What does Turbo Boost do?

[TomMaxwell]

Do you have to manually activate it? And what does it do, exactly? Does it speed up the machine?

 

[GREEN4U]

Do you have to manually activate it? And what does it do, exactly? Does it speed up the machine?

It utilizes Apple's new vents and asymmetrical fan that improves performance by channeling air into the vents. Much like a turbo car.

 

[eljanitor]

What it was

There was this button on the old beige desktop PC's in the 90's next to the reset button that said "turbo" it sped up the processor when you pushed it in.

 

[Senseotech]

Turboboost lets the OS request the CPU to boost its speed to perform a heavy workload, so long as the CPU's temperature and power usage are under a certain limit. Think of it as on-demand, automatic over clocking; the majority of the time the CPU runs at the advertised speed, but if needed, it can bump up temporarily to power through a heavier load.

 

[mitty]

 

[flatfoot]

Turboboost lets the OS request the CPU to boost its speed to perform a heavy workload, so long as the CPU's temperature and power usage are under a certain limit. Think of it as on-demand, automatic over clocking; the majority of the time the CPU runs at the advertised speed, but if needed, it can bump up temporarily to power through a heavier load.

Your description of Turboboost is ok, but the CPU also downclocks (Intel SpeedStep) when (a) core(s) is/are idling.

 

[glen e]

So green, you just made your answer up?

Wow....

 

[Senseotech]

Your description of Turboboost is ok, but the CPU also downclocks (Intel SpeedStep) when (a) core(s) is/are idling.

Touché, forgot that part.

 

[jimboutilier]

And here I thought it was a coping mechanism for hypo gonadism.

 

[GfPQqmcRKUvP]

So green, you just made your answer up?

Wow....

lol

 

[csixty4]

Do you have to manually activate it? And what does it do, exactly? Does it speed up the machine?

Great answers on this thread. Love the Knight Rider pic. But to reel this in and be a little serious for a sec: this is Intel's solution to the fact we had to compromise raw GHz for more cores.

Some of the original Pentium 4 processors could run at over 3GHz, but processor speed dropped soon thereafter to make way for smaller transistor sizes and more cores. The CPUs got more units of work done in a given amount of time, but one task might take longer because of the slower speed.

Now, with Turbo Boost the operating system is able to shut off individual cores on the chip and crank up the speed on the other ones, because some tasks just can't be broken down into parallel steps. They need that raw horsepower. There are some caveats, though:

• the chip can't be too hot already, because the increased clock speed is going to heat up the active parts of the chip even more
• the chip can't be drawing too much power already, because a lot of the power a processor uses gets released as heat
• and, the chip needs to have active cores that aren't already shut down

This all happens on the fly. There's no need to do anything manually to manage it.

 

[tigres]

Great answers on this thread. Love the Knight Rider pic. But to reel this in and be a little serious for a sec: this is Intel's solution to the fact we had to compromise raw GHz for more cores.

Some of the original Pentium 4 processors could run at over 3GHz, but processor speed dropped soon thereafter to make way for smaller transistor sizes and more cores. The CPUs got more units of work done in a given amount of time, but one task might take longer because of the slower speed.

Now, with Turbo Boost the operating system is able to shut off individual cores on the chip and crank up the speed on the other ones, because some tasks just can't be broken down into parallel steps. They need that raw horsepower. There are some caveats, though:

• the chip can't be too hot already, because the increased clock speed is going to heat up the active parts of the chip even more
• the chip can't be drawing too much power already, because a lot of the power a processor uses gets released as heat
• and, the chip needs to have active cores that aren't already shut down

This all happens on the fly. There's no need to do anything manually to manage it.

Prove it.

I jest of course, but would love to have a stat app to track my cores.

 

[csixty4]

Prove it.

I jest of course, but would love to have a stat app to track my cores.

My Dad's Windows 7 machine has a widget to track the CPU cores & speed. I'll bet there's something out there for Macs too.

 

[Senseotech]

On the hackintosh side of things, we have a tool called HWMonitor thats can monitor data like this. I have no idea if it would work on an actual Mac, as I'm away from my MBP at the moment and can't test it.