Few owners of computers with i5 and i7 processors know that these “hearts” can briefly operate above their factory frequency, that is, faster.

This is achieved through special technology from Intel, which, if installed all correct drivers enabled and running by default. Let's check it out and look at this work - it will help us with this Turbo Boost technology monitor.

Table of contents:

Briefly about Turbo Boost technology

As you understand from the above, this technology allows you to overclock the processor frequency above the nominal value set at the factory for a short time. This happens absolutely safely because voltage, current, temperature and even the state of the operating system are taken into account.

The duration of this acceleration depends on the operating conditions, type of workload, number of active cores, and platform design. Computer performance can increase very noticeably and significantly.

All this is wonderful, of course, but there is a small fly in the ointment - this technology does not support all processors, but only the first three generations of i5 and i7...

Checking the operation of Turbo Boost

The Turbo Boost technology monitor for older i5 and i7 processors has already been removed from the official resources of Intel, but the installer continues to “walk” on the Internet - I will provide a link to it at the end of the article.

Let's check how Turbo Boost works or find out whether this technology is actually used on our computer?

Installing the monitor is quick and easy. We launch it and get such a widget on the computer screen. We poke at it right click mouse and select the size...

...you can also attach it here on top of all windows so that you can observe the operation of the technology, for example, when launching any computer programs.

The frequency of my processor set from the factory is 2.3 GHz. Just by moving the mouse and opening and closing several windows, I “caught” the moment of processor acceleration with my screenshot...

After making sure that everything was working as it should, I removed the Turbo Boost technology monitor, which I advise you to do as well.

Download Turbo Boost technology monitor

Introduction

I remember the computer I purchased back in 1998. He used Pentium processor II 233 on Intel core Deschutes with motherboard Asus P2B. The system was fast, but I wanted to do something more interesting with it. And I started by installing a third-party cooler. Now I don’t remember exactly how much performance potential I was able to squeeze out, but I remember that it seemed insufficient to me. At some point, I opened the plastic cartridge of the slot processor and began experimenting with Peltier coolers to get even better cooling. In the end, I got a stable processor running at 400 MHz - at the same level as the most expensive models at the time, but significantly cheaper.

Of course, today overclocking gives a much more significant increase than 166 MHz. But the principles remain the same: take a processor running at stock clock speeds, and then squeeze the maximum out of it, trying to achieve the performance of high-end and more expensive models. With a little effort, you can very easily get a sub-$300 Core i7-920 to perform at the same level of performance as a $1,000 Core i7-975 Extreme without losing reliability.

What about automatic overclocking?

Overclocking in general has always been a tricky subject for AMD and Intel, who do not officially support the practice and also void the warranty if the CPU shows signs of tampering. However, in public, both manufacturers are trying to gain the trust of enthusiasts by offering overclocking utilities, supporting aggressive BIOS settings, and even selling processors with an unlocked multiplier. However, experienced users always knew that free cheese only happens in a mousetrap, so killing the CPU with too much voltage is an acceptable risk.

But with the advent of Turbo Boost technology, Intel processors Core i7 for LGA 1366 and the subsequent release of a more aggressive implementation with Core i5 and Core i7 processors for LGA 1156, Intel has implemented its own intelligent overclocking technology that takes into account several different factors: voltage, current, temperature and P-states of the operating system related to the load on the CPU.

By monitoring all of these parameters, Intel's embedded management system can improve performance by increasing clock frequency in situations where the maximum thermal package (TDP) of the processor has not been reached. By turning off unused cores and thus reducing power consumption, the processor frees up more capacity for single-threaded workloads, a little less for two active threads, even less for three loaded cores, and so on. As a result, Intel's "auto overclocking" provides an elegant and consistent way to increase performance without exceeding the TDP of any processor in question (130 W in the case of the Intel Bloomfield processor and 95 W in the case of the Lynnfield processor).

Can you do better?

