bunch of high scores, none of them actually care about what they are doing. I say if the MBP plays the games you need/wish acceptably - leave it as it is. If it doesn't, and overclocking gives you the extra performance you want - then do it but be aware of the risks. If you overclock and see no noticeable gain, reset to normal clock/mem speeds.
IMHO, of course.

 

That is only the 17" model. The CD 15" did not throttle, they ran at constant speeds. I don't know if the C2D 15" are a constant speed or not, but I can tell you in games the C2D 15" performs much better than the CD.