Overclocking w/ Linux

[Loser777]

I'm planning on getting a netbook, and I'm trying to decide between Linux (Ubuntu/Xubuntu) or XP... as Linux uses less Memory...
However, I don't know of any Set FSB-esque programs that can change FSB... and I would really like to be running my EEE at 900+MHz instead of the anemic 571 that it ships with...
Are there any programs that do this or should I just use XP?

[Lvcoyote]

For sure there are available utilities for XP, Personally I dont know of any desktop overclocking utilities for Linux, I remember looking for one also a year or so ago and didnt have much luck then.

[Loser777]

I guess I'll end up dual-booting, if that's possible on an EEE haha...
What's the install space required for EEEUbuntu/Xubuntu and XP (nlited)?

EDIT: Woah, looks like I found something... http://wiki.eeeuser.com/howto:overclockfsb
Anyone else heard of something like this?

[Speederlander]

Just clock everything up with XP, stress test with XP, clock it down, install linux, clock back up. Done.

[Loser777]

That's not what I meant... there is no SOFTWARE for linux to clock it up in the first place... I can't clock things up in the BIOS... I know there's a P95 equivalent for Linux.

[pwolfe]

Might want to ask around the phoronix community for this type of thing. I personally know of none; a 20 minute google session found nothing either. I can tell you that bios overclocking works just as you would expect in windows, and there is a lot of benchmarking software out there.

[Loser777]

I just don't think it's likely that the EEE would have BIOS overclocking XD.

[rcofell]

I've been wondering about this as well(for any system in general), but the best I've been able to come up with so far is the potential to modify the clockgen manually via the SMBUS, which the lm_sensors package includes a utility to access. Though I haven't been able to test if the utility is able to access/modify the clockgen successfully as well, since I only have one machine setup at the moment to check things out, and it happens that the board(Abit IP35-Pro) has a clockgen that I can't find the datasheet for(never got an email back from my inquiry to IDT...).

Anyways, that link you found might lead to some useful information on a functioning method to modify the clockgen, as at first glance it looks like it's using the I2C/SMBUS to control it.

[p2501]

I guess I'll end up dual-booting, if that's possible on an EEE haha...
What's the install space required for EEEUbuntu/Xubuntu and XP (nlited)?

EDIT: Woah, looks like I found something... http://wiki.eeeuser.com/howto:overclockfsb
Anyone else heard of something like this?

Looks to me you found something solid, even for EE-PCs. :shrug:

Not that I've tried it, but maybe this works too (I know it's old, but maybe it works): http://sourceforge.net/projects/lfsb/

If this is a Speedstepping CPU, maybe you could try via the governour (I know for sure that you can set voltages here at least) or cpufreqd. :shrug:

[rcofell]

Not that I've tried it, but maybe this works too (I know it's old, but maybe it works): http://sourceforge.net/projects/lfsb/
Aha, that's the exact sort of utility I've been looking for, thanks for the link!
While it hasn't been updated for 2 years, the code doesn't look too hard to pick up on, and it directly uses the I2C bus(well, through the i2c-dev kernel module) without having to hack together a solution using something like lm_sensor's i2c command line utilities :)

[Loser777]

It looks like the 4G model that I'm planning to get also has a special BIOS that enables "High Performance Mode", which if selected causes the Laptop to run at the full 900MHz. I was hoping for a mod that could let you go past 900MHz though... it's definitely possible with SetFSB.

[ExodusC]

I'm sure it's possible to software overclock on Linux with a program like lfsb. It's probably much more stable than software overclocking as well.

You're probably better off asking on a Linux based forum somewhere, though.

[uOpt]

There's some stuff in the icspll project on sourceforge.