GMABooster boost’s your netbook’s integrated graphics
The vast majority of netbooks and lower end notebooks rely on integrated graphics from Intel, the chipsets used include GMA 954GM, GMA 900, GMA 950 and GSE940 among others. With these netbooks basic games are playable, but if you play a game that needs 3D acceleration, your going to realize your hardware needs help.
Today we are going to look at a free software application called GMABooster that promises to give more graphics power for your games. Is this a legit claim? Read on to find out.
GMABooster is a useful little tool that allows you to overclock those Intel’s GMA 900 and other graphics cores found in the majority of these netbooks. Basically GMABooster cranks-up the clock speed from 133MHz or 166MHz to a full hearty 400MHz, or the same as the non-low voltage chipset found on standard laptops.
The application did deliver on its promise. The performance gains were about a 25% increase in our GPU tests conducted here in Florida. You won’t be able to play Crysis on your netbook and the added performance gain is certainly not earth shattering, nonetheless it could make the difference between playing some better games or not playing them at all.
It’s really hard to complain about an application that is free and actually improves the 3DMark06 performance as it claims. When it comes to netbooks users, most will take any performance gains where you can get them.
The bottom line is GMABooster application is an easy tool to use, costs you nothing and it works. The biggest drawback to this application is you have to download a new version each week – your free copy expires each week unless you make a voluntary donation and in exchange receive a serial number to permanently disable the expiration date thing. The download process used for the downloads is a bit annoying with its wait period for free downloads, but it is free.
Requirements include having .NET Framework version 2.0 or higher installed and your system running the 32-bit version of Windows XP, Vista, or Windows 7.
Interested? You can download GMABooster here.
Mac OS X and Linux versions are also available here.
[Via TweakTown]
