Asus’ Super Hybrid Engine new High Definition mode explained

Asus quietly launched the new Eee PC 1000HV netbook in Italy recently. This was the first Eee PC to sport discrete graphics in the form of ATI Radeon HD 3450 graphics with 256MB of dedicated memory. Whilst the benchmarks were expectedly better than most other 10-inch netbooks, another point that caught the eye was a mystery ‘High Definition’ mode in Asus’ Super Hybrid Engine utility.

This utility allows you to overclock (or underclock) the Atom CPU depending on your usage. As things stand (version 5), the Super Hybrid Engine has three different modes. The Power Saving mode underclocks the CPU to a minimum 750MHz on the N280 Atom CPU. The High Performance mode is the standard speed of the chip (1.66GHz for the N280) whilst the Super High Performance mode overclocks this to 1.75GHz.

Notebook Italia analysed version 6 of the Super Hybrid Engine which adds the fourth clocking mode called the ‘High Definition’ mode. They found that Asus has reduced the overclock in the Super High Performance mode from 1.75GHz to 1.70GHz and created the new High Definition mode which has a 1.80GHz overclock.

This overclock comes at the expense of heat and battery life though. Measurements conducted saw heat creep up to 75 degrees in High Definition mode. Whilst it’s probably not recommended to always run a netbook at this speed setting, it provides a welcome 8 percent boost if needed.

Thanks Marco!