MSI Wind U100 Netbook Overclocking Guide

Sandra 2009, Geekbench & Final Thoughts

Sandra 2009 Memory Bandwidth

The Sisoft Sandra 2009 benchmark utility just came out recently and we have started to include it in our benchmarking. With Sandra 2009 you can now easily compare the performance of the tested device with its speed and its (published) power (TDP)! Sandra XII SP2 also has SSE4 (Intel) and SSE4A (AMD) benchmark code-paths, which is great for those of you testing next-generation AMD & Intel chips.

The memory bandwidth scores with the MSI Wind U100 overclocked to 619MHz and the memory proved to be significantly faster than the stock scores at 533MHz.

Geekbench

Geekbench 2 is designed as a powerful program which can allow you to measure the performance of your computers processor and memory. In addition, Geekbench also offers the Geekbench Result Browser which lets you compare your Geekbench scores with other Geekbench users.

Geekbench showed a performance increase of just over 15% and the overall Geekbench score was able to break the 1,000 mark for the very first time. You can see that overclocking the processor greatly helps the integer and floating point performance of the CPU as well as the memory performance. It is obvious after running all these benchmarks that overclocking the Intel Atom N270 even by just 15% will greatly improve your user experience and give you a performance boost when needed.

Final Thoughts & Conclusions

Turbo mode is certainly a key feature that sets the Wind apart from other netbooks. Nearly every entry-level netbook out there is equipped with the same Intel N270 Atom processor, so the performance is nearly identical. This overclocking feature gives the MSI Wind the performance it needs to stand out from the crowd, which is very important. At just $299.95 shipped the MSI Wind U100 netbook might be pushing a year old, but is affordable and can be overclocked quickly and easily. When overclocked the MSI Wind U100 was able to perform better than the ASUS Eee PC 1000HE, which retails for $369.99 shipped.

There are a couple of downsides to overclocking, though, that should be pointed out. For starters you must be plugged into an AC power outlet for Turbo mode to be activated. Once you unplug the system the overclock will be removed and the system will actually enter a power saving state. You also get a slightly louder fan since more cooling is needed. Battery life is a huge deal to netbook users and luckily it is not impacted by overclocking, as you can’t enable turbo mode while on just the battery pack.

Legit Bottom Line: A quick update of the BIOS and enabling an overclocking BIOS feature is all that stands between the MSI Wind U100 and blasting past competing netbooks with ease!