Air conditioning and turbo boost?

[Panini]

From Turbo Boost's description, it seems the clock speed is adjusted according to temperature so that the computer doesn't overheat. Does this mean that by using the computer in an air conditioned room will allow better/longer/higher turbo boosting since the air entering the fan will be colder? What about cooling the base of the laptop?

Another question about turbo boost: Undoubtedly, while turbo boosting, the computer will get hotter, and at a certain temperature it will begin to throttle down. Suppose a program requires 2.5Ghz to run smoothly. Does this mean that I can only run the program for a certain amount of time before it becomes "choppy?"

i.e Does this mean performance will get worse and worse the longer you use a program? This doesn't seem like that big of a problem with macbook pros which have a base clock of 2.6ghz since turbo boost only increases clock speed by ~40%. In the case of the air, turbo boost almost doubles the clock speed! Can anybody say from personal experience whether or not the throttling has a big impact on apps that require consistent performance such as games (since the iGPU also depends on the cpu clock speed)?

 

[plucky duck]

I brought with me my MBA on a road trip, the MBA was on my lap in direct sunlight and I noticed my game (NFS:HP) started out fine, then within 10-15 minutes it became quite choppy. Looked at Intel Turbo Boost monitor and noticed it was throttling down. Same as when I was gaming in bed where the MBA was laying on the bed, very poor air circulation and the bed acting as an insulator lead to throttling as well.

If you leave it on a desk and allow proper air circulation then it should be fine. I have it in a Sena folio case and expect even poorer air circulation and thus don't game when it's in the case.

 

[aleni]

I use bootcamp in my 2012 11" air to play games. Its turbo boost doesn't work until i use an app called throttlestop 5.0 beta.

I can play call of duty black ops from start to finish in an air cooled room. Temp hits 105 but games were still running fine, so no overheating and throttling by the intel processor. I dont know about non air cooled room because im afraid it might over heating.