When we discovered that the Core i7-860 and -870 processors accelerated by an impressive 667 MHz in single-threaded applications, we began to ask ourselves whether an advanced user should overclock the processor themselves at the risk of ruining a good CPU, or should they just rely on dynamic Intel overclocking? No, we don't want to seem lazy. Let's hope there are actually tangible benefits for enthusiasts that provide better performance. But we still don't want to throw into oblivion the efforts Intel engineers made in trying to optimize Nehalem for balanced performance in single and multi-threaded applications.

We decided to do a small experiment: we took the Core i5-750 and Core i7-860 processors, overclocked each of them, and then compared the results of the two processors at standard frequencies with Turbo Boost technology active and with Turbo Boost technology disabled. Of course, we have Intel samples in our laboratory, but we cannot reliably consider them representative of retail models. So we bought both processors from Newegg, just to make sure they matched. We considered using a "boxed" Intel cooler, but in the end we figured that we would never get 4 GHz or higher unless we purchased a third-party cooler. Therefore, for testing we took the Thermalright MUX-120 model.

Getting ready for comparison

Processors

As already mentioned, in our experiment we used retail versions of the Core i5-750 and Core i7-860 processors - the two models that we think are of most interest to enthusiasts. The i5-750 is in the $200 price tier and can reliably run at 4GHz or higher, while the i7-860 is a $300 alternative with Hyper-Threading support, a base clock speed of 2.8GHz and an additional Turbo Boost stage with one active thread. .

Why didn't we take Core processor i7-920? This is also very interesting option, especially if you are planning to build a high-end gaming system and need additional lines PCI Express 2.0, which the Intel X58 chipset has. But for about the same price as the Core i7-860, the i7-920 adds a third memory channel, loses 133 MHz of base clock speed, and provides a less aggressive Turbo Boost mode. In addition, buying a processor for LGA 1366 means purchasing an expensive motherboard on Intel X58. Lynnfield and P55 are more suitable for those enthusiasts who are interested in the optimal price/performance ratio of a new build.

Motherboard

Our choice of motherboard will puzzle some people, but we went with the Intel DP55KG for several reasons.

Let's start with the technical ones: we initially planned to use our motherboard Asus board Maximus III Formula. But after updating the board to latest version BIOS published on the company's website, it stopped working stably with our retail CPU and Corsair Dominator memory kit. We were probably just unlucky, so we took the Gigabyte P55A-UD6 motherboard, which worked great with Turbo Boost active, but did not behave so well with Turbo Boost disabled. The tests were successful, but when launching applications and navigating Windows, it felt like we were looking at a Pentium II from ten years ago rather than a powerful machine.

Therefore, in search simple solution, we switched to the Intel DP55KG motherboard, which performed well in latest testing of models on Intel P55. If any motherboard should perform as expected, it would be Intel's own enthusiast-oriented model. As expected, the Kingsburg motherboard coped with our task, so we continued testing.

Then we tried to eliminate bottlenecks. The ATI Radeon HD 5850 video card is perfect for budget-conscious enthusiasts, and the 160 GB solid state drive Second-generation Intel minimizes storage problems. Two 2GB Corsair DDR3-1600 Dominator GT DDR3-2200 8-8-8 modules allowed us to run at DDR3-1600 frequencies without any stability issues.

Test configuration

Tests and settings

Our first test results have already turned out to be very interesting. We observe that Turbo Boost technology provides minimal performance gains in the overall PCMark Vantage score. Meanwhile, overclocking leads to a significant gap between both processors. Turbo Boost was much more effective in the TV and Movies and Productivity tests, although overclocking provides even greater gains in both cases, as you'd expect.

Interestingly, Hyper-Threading technology provides a minimal advantage - this is what we see in all test runs of this package. Of course, this package relies on features built into Windows 7, so it's likely that the operating system's components aren't as optimized for Hyper-Threading as Microsoft would have us believe.

