In the news today: The TURBO [Boost] button reintroduced

[AlHill]

I saw this on a news site. Worth sharing.

The TURBO button reintroduced

April 1, 2017

Canberra, ACT, Australia

By Jonathan Dough

United Associates News Desk

For almost a decade, Intel (http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/intc NASDAQ:INTC) has been providing processors with http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/processors/000005647.html Intel® Turbo Boost Technology. "Intel® Turbo Boost Technology is a way to automatically run the processor core faster than the marked frequency if the part is operating under power, temperature, and current specifications limits of the thermal design power (TDP). This results in increased performance of both single and multi-threaded applications." Turbo Boost provides the increase in performance when needed, and is transparent to the user.

However, many users do not understand the Turbo Boost feature and subsequently post questions on /community/tech Intel's support community. Users also do not understand why the processor, if it can run faster, cannot be set to run faster all the time, rather than when simply "when needed".

Well, it appears that it can be set to run all the time, at the higher speed. To help users enable this performance boost, we have gone back to a feature which many of today's users will not remember.

The technology of the 1980s allowed PCs to have a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbo_button Turbo Button. This was a button on the PC which, when activated, would change the speed of the PC. Remember the old https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Personal_Computer_XT PC XT machines? Users that did have this feature often marveled at having a two-digit LED display on the front of the PC case, proudly showing the speed at which they were running, in MHz. Many PC "clones" from that period had a Turbo Button that did nothing. Back then, "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PC_compatible IBM PC compatible" was important.

To reintroduce this feature, with those processors that provide Turbo Boost, no hardware change or BIOS update is required by the user. No registry hack or modification to your system is necessary. And, all http://www.Microsoft.com/ Windows operating systems are supported. It can be turned on and off, using a simple ALT code sequence:

ON: NumLock on, Press and hold ALT, type 1 on your numeric keypad, and release ALT.

OFF: NumLock on, Press and hold ALT, type 0 on your numeric keypad, and release ALT.

Sounds simple enough. So, why has this been kept a secret? An employee who asked to not be identified suggested it could impact the sale of more powerful processors.

Perhaps it could. However, having that increase in performance under their control will help a lot of users.

Intel could not be reached for comment.

[MaryT_Intel]

Very funny story from John Dough. Happy April Fool's Day!

[MartyG]

I'm actually old enough to have owned a PC with a Turbo button!

[idata]

Thank you for the post Al Hill.

Best regards, Ivan.