While Asus advertises the current generation Eee PC as having either a 900MHz or 800MHz Celeron processor, depending on which model you buy, the truth is Asus underclocks these chips to run at 630MHz and 570 MHz respectively. This makes sense given the Eee PC’s mediocre battery life. The faster the processor is running, the more electricity it uses and the sooner you run out of juice. But if you want a bit more oomph you might want to look into overclocking or right-clocking your device.
While there’s at least one unofficial BIOS floating around that lets you adjust your clock speed regardless of the operating system you’re using, you have a lot more control over your overclocking if you use a Windows or Linux application. If you’re running Xandros, you can check out EeeControl. The latest version of the Ubuntu Script Pack should have you covered if you’ve installed Ubuntu. And for Windows users, there’s Eeectl.
I’ve been using a Windows utility called Eeectl for a few months now to “overclock” my Eee PC so that it runs at 900MHz. But it’s also possible to tweak Eeectl’s .ini file to seriously overclock your Eee PC so that it runs at 1GHz or higher. Vito Cassisi has written an awesome tutorial explaining exactly how to obtain the best results. He also offers suggestions for adjusting the clock speed using SetFSB or using the BIOS method.
In a nutshell, what you have to do is adjust the front side bus speed and the voltage for your CPU in order to increase its overall clock speed. You can do this manually, or if you’re the trusting sort, you can download a custom .ini file Cassisi put together with several advanced clock speeds included. Using Cassisi’s file I was able to get my Eee PC up to 1.06GHz.
Of course, your battery life will suffer if you run at these higher speeds. And you run the risk of overheating your system. Fortunately Eeectl includes a built in temperature meter so you can keep track of just how hot your system is getting. If you start to approach 65C, it might be time to ramp down your clock speed a bit.
[via Asus Eee Hacks]
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3 Comments on "Guide to overclocking an Eee PC, or how to shorten your battery life"
ASUS now supplies a BIOS update which allows the processor to run at the full [897 Mhz]. Also, ASUS even has available for download the Super Hybrid Engine Utility which allows on the fly CPU adjustments…the original “underclocked” [Power Saving Mode] ~6xx Mhz, the Celeron M’s rated clock speed [High Peformance Mode] ~897 Mhz, [Super Performance Mode] aka ASUS officially overclocked ~960 Mhz, or Auto Mode. The program is easy to install and download from ASUS Support, uses very little storage space, and I verified the clock speeds using CPUID CPU-Z becuase ASUS doesn’t do such a great job of stating what this utility actually does!
Oh, and I didn’t make this clear but it simply sits in the tray ready to adjust your CPU clock speed on the fly!
Haha, my friend got one of these from his parent’s old garage. I will point him in the direction of this 🙂