Turbo Boost technology has very little effect on the overall 3DMark Vantage results, but at least gives tangible advantage in the CPU test. In GPU tests, we do not see a noticeable impact. However, manual overclocking also has little effect in GPU tests. But this is not surprising. Both CPUs are fast enough not to become a bottleneck for our single Radeon video cards HD 5850, so we expect very little performance gain in games after increasing the clock speed central processor.

This synthetic test gave a significant increase due to Hyper-Threading technology in the CPU run, which corresponds to the increase after manual overclocking, namely the quad-core i5-750 at 4 GHz is equal in performance to the i7-860 at standard clock frequencies with Turbo Boost. Well, it remains to be seen how well these results translate to real-world applications.

The most significant increase after overclocking is observed in the Dhrystone iSSE4.2 test, where Hyper-Threading has a weak effect. In the Whetstone iSSE3 test, we see that the 4 GHz Intel Core i5-750 cannot reach the Core i7-860, which runs at the standard 2.8 GHz.

Multimedia tests also show that Turbo Boost technology does not provide a significant increase, but we get an increase in performance after overclocking both CPUs to 4 GHz. Hyper-Threading plays a significant role in both test runs, which is also interesting since we expected Turbo Boost to have a more significant impact in real-world tests.

At standard clock speeds throughput memory remains almost unchanged when Turbo Boost is turned on or off. This is because Turbo Boost only affects the processor multiplier, leaving the base clock speed BCLK unchanged (and therefore the memory divider does not change).

But when we overclock the processors by increasing the base BCLK frequency (since our CPUs have a locked multiplier), the memory bandwidth also increases, as we can see from the results of the SiSoftware Sandra 2010 Bandwidth test.

We updated our test package to the latest version of Apple iTunes (9.0.2.25), but the program's behavior did not change. It is still poorly optimized for multithreading, so Hyper-Threading technology only does harm in this case.

On the other hand, the load on just one core means that Turbo Boost significantly improves performance in iTunes. The same can be said about manual overclocking of both chips to 4 GHz. It's nice to see that theory is confirmed by practice.

Unfortunately, iTunes is an exception in our test suite, which is dominated by applications with good multithreading support. Let's see how they behave.

MainConcept can use as many threads as it has available. Even with Turbo Boost technology disabled, the Core i5-750 processor operates at a clock frequency of 2.66 GHz, and the i7-860 at 2.8 GHz. Although this test stresses all four cores, operating within thermal envelope and temperature limits means we get one step (133 MHz) when Turbo Boost is enabled, which is why both processors perform better with this feature.

More than Turbo Boost, Hyper-Threading gives the Core i7-860 a significant advantage over the i5-750 - good evidence that for multi-threaded applications, it really makes sense to pay extra for Hyper-Threading.

However, overclocking minimizes the difference between the two CPUs. At a frequency of 4 GHz, both processors cope with work significantly faster than at standard frequencies. Of course, with the Core i5 we see a more significant increase in percentage, since this processor does not receive multi-threaded acceleration at standard frequencies due to the lack of Hyper-Threading.

Let's move on to the results of the DivX codec, which is well optimized for multithreading, as well as the Xvid codec, which is not so well optimized.

As you might expect, the Xvid codec does not provide an advantage (and in fact even loses) due to active technology Hyper-Threading on Core i7-860 versus Intel i5-750. However, Turbo Boost speeds up the execution of the task on both CPUs.

Interestingly, DivX doesn't benefit much from Hyper-Threading either, suggesting a four-thread limit. In our case, the Core i7-860 is only slightly faster. And both processors get a significant boost from overclocking - enough to say that manual overclocking is in the best possible way to speed up performance in multi-threaded applications, but you won’t get such a big boost from Turbo Boost.

HandBrake - new program in our test package. This free utility, which can benefit from multithreading support. In our test, we converted the first .vob file of the movie "The Last Samurai" to .mp4 format.

