Zdnet Clock Tool For Mac Pro
Icaro Aveiga
ZDNet Clock ist ein Overclocking-Tool für Macintosh Computer. Die Version 1.0 unterstützt die Modelle Mac Pro und Xserve. Typische Geschwindigkeitssteigerungen liegen bei 15 bis 20 Prozent. Mittels eines Schiebereglers lässt sich die gewünschte CPU-Frequenz auswählen. Rechner mit einer 2,8-GHz-CPU können meist bis weit über 3,2 GHz getaktet werden.
Description:
ZDNet Clock is an overclocking utility for Macintosh computers. Version 1.0 supports Mac Pro and Xserve computers. Typical increase of speed ranges from 15 to 20 percent. Simply select the desired CPU frequency. Most computers with a 2.8 GHz CPU can be overclocked to 3.2 GHz and up.
Summary:
ZDNet Clock is the first overclocking utility available for Mac Pro and Xserve computers. Overclocking no longer is a Windows-Only domain. Unlike most overclocking tools for Windows ZDNet clock can be used without any hardcore knowledge. ZDNet.de features detailed coverage of ZDNet clock in English and German.
ZDNet Clock is developed by de.zdnet and is used by 7 users of Mac Informer. The most popular version of this product among our users is 1.0. The product will soon be reviewed by our informers.
Mac OS X only: Freeware application ZDNet Clock overclocks your Mac Pro's processor for faster performance. As the name suggests, the application is made by the German branch of tech web site ZDNet, and according to the download page the latest generation Mac Pro (3.1) with a 2.8GHz processor can be overclocked to 3.24GHz without increasing voltage to the CPU and without losing stability (translation: faster computer, no major risk). Overclocking has never been as easy on Macs as PCs, but the ZDNet Clock tool aims to make it just that. ZDNet Clock only works on Intel Mac Pros and the Apple server Xserve, requires OS X 10.5. We don't have a Mac Pro at Lifehacker HQ to test it on, so if you feel like being our canary in the coalmine, let's hear how it worked for you in the comments.
Researchers from Facebook's engineering team have just released a public time-keeping service dubbed time.facebook.com, a twist on similar tools already made available by competitors such as time.google.com and time.apple.com. All three services exist to answer the same question: what time is it now? And Facebook has reason to believe that its brand-new service is the most precise of them all.
In reality, most of our clocks synchronize to UTC over a protocol called the Network Time Protocol (NTP), which typically only lags a few milliseconds behind. Except milliseconds add up, and after a month you end up with a microwave that's an hour behind, Oleg Obleukhov, production engineer at Facebook, and who developed the new time-keeping tool, told ZDNet.
And so, unsatisfied with the services already available, Facebook went out and "fixed time" on its own. The new tool uses a different technology to improve precision in time-keeping, according to the company, from tens of milliseconds to hundreds of microseconds.
Facebook's team kicked off the project by trying to assess exactly how precise existing time-keeping technologies are. The precision clocks that satellites have on board, and which essentially define what a second is, are currently relayed by NTP devices that receive the signal and keep satellite time at their own level via ultra-precise atomic clocks. These atomic clocks then deliver time to servers and devices, typically through a computer program called ntpd.
Ntpd's role consists of synchronizing our clocks to UTC by compensating for the inevitable latencies in the process, based on mathematical formulas that account for things like congestion. "If you say: 'give me the time now', you will always get time that is outdated, even in its lowest latency," explained Obleukhov. "Ntpd fixes the inaccuracies in the network."
At first glance, the interest of having a clock that is more precise by microseconds rather than milliseconds might not come across as obvious. Fairly so: Obleukhov himself acknowledged that the immediate effect for consumers "won't be life-changing". Rather, the bulk of the perks will be felt in specialized environments, like databases, where transactions are time-stamped and mix-ups can be hard to avoid if time isn't kept as precisely as it can be.
This site has a lot of great tools for doing time zone calculations, but the one that saved us this week was their meeting planner. The way it works is that you pick the date for your meeting and a set of cities, like, for example Brisbane (in Australia), Portland (here on America's west coast), and London (in the UK). You can pick more than three, but I'm using three because it fits on the screenshot.
It's free and it's easy to use. It incorporates daylight saving time (DST), which we rediscovered this weekend. I'll be clocking into this site more over the coming weeks for the rest of my meetings.
