M15x How does TURBO MODE work??

Okay so i was looking to buy this M15x but i saw it said 1,6 ghz (2.8 turbo mode) What the heck is this? someone said that when u use one game or somthing like ur playing wow it will only use 1,6 ghz and when ur running like 3 or 4 wows it will run 2.8? if so thats really weird. Care to explain

 

Basically it shuts down a core and ups the clock speed based on how many threads you are running. Ultimately when you get to 2.8GHz you will be only running a single CPU core. This allows it to overclock while keeping the same power level and since not much takes advantage of multiple cores (still...sadly) you shouldn't see too much impact.

 

Well it could be worse though, right?

For example, than someone with a Quad Core being forced to run stuff that supposes 1 core. This I7 thing seems to fix that annoying problem.

Sorta reminds me of backwards compatibility a bit. You know, where if a game doesn't support 4 cores, just 2, then the CPU can shut down the additional cores and....bah... I'm confusing myself because I know it's not as simple as Ghz.

Though at least we should see a bit better performance on single core/dual core games/programs as compared to what a QXXXX can perform? Something like that? As far as I'm aware those QXXXX suffer when not running all cores, hence why the Core2duo was recommended for gaming because not many games supported Q cores.

 

the era of comparing 'duals to quads' is over.

when you buy a core i#, you're 'really' buying four processors. a single-core one, a dual core one, a tri-core one and a quad-core one.

its equivalent to swapping out the CPU and replacing it with another processor that has just enough threads to run the particular program at maximum effectiveness. without all the hassle....

its really quite a beautiful thing....


what you should be thinking about is 'clocks,' instead of 'cores.'

 

Uve lost me... didnt explain how it works thoe so when your running four things ur ghz is split up giving some of it to each app?

 

So if u were running wow, I think it uses 2, it will not use the other 2 cores dropping 5.6 ghz to waste?

 

If a program uses four cores, the CPU will run at the "non-turbo" speed of 1.6GHz each. When a program uses less cores, the unneeded cores will be switched off the cores still in use overclocked. The less cores are active, the higher clock speed the remaining cores will be running at at load.
At idle, of course, the clockspeed will likely remain low.

 

...and if an application is optimized to 4 cores, that 1.6GHz will be MORE than enough power. As someone implied earlier in the thread, with the i5/7s, you will be getting maximum performance whether a 1 core, 2 core, 3 core, or 4 core application.

Another comparison would be the engines that shut down cylinders when you don't need them in order to conserve fuel. Although when they are shut down you have less "power", the application (vehicle) continues to run optimally...and, if needed, those closed cylinders immediately open up when a need for power is indicated...

 

Right. Besides, the Core i7 at 1.6GHz is at least as powerful as a Core 2 at a much higher clockspeed in most games due to it's improved architecture anyway.

 

And if some games will require min 4 cores with 2.5Ghz, you are boned . Recommended system settings for the upcoming Dragon Age: Origins is [email protected]. So you will be running 4 cores@ 1.6ghz. Yes i7 is very efficient, but not when it comes to games that benefit from high clocked 2 or 4 cores. There are not too many such games, and WOW is not the one, so don't worry. Since most of the upcoming games are being also ported to consoles, system requirements will not skyrocket in the couple of years from now.

 

Any bets that when Dragon Age releases, there will be multiple choices on how to run it? No game developer in their right mind is going to release a game that only runs optimally on a quad 2.5Ghz...

 

Basically how turbo mode works is:

If you're running a program or game that does NOT use all 4 cores of the processor, it will shut down the unused cores, and overclock the ones being used. If running on one core, it can overclock that single core to 2.8GHz, while shutting down the others. It can also run on two and three cores only, but you will recieve a lower overclock if there are more cores being used.

 

The recommended spec is actually for a Core 2 Quad at 2.4 GHz, and considering that the only mobile C2Q that would meet those recommended requirements is the very high end QX9300, comparing it to the low end 720QM is probably not the best comparison. The high end 920XM gets up to 2.26 on 4 cores, and 3 GHz on 2 cores on basic turbo mode, although the Clevo W870CU has a BIOS allowed overclock to 3.73 GHz (although I think that's single core, which means dual core should be around 3.6 GHz). Even so, I think the advantage of the i7's newer architecture would make up for being only 2.26 GHz compared to the recommended 2.4 GHz.