Since the utility supports multithreading, the Turbo Boost function has little effect. But, again, it is interesting to see that Hyper-Threading does not have the same serious effect as, for example, we saw in the SiSoftware Sandra or 3DMark Vantage packages. The real way The performance boost lies in manual overclocking - we get significant performance improvements by increasing the frequency of our test CPUs to 4 GHz.

Our Adobe Photoshop CS4 test consists of several multi-threaded filters applied to a .TIF image. Therefore, it is not surprising that Turbo Boost technology has minimal effect. Hyper-Threading also does not have a very noticeable effect.

But what really helps increase the performance of Photoshop CS4 is the clock speed. The Core i7-860 at 2.8 GHz performs slightly better than the Core i5-750 at 2.66 GHz, and Turbo Boost gives both processors 133 MHz. At 4 GHz, both processors demonstrate comparable results, which are much higher than those without overclocking.

We were puzzled by the behavior AVG antivirus 9, which no longer scales as well after upgrading from AVG 8.5. However, launching the task manager during the test clarifies the situation. When the scanner is running, it consumes, at best, 10% of the processor resources. We tested the antivirus on dual-processor chips and on Atom platforms - performance really slows down if you reduce the number of processing cores and lower the clock speed. However, the Core i5-750 and Core i7-860 perform at very similar levels, so we can say that their performance in AVG 9 is identical.

3ds Max 2010 benefits from both Hyper-Threading and Turbo Boost technologies. Overclocking remains the best way to get maximum performance in this program. The Core i5-750 shows an advantage at 4GHz due to its 200MHz base BCLK clock, which is 10MHz higher than the i7-860's 190MHz at 4GHz.

This archiver is well optimized for multithreading (which cannot be said about Hyper-Threading support). WinRAR gives a minimal speed increase from Turbo Boost technology, since all four cores are active. Turning off Turbo Boost completely reduces the frequency of each CPU by 133 MHz under full load, so this technology still helps a little.

However, when both processors operate at 4 GHz, the performance is comparable (and significantly faster than at standard frequencies).

As you can see, the compression speed (in KB/s) scales proportionally not only to the clock speed, but also to the number of available cores. In fact, the 4GHz Core i5-750 can't even keep up with the 2.8GHz Core i7-860 with Turbo Boost disabled.

Since this archiver is well optimized for multithreading, Turbo Boost has little effect. Hyper-Threading adds a bit of performance, and overclocking again makes a big difference.

3D games

Crysis at all three tested resolutions shows negligible gains from Turbo Boost, Hyper-Threading, or overclocking.

This game recently appeared in our test package. Unlike Crysis, which loads mainly graphics subsystem Left 4 Dead 2 scales more efficiently with CPU performance (assuming you have a graphics card as powerful as our Radeon HD 5850, of course).

We see that the automatic 133 MHz boost due to Turbo Boost technology helps a little at low resolutions, but Hyper-Threading has no effect at all. Overclocking gives a noticeable increase in resolutions of 1680x1050 and 1920x1200. However, all these gains are no longer observed; it is worth turning on anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering. As with Crysis, performance starts to level out whether your system is running a 2.66GHz Core i5-750 or a 4GHz Core i7-860.

We will not conduct a full set of gaming tests, since there is no point. In our third and final Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 gaming test, we see that CPU performance doesn't always match in-game performance. This popular game isn't the best choice for testing, but a 60-second run of Act II: The Gulag shows us that Turbo Boost, Hyper-Threading, and even overclocking to 4GHz don't improve frame rates.

Now comes an interesting moment too. If it were possible to configure all processors to run up to 4 GHz without changing all other variables, then our recommendations based on performance tests would already be obvious. Alas, this is not true.

