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The Intel Atom N270 processor is designed to run at a handful of clock speeds. But it generally tops out at somewhere around 1.6GHz or 1.7GHz. And you need to have the proper hardware and software in place to overclock it. Unfortunately, HP has discouraged users from overclocking the HP Mini 2140 by locking the hardware to prevent overclocking software from working properly. But where there’s a will there’s a way, and HP Mini Guide forum member Twain apparently had plenty of will.

The details are a bit complicated, but basically he found the hardware pin that was locking the clock speed and physically moved it. Once he was done, he was able to use SetFSB to adjust the clock speed from within Windows. The end result is an HP Mini 2140 that can run at up to 1.9GHz.

Twain’s particular model also happens to have a 720p display capable of displaying 1366 x 768 pixels. I’ve found that Intel Atom powered netbooks generally don’t have enough oomph to pump out HD video on these higher resolution screens, but Twain reports that when running at 1.9GHz the netbook was able to handle 1080p video without any stuttering.