ATI Radeon X1600 overclock?

Do you seriously want to overclock a GPU which causes the machine to be hotter than touch can handle for some people's machines? You are playing with fire if you do.

My Personal opinion... I never overclock my notebook video cards. Its just not worth the heat risk. My PC is overclocked but I seriously would stray away from OCing your Video Card in your MBP.

Also... the performance gain you get in over clocking is typically negligible. It's one thing to overclock a desktop system... you can put in better heat sinks and a multitude of other cooling options... but overclocking a notebook GPU doesn't offer any real advantages in terms of performance. You also risk stability issues and can potentially cause the hardware to fail. You run the same risks on a desktop system... but the components are easier to replace and tend to be much less expensive to do so.

Technically, it is not underclocked... it is clocked at the speed Apple has chosen to be optimal. Because the GPU may be specked higher, that does not mean that manufacturers have to max out the performance. As the MacBook Pro is Apple flagship notebook, they would likely have had a very good reason for setting the speed as they did. Likewise... most processors are capable of running at faster speeds as well... but are set to the speeds they are to manage heat and performance. Notebook processors are very often capable of being over clocked more than desktop processors as they tend to be manufactured to higher tolerances.

I guess the big question would be... Do you feel your graphics processor is not performing well for you as it is? How much of a performance boost are you looking to get by over clocking it? Do you think that performance boost will be worth the extra power consumption that the GPU will use... along with the increased use of the fan for additional cooling?

See my FAQ* on optimizing Mac OS X speed:

http://www.macmaps.com/Macosxspeed.html

If the operating system isn't running at an optimal speed for whatever reason, that can feedback its way to specific applications.

* Links to my pages may give me compensation.

Read that page. It says Intel Macs aren't supported yet.