3
0
I just found out about GMABooster for OSX which supposedly boosts performance for the Intel GMA 950 in my mac mini.
As anyone used this? Is it spyware? The site seems real but at the same time seems a little bit untrustworthy.
bentford
Posted 2009-09-28T19:40:37.277
Reputation: 112
3
GMABooster is most likely just snake oil: it promises a lot but delivers very little. It won't have any real, tangible results. And this bit of information from the site seems rather weird:
The gift is, a given Number, once entered, permanently disables the expiration date check
It's free, I can use it how much I want but it expires? What gives?
alex
Posted 2009-09-28T19:40:37.277
Reputation: 16 172
2
GMA Booster wont uninstall from my computer as NIS2010 deams it to have suspicious activity.... Turned fire walls off and it wont unistall.
I noticed no benefit what so ever with this program. I'm using 1000he win 7 ultimate with 2gb memory and 4gb flash as readyboost. The gma booster (2.1 I think) was buggy and shot to pieces. The most dramatic thing it did was make a white block appear on my desktop. Strangely no diagnostic program detected any change in memory clock and it is argued on the gma booster website that this is normal as the clock speeds test is innacurate.
Sounds like one big joke and yes snake oil. I need to clean my system of this crud now.
2
I've tried it, and could get no change in benchmarking using either OpenGL Viewer or XBench (though I don't really trust XBench much for its graphics tests). I have no idea why changing the frequency has absolutely no effect on the OpenGL performance, but that was my conclusion on a Macbook...
The Tentacle
Posted 2009-09-28T19:40:37.277
Reputation: 4 621
0
It works, just not as much as many would hope:
As you can see, the GMABooster application did actually work. It simply overclocked the GPU from its default 166MHz to 400MHz. At 400MHz, the performance of the GPU on 3DMark06 was about 86% higher than before we ran the application. The performance gains are certainly not earth shattering, but they are gains nonetheless and could make the difference between playing some games and not playing them. -TweakTown
The bottom line is that many are ricing their underpowered system, hence the reports of it not doing anything. It does quite a bit, but it won't magically support things like H.264 decoding, geometry processing, transform, lighting, nor advanced vertex shaders (I jacked some of that from the Wikipedia entry for the GMA 950).
Indolering
Posted 2009-09-28T19:40:37.277
Reputation: 101
0
didn't know it is available for OS X. does Apple build computers with Intel's integrated graphics???
anyway, it is not spyware, but the results are rather questionable and improvements are limited to very few programs/games.
over at eeeuser.com, there are a couple of threads where GMABoster is discussed (incl. benchmark results), e.g. here
Well, yes, they do use Intel integrated graphics. Macbooks, for instance, have an Intel X3100 graphics processor (which is actually a GMA 945). – alex – 2009-09-28T19:47:26.343
i remember when it first was released, it generated quite some hype in the netbook scene (the kids were dreaming of Crysis on their netbooks :) but it never delivered. the developer, a Russian, wanted to charge $$ at first but later i became freeware (well, that was the last i heard). – None – 2009-09-28T19:58:53.717
My 2007 mac mini has Intel GMA 950, which is why I asked. – bentford – 2009-09-28T20:48:42.803
alex-X3100 is not GMA945. It was a moderate upgrade to GMA 950 – MDMarra – 2009-09-28T22:19:52.697
it isn't exactly snake oil ... but nothing to write about either. – None – 2009-09-28T19:55:50.617
1I've yet to see software like this really improve performance noticeably. Maybe it's just me, but I don't really buy into this :) – alex – 2009-09-28T20:03:26.047
as i said, it does improve the performance in certain scenarios, but i wouldn't bother with it. – None – 2009-09-28T20:14:31.297