Yes, it’s been done.
This guy took his 1.25GHz mini and overclocked it to 1.42GHz. Via four jumpers, the G4′s speed can be selected between four settings: 1.25, 1.42, 1.50 and 1.58GHz. He tried 1.5GHz, but had stability issues.
I probably won’t be this bold, as the jumpers are really, really tiny and I wonder if I could even get 1.58GHz out of my faster G4 (it wouldn’t be worth it for just 1.5GHz). Maybe when the warranty runs out and I dramatically improve my SMT soldering skills…
Seems like a lot of trouble just to squeeze out an extra .17 ghz.
Does that really make a difference in performance?
Some people would consider 14% a lot of improvement and could show more-than-marginal increases in some Xbench scores.
Going from 1.42 to 1.58 would be on the lower end of 11%, which might yield some improvement as well, but when it comes right down to it, it is probably less than noticeable.
I think this is more for the cool factor and the rep of only having paid for the lesser mini, but now he essentially has the speed of the bigger brother.
I still think increasing the RAM to 512mb or even 1GB is the real difference, one that would be noticeable across the board.
just gotta wonder how much extra heat we’re dealing with here. it’s not like we can put a huge heat sink like we can in an overclocked pc.