That's only the recommended processor, and there are plenty of _desktop_ C2Qs that meet that spec quite nicely. The minimum required is only a C2D at 1.4 GHz (XP) or 1.6 GHz (Vista) so there's plenty of room in there for a lot of other processors...

As for the OP, try reading http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=5366097&styleid=17#post5366097, and http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=422260 for some more information on turbo mode and how cores work.

 

I said recommended not minimum
And BTW, would you settle for running Crysis on min system or go for the highest possible rig? You can run pretty much all games on netbooks (with some tweaking) but when you buy a gaming laptop it's sad to know that the next upcoming game you wanted to play puts your rig on it's knees. That's why I'm reluctant to admire mobile i7 yet, till I see It's performance (synthetic benchmarks excluded).

 

Oh, and, as always, I managed to forget about hyperthreading, which means that in theory, you can run 4 threads on 2 cores, which means that an i7 might be able to run a C2Q optimized game on only 2 cores, which means that even the "lowly" 720QM would be running at almost 2.4 GHz (2 cores, 4 threads). This of course assumes that hyperthreading is all it's cracked up to be.

 

i'm really calling bull on dragonage making use of a quadcore 2.5ghz...thats some hardcore programming involved in that, and it DEFINITELY will not be running that high the whole time.

keep in mind that nehalem is about 40% more efficient per clock that c2q, meaning that a 1.6 720m is closer to a 2.24ghz c2q. AS WELL, the 720 will STILL turbo even when its running all four cores(up to one or two bins), if it can be kept cool enough(which i'm betting the alienware can pull off).

 

C'mon guys, it's all about the marketing. You find i7 turbo boost and HT nice - good for you. I would like to see the actual gaming benchmarks on high rez with SLI. The comparison reviews I've seen so far, never took into consideration C2Q overclocking (and that's a 1k pts difference in 3dmark!), and even @stock the older tech loses 5-10%. Not too convincing IMHO. The only thing that is convincing is the desktop i7 975@4ghz.

 

Well, if you compare to an overclocked CPU, you'll have to compare the Core i7 overclocked with the core 2 quad overclocked as well. Clock for clock, the Core i7 will run games better than the Core 2 Quad. Does the M15X' BIOS allow for overclocking and disabling turbo mode?
All I know is that on desktops, my Core i7 920 @ stock 2.67GHz noticeably outperforms my Q6600 @ 3.4GHz in actual games (in benchmarks as well, but what counts for me is actual gameplay) with the rest of the hardware except mainboard the same. I was surprised this was the case when I got it, but that's just how it goes.
Of course, that's comparing desktop chips with the older Core i7 architecture, but I'd imagine the laptop chips would scale in a similar manner. But who knows.

 

you shouldn't be buying the i7 for gaming.

the mobile c2q simply can't be bottlenecked atm(no with any nvidia solutions at least).

 

Of course your 920 i7 cpu is way above Q6600. As you can see from here http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Processors-Benchmarklist.2436.0.html it even significantly outperforms the QX6850. But mobile i7 is different. As I understand it's aimed at the different market segment and is not meant to substitute core 2 quads. Yes we can compare them overclocked, but as you can see from the same link, 920XM has lower score in 3Dmark as well as Wprime compared to the stock QX9300. It has better single rendering (due to the turbo boost) but do you see a huge difference in multi-rendering? Welcome to mobile computing, lol. Intel does the same as Nvidia, naming similarly the mobile and desktop processors, but look at the difference in performance between the desktop and mobile i7extreme! On the other hand we don't really need that power yet.

 

Exactly my point

 

I find the wPrime results on that list quite suspect for the mobile i7s. The 920XM has a worse wPrime result than the 820QM or 720QM? As pointed out in http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=5420200, their score for the 820QM comes from an average of 2 scores of 13 and 41(!), with the user with an 820QM in his possession getting a 13 on just about all of his runs.

