To begin with, to understand what Turbo Boost is, you need to at least briefly imagine what “overclocking" of computer components is.
Acceleration (or overclocking) of a computer is an increase in its speed by operating components in abnormal modes (usually at an increased frequency). The most common type of overclocking is to increase the frequency of the central and graphic processors, as well as operational and video memory.
Overclocking of the processor as a phenomenon has existed since the beginning of the 90s of the last century, after the concept of the multiplier appeared in the CPU 486th series. Motherboard manufacturers, wanting to unify their products for the entire line of new processors from Intel, designed their products in such a way that by closing individual jumpers to the “mothers” it was possible to set the bus frequency and processor multiplier. And the final frequency of the central processor is the product of the bus frequency by a factor.
Over time, thanks to the efforts of some companies (Abit, Epox and some others), overclocking ceased to be the lot of a separate caste of computer gurus. In the BIOS of most motherboards, whole sections of settings have appeared, allowing even an inexperienced user to change parameters such as the frequency of the processor bus, voltage supplied to the CPU, timings (delays) of memory operation, etc.
The attitude to overclocking among different processor manufacturers was also different. In AMD, for example, if it was not encouraged, then, in any case, they did not put sticks in the wheels. In addition, in the processors of this particular company for the first time in many years a multiplier appeared, unlocked “up”, i.e. allowing you to raise the processor frequency above the nominal. But Intel has long been a consistent opponent of overclocking. For example, motherboards manufactured under its brand did not have a single option responsible for fine- tuning the processor and memory. The situation began to change since the end of 2008, when Turbo Boost technology appeared in the new Bloomfield processors.
The reason for the appearance of Turbo Boost is the multicore of modern processors. Although the first dual-core desktop processors are almost seven years old, still not all applications are optimized for multithreading. In this regard, a situation often arises when one or two cores are almost 100% loaded, while the rest are "resting" at this time. In this situation, new processors get minimal advantages over their single-core predecessors. And Turbo Boost allows you to automatically increase the frequency of loaded cores for a while, thereby increasing both the real and apparent processor speed in this particular task. At the same time, automation does not allow the processor to go beyond the thermal package assigned to it by the manufacturer. In other words, the processor in such an abnormal mode will not produce more heat than a regular cooling system can remove from it .
Turbo Boost technology now supports most Intel processors in the Core i family (but not all!). The budget Pentium and Celeron are unfortunately deprived of it. Each processor model, along with the rated frequency, has a maximum “overclocking” frequency. For example, the Intel Core i7 870 processor at a nominal frequency of 2.93 GHz in Turbo Boost mode can accelerate to a fairly impressive 3.6 GHz.
Those who don’t know how to enable Turbo Boost can be reassured: by default, this option is enabled in modern BIOSes (unless, of course, the processor installed in the computer supports this). As a rule, the menu item responsible for the operation of this technology is called either “Turbo Boost”, or “Turbo mode”, or somehow very similar. In advanced firmware designed for experienced users, it is possible not only to turn on / off this mode (the value of the Enable / Disable parameter), but also to regulate the maximum multiplier for each core. Sometimes even an increase in the maximum thermal package of the processor is allowed. The latter function allows the CPU to operate in turbo mode for a longer time or at the same time maintain an increased frequency on more cores.
Also, the system must be installed Turbo Boost Technology Driver, which allows modern operating systems to ensure their correct interaction with the BIOS of the motherboard.
Recently, AMD has also been using an analogue of turbo boost technology, TurboCore, in some generations of its processors. From technology from Intel, it is nothing but a name, in fact, no different.