This alarm clock lets you choose nightly or morning routines, complete with soothing soundscapes and customizable lights. While it's normally $200, you can get it for $170 on Amazon (just don't forget to apply the $30 coupon before adding it to your cart).
While costly, I'd argue that this alarm clock is worth it if you're serious about changing your sleep schedule for the better in 2024, and it's absolutely a superior option to the standard alarm clock or your smartphone's alarm.
Proven to work by those in the Mac community, the approach also increases the speed of the system bus and the memory as a result, though Apple's choice of hardware ironically suits it better to the process than many gaming-oriented parts for Windows computers: as the Mac Pro must use RAM with error correction, it prevents an excessive overclock from ruining data on the hard drive by making sure that only valid data leaves system memory.
The clock difference is enough to provide a tangible "free" upgrade in performance to the systems, though this isn't always measurable. In synthetic tests such as Geekbench, the software can incorrectly report similar performance even though timing the results proves that they're above what would happen at Apple's officially rated clock speeds.
However, unlike most overclocks, the technique requires a certain degree of trickery and carries an extra amount of risk. The current version of the tool works by loading a kernel extension into Mac OS X on boot that forces the clock speeds upwards immediately after the system starts. Without it, the Mac Pro would immediately revert back to its stock speeds the moment the system is rebooted, according to ZDNet. The initial beta app can also sometimes be overridden when the Mac comes out of sleep mode.
Like most overclocking, the technique is also limited by the nature of the hardware. At present, the German experimenters are unable to push past the 3.24GHz barrier without an inherently unreliable system. The faster processor speeds eventually overwhelm the memory and prevent it from correcting every error, triggering a kernel panic in Mac OS X that forces a reboot. High-performance third-party memory that operates above spec is described as the only real solution to this problem.
System time also falls out of sync without the expected clock rates and can't be corrected even by calibrating the computer online, the testers say. Instead, a reboot is necessary to at least temporarily provide accurate timekeeping.
Quote:Originally Posted by AppleInsider
Apple's choice of hardware ironically suits it better to the process than many gaming-oriented parts for Windows computers: as the Mac Pro must use RAM with error correction, it prevents an excessive overclock from ruining data on the hard drive by making sure that only valid data leaves system memory.
Okay, seriously, I stopped reading right there.
Quote:Originally Posted by AppleInsider
The current version of the tool works by loading a kernel extension into Mac OS X on boot that forces the clock speeds upwards immediately after the system starts.
Let me just add some comments:
ZDNet Clock doesn't load a kext at boot time. It is dynamically loaded, when you start ZDNet Clock. After a reboot the kext will never be loaded, until you run ZDNet Clock again. This keeps things safe.
If you reboot without turning the system off (shutdown), the Mac Pro keeps the speed you set with ZDNet Clock. In this case the system time runs at the correct speed and benchmarks report better results, because Mac OS adjusts the system time speed at boot time, but at no time afterwards. Also, the kext is not loaded, because it is needed only to change the bus clock. Once changed the kext can be unloaded.
If you shutdown your computer and turn it on again later it will always run at stock speed. You need to run ZDNet Clock again.
With pre-installed Apple RAM we were able to run a 2,8 GHz Mac Pro at 3,17 GHz 24 hours under full CPU and memory load without a single parity error, that had to be corrected.
Using Kingston or Transcend RAM the same results could be achived at 3,24 GHz. Same specs as Apple RAM.
Some noname RAM showed up errors at 2,83 GHz. A user reported RAM errors at 2,86 GHz using noname modules. One should probably check for parity errors in the system log when using noname RAM, even if the system runs at stock speed.
-Christoph (Author of ZDNet Clock)
ZDNet.de has posted a new tool called ZDNet Clock Tool 1.0 for Mac Pro which allows you to overclock your Mac Pro. The process of overclocking uses software to increase your computer's processor speed and bus speed, potentially leading to higher performance. Boost the speed too high, however, and the computer may crash as either the processor or some of their components are unable to keep up. Still, ZDNet.de claims to have achieved some impressive results:
Rebooting (but not shutting down) reportedly corrects this timing issue on all but the 1st generation Mac Pros. More details are available in the article. The application is available for free download from ZDNet.de (click on "Jetzt herunterlade" to download). Some MacRumors readers have already had some experience with this tool, but readers should proceed with caution (see potential disadvantages in overclocking, in general).
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