PC CPU with Turbo functionallity , enlighten me !

[neilencio]

In the Philippines, "Turbo" is when you put your two index fingers together (in the shape of a gun), and use it to poke another person's butt. (I believe it is called "Kancho" in Japan).

The act got its name from the fact that you can turbo a person to make him go faster.

[pakopako]

Eh, kinda. Since it's within normal parameters it's hard for me to think of it as overclocking and more as a form of throttling.

Excuse my ignorance, but isn't "throttling" akin to applying the breaks or slowing down?

From my perspective, what I am hearing you say is that, by default, modern computerized devices do not operate at peak performance, but at a reduced performance (say, at 85%).

The software included has a "turbo" feature, which would boost performance, but only within the original hardware parameters (so the machine operates at 100%).

When the system is idle, or does not require as much computation, the software shuts parts of the processor off (what I originally learned the term "throttle" as) reducing the performance to -- again, just putting out a random number -- 50%; or even reducing it to one core running at the same level as my first example (85%).

Weird.

[Hobie-wan]

Eh, kinda. Since it's within normal parameters it's hard for me to think of it as overclocking and more as a form of throttling.

Excuse my ignorance, but isn't "throttling" akin to applying the breaks or slowing down?

Not applying the brakes, just not applying all the juice. Like taking it easy on the gas between stoplights and only pushing down enough to get up to speed normally instead of putting the pedal on the floor every time. Less wear an tear when full power is not needed.

[isiolia]

When the system is idle, or does not require as much computation, the software shuts parts of the processor off (what I originally learned the term "throttle" as) reducing the performance to -- again, just putting out a random number -- 50%; or even reducing it to one core running at the same level as my first example (85%).

Modern desktop PCs do that too - it's been done in laptops for much longer. By lowering the clockspeed they can reduce power use, and in turn heat. Fans can run slower, and the machine hums along sipping power and not making as much noise.

What is billed as "Turbo" on the current i-series is more reconfiguring the CPU on the fly.

Software can't automatically take advantage of multiple CPU cores. For multi-tasking, the operating system might run one application on CPU1 and another on CPU2 (and yet more on CPU3, 4, etc).
Individual applications need to be coded in such a way that splits the work they're doing between multiple execution threads.

If the workload you're handing to a multi-core CPU can't, for whatever reason, be split between the all CPU cores, then performance is limited to that of those it can be. The point of Turbo is to, in those situations, improve the performance of the CPU cores your'e actually using.

As mentioned in earlier posts, a given CPU has a specified power/temperature that it operates within. For a multi-core CPU, that's a combined total between all the CPU cores.
If only one core is running, then more power can be routed to it, and it can give off more heat, all while still saying within the specified parameters for that model CPU.

The logic in the CPU can look at the workload placed on it and determine what would be optimal for performance. If you're actually using all four cores, the maximum clockspeed (within spec) is lower.

I say it's more akin to throttling, to me, because it's an on-the-fly reconfiguration of the CPU all within spec. Overclocking would be pushing the CPU beyond what it's spec'ed at.