THERE IS NO SUCH THING as 'getting more value' out of a fruit-flavoured computer. It’s a fact. We wrote about this Monday when some CNET hacks came to the conclusion that an Apple upgrade cost up to three times more than a Dell upgrade. Same component, thrice the price. 'Pay up or shut up' is the standard policy, it seems.

During this weekend, however, some cunning runts at Germany's ZD Net have come up with a way to ruin the party for Apfel Komputer: they’ve written their own Mac Pro overclocking tool and made it available to all who wish to fool around with their Apple toys. The Mac's lack of BIOS had made this an impossible task... until now.

The overclocking tool – ZD Net Clock - will allow you to take control over the Mac Pro's Intel-based chipsettery and up the FSB. The tool is pretty basic – as you can’t dissociate the CPU overclock from the RAM speed, or control voltages for that matter - but it works fine.

Since the processors used in the 3rd generation Mac Pro range have fairly close clocks (2.8, 3.0 and 3.2GHz), a small overclock to the FSB results in sizable performance gains. Using their own example, take a 2.8GHz Mac Pro – the cheapest in the bunch – overclock it, and you get a system that outperforms the higher-end 3.2GHz model… that is, by the way, €1430 pricier.

In all fairness, it’s the migrant PC crowd that will look at this with some sense of accomplishment, as Apple's followers usually ignore the possibilities of the Apple-turned-PC hardware. Imagine the hardcore enthusiast/sysadmin pounding on his chest and gloating he’s got his FSB up from 400 to 463MHz, while the turtleneck cappuccino-sipping user-base look at him sideways with an air of distaste, firmly cupping their mighty mice.

We have no idea whether the tool will run on all x86-based machines, but if it doesn’t already, it shouldn’t be too hard to get it up and running.

You have to hand it to the Herren at ZD Net, tho’, they even have a sense of humour – the tool doesn’t call it “Front Side Bus”, they call it “Marketing Bus Clock”.

Apfel Inc, however, might be less than amused with this show of software prowess. We wouldn’t be surprised if it unleashed its legal beagles on the matter pronto.

L’Inq
ZD Net Deutschland