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Asus EEE PC running on Windows XP |
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Written by Dusan Srbljak
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Friday, 02 May 2008 |
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Page 1 of 2  Asus made an effort and delivered very good and useful manual with EEE PC. In manual you can find detail description of how to install XP and how to customize it for best performance. By customizing we mean how to turn off all those unnecessary, by our opinion, Windows services which take up 4 GB on SSD (for example “System Restore” service). Average installation of WinXP Pro SP2 should occupy around 1.5 GB, exact same amount like our installed OS takes. To be honest, this could be reduced if you use nLite program.
For XP installation you need to have extern CD/DVD device, which is plugged in EEE PC using USB interface. First thing you’ll spot, after drivers installation (drivers from package are installed with “OneClick” routine, which is praiseworthy) is time needed for OS to boot up. Everything is working very fast. Users familiar with optimization of XP should accomplish even better results in this segment. We have installed Office 2003 with expectations for EEE PC to work smoothly in Excel, Word, Power Point and similar. The biggest problem of Asus Eee PC, besides little hard disc (which can be expanded thanks to price and capabilities of SD cards) is display resolution. 800x400 pixels is more than enough for “help out” but not for normal and easygoing work. EEE has D-Sub connector and in indoor environment you can connect additional monitor, but that won’t help you if you find yourself in the outdoors. But there is solution. You need to set graphics drivers to display larger resolution than EEE’s graphics chip offers you as default. We have been set virtual resolution until 1024x768 pixels. Here is how it looks in practice. It can be seen only small piece of desktop with chosen resolution. When you come to the edge of monitor with your mouse pointer, it starts to scroll horizontally or vertically and it moves to selected part of virtual display. That actually means that you will have much larger desktop size. The greatest benefit of all has Photoshop with all of its tool pallets. After installing video codec we even played a couple of DivX and DVD titles and everything was working quite perfect.
New dimension
| Clock Generator |
| Every motherboard has its one clock generator chip and that is applicable on MB built in EEE PC. Clock generator is a chip on motherboard which can “communicate” with BIOS if you want to overclock or underclock your components, like CPU and RAM. Programs like “Clockgen” and “SetFSB” can choose right clock generator and enable OC from operating system, which is very useful. Generally speaking, there is no much sense to overclock laptop, but for EEE PC is completely different case and everything works so simple. Every clock generator has its mark and for EEE is: ICS9LPRS906CGLF. You just have to set this mark from SetFSB or ClockGen. You will get slider for setting wanted FSB. These programs you can easily find on Google. You can monitor clock change on CPU-Z program. You also need to check if the CPU is stabile with these settings. You should use Prime95 and its subversions. The good thing is that you don’t have to “play” with voltages because when you set voltage for the first time it will stay set at nominal value and there is no fear of preheating CPU. It’s up to you to check to what point is possible to overclock CPU and achieve stable operational conditions. Also it is possible to underclock CPU if you need to prolonger battery autonomy. This can be very useful for all users who travel a lot, and have needs for better battery capacity. For example, Word will be operative even at 200 MHz resulting in increased battery autonomy.If it’s by any chance using SetFSB or ClockGen sounds complicated to you, can try with specialized software for EEE PC and which does similar thing as other two. That program is “eeeclock”. After starting it up “eeeclock” will be in system tray and it’s possible to set three overclock profiles: 70 MHz as Stock, 85 MHz as Medium or 100MHz as Full work regime FSB for CPU. You can bet that it’s very simple and effective. |
When we plugged in our 37” test LCD TV 1366x768p we got a functional machine for surfing, listening music, watching movies … EEE PC become our home multimedia center. But for complete pleasure we should watch some HD film, to completely make use of our large external display. We tried with 720P video material (we knew that a 1080P film won’t do properly, because of weak CPU). The whole time we had chops and we just couldn’t enjoy the movie… But suddenly we’ve realized that our EEE PC was working at 630 MHz but not at default 900MHz (for Intel Celeron M353 CPU). So it seems that Asus has been underclocked this CPU (reverse from overclock) to reduce power consumption, bigger battery autonomy and lower heat dissipation. That actually makes sense if the laptop is in move, but if it is connected on electrical power grid than the clock should be set at 900MHz. Soon we come to conclusion that in BIOS doesn’t exist option for returning to standard CPU clock. So we resort to trick called “clock generator” for motherboard. We had successfully overclocked CPU at stabile 950MHz and 720P video material just “took off”. We got “ultra-portable” multimedia player and Asus EEE usability got complete new use dimension. It is interesting that overclocked Eee in full load mode was warming for only 3°C (5.4°F) more than it was at 630 MHz with FSB at 70MHz.
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