The good news is that you can increase the voltage on each processor, increase their frequency to 4 GHz, and then get very modest power consumption in idle mode. Enhanced SpeedStep technology was implemented properly on the Intel DP55KG motherboard even when the base BCLK clock was set to 200 or 190 MHz, meaning both of our test processors dropped their clock speeds under no load. Of course, we see a slight increase in power consumption in both cases, but it is two or three watts, which can be ignored.

The PCMark Vantage run graph on an Intel Core i5-750 shows a completely different picture when the processor is running under load. You'll find three lines on the graph: the green one represents our run of the i5-750 with Turbo Boost completely disabled, the red one represents the power consumption with Turbo Boost active, and the blue one represents the platform power consumption when overclocking the processor to 4 GHz using the 200 MHz BCLK base frequency and voltage 1.45 V.

It is quite clear that turning on Turbo Boost leads to increased power consumption. But it is much lower than the overclocking and voltage increase required to keep our 2.66 GHz processor stable at 4 GHz.

Average power consumption without Turbo Boost was 115 W for the entire run. After enabling Turbo Boost, average power consumption increased to 120 W. After overclocking to 4 GHz, this increased to 156 W, and we still finished the test just 28 seconds faster.

Conclusion

In the end, our research into the benefits of Turbo Boost, Hyper-Threading, and good old-fashioned overclocking gave us something to think about.

The first thing we learned is that Turbo Boost is most effective at improving the performance of applications that are poorly optimized for multithreading. Today there are fewer and fewer such applications, but we still have a couple of programs that get a serious performance boost after turning on Turbo Boost. We also noticed a consistent small increase after enabling Turbo Boost, even in multi-threaded applications, which is associated with one step of acceleration when using four cores. Overall, the intelligent overclocking built into processors based on the Nehalem design gives Intel a competitive advantage over AMD and its own Core 2 line in applications such as iTunes, WinZip and Lame. Turbo Boost no longer impacts the performance of MainConcept, HandBrake, WinRAR and 7zip as much - efficiently written applications that can fully load quad-core processors due to their parallelism.

Hyper-Threading is even less useful, but, again, we can give a couple of examples when this technology shows itself well in real conditions. Video transcoding applications, for example, can use Hyper-Threading and can reduce task completion time. However, there are all reasons why we would recommend the Core i5-750. This processor costs almost $100 less than the Core i7-860, but still delivers virtually the same level of performance with minimal hit-off in properly optimized programs. Before us is, in a way, a modern version of the famous Celeron 300A, which worked reliably at 450 MHz.

The biggest victory still came from manual overclocking. Of course we appreciate new feature Turbo Boost in Core i5 and Core i7 processors, but it's important to emphasize that the benefit of this technology is most obvious in single-threaded applications (and that benefit is fading away as developers begin to take full advantage of modern multi-core architectures). If the load on the processors is full, then the advantage from Turbo Boost is no longer so significant. Meanwhile, the gain that overclocking provides manifests itself constantly, regardless of whether you launch iTunes or HandBrake. It's also a great time to be an overclocking enthusiast, with affordable 45nm processors easily overclocking to 4GHz and recently released 32nm processors reaching 4.5GHz and beyond.

Of course, there are some subtleties associated with changing the standard parameters. First, risk must be considered. Running a 4 GHz processor at 1.45 V is not that dangerous (even with air cooled), but if the processor burns out, you will not be able to replace it under warranty. Moreover, power consumption under load increases significantly if you increase the clock speed and voltage. Luckily, the motherboard we were using correctly reduced power consumption and clock speed when idle.

Finally, we should remind our readers that it doesn't make much sense for a gamer to invest in an expensive processor. Whether it's a $200 Core i5-750 or a $300 Core i7-860, you'll get the same frame rates at most resolutions unless you invest in a more expensive graphics card configuration.

Intel Core I5 ​​and I7 processors, in addition to the established nominal frequency, can operate at higher speeds. This speed is achieved thanks to special Turbo Boost technology. When all drivers are installed, this technology is enabled and works by default. However, if you have installed all the software and there is no acceleration observed, it is worth monitoring Turbo Boost.

