We’ve been puzzling over the “High Definition Mode” in the Asus Eee PC Super Hybrid Engine software ever since a user uncovered an image for the mystery mode tucked away in the executable files. Now that the first netbook to actually make use of the new HD mode is available (in Italy, anyway), the folks at Notebook Italia were kind enough to figure out what the heck it does.
The answer’s not all that surprising. It overclocks the Intel Atom processor to give your system a slightly better chance of decoding HD movies with the aid of the Eee PC 1000HV’s included ATI Radeon GPU. So for those keeping score, here’s what happens when you use the Super Hybrid Engine in several different modes:
- Power Saving: 1.2GHz clock speed
- High Performance: 1.6GHz
- Super High Performance: 1.7GHz
- High Definition Mode: 1.8GHz
You’ll pay a price for switching on HD mode. The battery will run down a bit faster and your computer will run a bit warmer. But if you’re looking for a temporary performance boost, this is probably the safest way to get it… even though some hackers have managed to user other tools to overclock the Atom CPU to run at over 2GHz.
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