If you're on Windows Vista (euuugh) or 7 (yay!) you can turn off Aero.
I've found that some games go faster on 7... probably because of DirectX 11.

I downloaded GMABooster and it seems to be working a bit better than I expected it to. However, I've realized something. People claim it's safe because it doesn't overclock the card, it rather puts it back to the clock speed it's meant to be at. Well, Asus doesn't expect people to be doing this, so don't you think they build their laptops with this in mind? Parts are close together, fans only go so fast, other ventilation, etc. They probably don't anticipate people running it at 400MHz. So while we technically aren't overclocking, we're still going over what the manufacturer designed it for. Might I run into any physical problems on my 1005HA?

good point!
Granted, I haven't noticed any extra heat from my 100HA, but then again, I haven't run it past 5.5 hours either (about an hour less then I get with the booster according to the meter), still, you can't always tell what the temp is going on *inside* the machine...
On the other hand, I kind've bought the thing to be a bit of a junker that I had less issue actually *using* (which always equates to my mind as running into the ground) because it costs about the same as my hubbie's consoles these days- so, as long as it doesn't catch fire or totally burn out in less then a year- I figure I got my $300 out of it. I mean- even if it lasted only 12 months- that comes down to about $25 a month to be able to compute what I want- when I want-where I want without having to sweat battery-life, the endless battle for plugs- nor destroy my back just because I wanted to do some email or play a game or two on the road....not bad all told to be honest.....

I have GMA Booster automatically set to 400MHz on Windows Startup, never had a problem even after hours of use.

Btw, all three primary chips are passively cooled by the aluminum heat sink beneath the keyboard.  If it ever got too hot you'll feel it.  Besides the chips will shut down if they get too hot.  So perfectly safe, you'll need to flash fry them to get past the heat sensors and the GMA950 isn't powerful enough to really generate much heat.

It does get a little warm when watching movies constantly but normal use doesn't stress it that much and it'll otherwise stay cool.  So unless your fan was constantly on to begin with, it does depend on your ambient temperatures, then you should have plenty of leeway to add a little more heat to the system.

Ummm well if you do a search on the forums you can find that answer, but generally speaking 1080p movies tend to not be movies and just slideshows with sound. But 720p movies are indeed playable, but if they are in MKV format your going to have to demux/convert it into something else like a mp4 or avi file, which doesnt take any longer than 10 minutes to do if you do it right. The only codecs i have installed is FFDSHOW and i use various players because not any one player ever seems to work for everything it seems. Ive had alot of luck with WMP and VLC tho

actually if you have Windows 7 installed, 720p and 1080p are both playable,
720p > perfect
1080p > requires you to have it full screen in order to play it smoothly.
*if you have the right settings, doesn't matter what the container is... .mkv, .avi, .divx, .ts
as long as it was encoded using H264... they all works.

reason: win7 support atom processor H.264 hardware processing.
windows xp and vista don't, and will not(according to microsoft).
third party support like cyberlink do not make use of atom built-in H264 decoding.

* you still need to have the right player of coz, i prefer using PureCodec Player which lets you change video(codec) settings according to your computer hardware spec.

Last edited by comscier (2009-11-20 10:15:50 pm)

I'm not aware of any netbooks that have a video processor that can accelerate any part of H.264 or VC1. Lots of notebook chipsets made in the past 2 years can do it, but netbooks use cheaper older stuff. GMA 9x0 can not do anything more than DVD/MPEG2.

Also, I've found that Media Player Classic Homecinema's built in FFMPEG decoders are quite fast. Using the internal codecs is faster than ffdshow and perhaps even DiVX's free H.264 decoder. I've been playing around with H.264 decoding on old P4s and P3s and this is what I've found. I have not purchased CoreAVC so can't speak for it in comparison.

Last edited by swaaye (2009-12-07 8:24:27 pm)

CurlyCarlos wrote:

At native res, GMABooster produced ever so slightly better numbers. At 640 x 480, the stock speed won. Even then, these numbers are too close to really say there's any true difference.

Really shows how much the Atom is bottlenecking the GMA950. I can't wait for the Via Nano + ION chipsets - they'll be such an improvement over the one's bundled with an atom.

Try to have GMA Booster automatically set to 400MHz on Windows Startup.