I've been noticing that while BiaB runs pretty well on my Acer Aspire One netbook, every once in a while, I'll hear an audio crackle, or on very rare occasions, BiaB will slowly start to choke as the audio sampling starts to stutter and skip, worse and worse, until the app is just hung. Also, I noticed that sometimes the audio from the first drum side-stick in the intro count would sound a little odd or be missing entirely, then the rest would sound okay.

Yeah, I know, I should use it on a REAL computer, but this little netbook is just so darned ideal for mobile songwriting.

Anyway, certain netbooks, including my Acer, use the Intel GMA chipset for graphics, but they are often set to run at slower speeds (133 or 166 MHz) than they are rated to run (400+ MHz).

Enter a little donation-ware utility called GMABooster

http://www.gmabooster.com/home.htm

I gave this a try, setting my GMA chipset to run at 400 MHz, and suddenly my little Acer was just a little bit more snappy. But more importantly, those annoying snaps and crackles in the audio output completely disappeared, AND I haven't had a crash since.

Oh, and the audio comes in properly right from the beginning, so no missing "1" count on the intro click.


Anyway, so far so good. The talk seems to be mostly about improved 3D performance, but the improved responsiveness of the 2D seems to be improving application performance in general. My guess is that at the higher clock speed, the main processes are spending less time in a wait-state, for the graphics engine to return from it's operation.

As with any "unofficial" software, or anything that smacks of overclocking, be careful. The maker of this software claims that this isn't really "overclocking", just telling the hardware to run the way it's SUPPOSED to run. But anytime you increase clock speed of a component, I think you run some risk, no matter how small.

So while my experience has been good, and I haven't heard of anyone having problems with this utility, proceed with caution.

Last edited by EightString; 01/28/10 11:12 AM.