What is Turbo Boost and how does it work?

Turbo Boost is a technology that is designed specifically for Intel Core I5 ​​and I7 processors of the first three generations. It allows you to temporarily overclock the core frequency above the established nominal. Moreover, such overclocking is performed taking into account the current, voltage, temperature of the device and the state of the operating system itself, that is, it is safe. However, this increase in processor speed is temporary. It depends on the operating conditions, load type, number of cores and platform design. In addition, overclocking using Turbo Boost is only possible for Intel Core I5 ​​and I7 processors of the first three generations. Full list of devices that support this technology next:

It is also worth noting that Turbo Boost technology only works on operating Windows systems 7 and 8. Windows Vista, XP and 10 do not support this technology.

To begin with, in order to understand what Turbo Boost is, you need to at least briefly understand what “overclocking” computer components is.

Overclocking (or overclocking) a computer is an increase in its performance 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 GPUs, as well as RAM and video memory.

Processor overclocking as a phenomenon has existed since the early 90s of the last century, after the concept of a multiplier appeared in the 486 series CPU. 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 on the “mother” it was possible to set the bus frequency and the multiplier of the processor used. And the final frequency of the central processor is the product of the bus frequency and the multiplier.

Over time, thanks to the efforts of some companies (Abit, Epox and some others), overclocking has ceased to be the preserve of a separate caste of computer gurus. In the BIOS of most motherboards, entire settings sections have appeared that allow even an inexperienced user to change parameters such as processor bus frequency, voltage supplied to the CPU, memory timings (latencies), etc.

The attitude towards overclocking was also different among different processor manufacturers. At AMD, for example, if they did not encourage him, then, in any case, they did not put a spoke 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 increase the processor frequency above the nominal one. But Intel for a long time was a consistent opponent of dispersal. For example, motherboards produced under its brand did not have a single option responsible for the fine operation of the processor and memory. The situation began to change at the end of 2008, when Turbo Boost technology appeared in the new Bloomfield processors.

The reason for Turbo Boost is the multi-core nature of modern processors. Although the first dual-core desktop processors are almost seven years old, not all applications are still optimized for multithreading. In this regard, a situation often arises when one or two cores are loaded at almost 100%, while the rest are “resting” at this time. In this situation, new processors receive minimal advantages over their single-core predecessors. And Turbo Boost allows you to automatically raise the frequency of loaded cores for some time, thereby increasing both the real and apparent performance of the processor in this particular task. At the same time, the 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 a non-standard mode will not emit more heat than the standard one can remove from it.

Currently, Turbo Boost technology is supported by most Intel Core i processors (but not all!). Budget Pentium and Celeron are unfortunately deprived of it so far. Each processor model, along with the nominal frequency, also has a maximum “overclocking” frequency. For example, an 870 processor with a nominal frequency of 2.93 GHz in Turbo Boost mode can be overclocked to a fairly impressive 3.6 GHz.

Those who do not know how to enable Turbo Boost can be reassured: by default, this option is enabled in modern BIOSes (if, of course, the processor installed in the computer supports it). As a rule, the menu item responsible for the operation of this technology is called or “Turbo Boost”, or “Turbo mode”, or something very similar. In advanced firmware designed for experienced users, it is possible not only to enable/disable this mode (Enable/Disable parameter values), but also to regulate the maximum multiplier for each core. Sometimes it is even possible to increase the maximum thermal package of the processor. Last function allows the CPU to operate in turbo mode for a longer time or simultaneously maintain increased frequency on more cores.

It is also necessary to install the Turbo Boost Technology Driver into the system, which allows modern operating systems ensure their correct interaction with Motherboard BIOS fees.

Recently, AMD has also been using an analogue of turbo boost technology - TurboCore - in some generations of its processors. In fact, it is no different from Intel technology except for the name.