Oh, and if you're not worried about the CPU being bottlenecked, why'd you bother bringing up Dragon Age Origins?

 

Erm, the desktop i7 920 can overclock to 4GHz...thought I'd tell you that

Sadly I doubt that'll be the case here. The desktop i7s when they came out were at very similar clocks to the desktop C2Qs at the time, whereas the mobile i7s are clocked significantly lower.

 

the LGA1366-i7s also sucked hardcore when it came to turbo mode(it was first generation afterall). two bins? is that supposed to do?

 

So guys i7 820 is terible for gaming? awh man i wanted to harcore game on a actually mobile M15x

 

No it's not terrible for gaming, but for bank for the buck I think you'll get more out of the 720. It's not such a bad performer in that department, but certainly isn't the best. You can still do lots of hardcore gaming. You mentioned Aion in your other thread, that won't be a problem with the M15x and a 260m/i7 720 combo.

 

That would depend on what you consider hard core gaming? If running benchmarks is your goal, you can probably do better with the c2q in the M17. If your real interest is straight gaming, I'm going to go out on a limb and say you can run all the same games on an M15 with i7 and sufficient RAM that you can run on an M17 that is using last generations quad core. Then again, I haven't played all games, so that is just speculation on my part.

I found a review of the M15x that is from folks outside this forum...even includes some benchmarking: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/12/AR2009101202157.html

 

The i7-820QM will be fine for most hardcore gaming. Your problem will almost always be the single 260M graphics card before you reach your CPU limit.

 

alright, the fact of the matter is this. when it comes to MOBILE gaming, your graphics card will ALWAYS be the bottleneck(when configuring high-end CPUs with high-end GPUS).

that means that c2qs are more than enough for your gaming needs. getting an i7 for gaming(this may or may not be different when you start considering cost - i'l talking strictly from a performance standpoint) is not a smart choice.

HOWEVER, on the desktop, this is a different story. Quad-SLI, Tri-SLI, and CrossfireX setups need a fairly beefy CPU, and you may indeed need a core i7 to power it in some circumstances. but even in those cases, an overclocked c2q should still be enough.

 

hello, i just got mine M15x, i have 1 question, how do i enable or disable the turbo?

i currently using core i7 QM820 1.73, and it can turbo up to 3.06GHz..

 

Are you asking there, how do you make it overclock? It overclocks itself when placed under load, provided not all the cores are being used, and that it stays within thermal limits.

If you want to turn the feature off altogether you can do so in the BIOS, I think.

You can't set it so that it's on turbo all the time. It will only turbo when not all 4 cores are under use, and when there is load on it. Plus, 3.06GHz is only when one core is being used.

 

Thanks, that explained all

 

What does the EXTREME in 920xm do then??

 

I do like the idea of a 4 core cpu disabling 2 core so they can overclock the other Two cores So the other two cores use more of the heatsink. I always seen 4 core cpu is useless in game playing. (Lazyness of the programers) It is why I alway stayed with Dual core.

We can say the same thing with 32 bit and 64 bit. Most games are still 32 bit.

Most games use More gpu not cpu power Unless it due to caculations. where the cpu has be used.

 

It has an unlocked multiplier for possible additional overclocking over and above Turbo Mode (if your computer supports it, which I don't think the M-15x currently does).

 

Well then i think buying the extreme processor isnt necessary for M15x if you cant really use the extreme part of it.

 

Well, it also runs faster than the 820QM even without the extra overclocking (2.27/3.06/3.2 turboboosted on 4-3/2/1 cores compared to the 820's turboboosted 2/2.8/3.06). Even so, unless you do a lot of video-encoding or other extremely CPU-intensive work, you're not likely to stress either an 820 or 920 to its limits regardless.

 

I realize that the i7/i5 cores over clock themselves, to their appropriate speed. Would it be possible to up the overclocked speed? I would image that the they are overclocked with more headroom than needed, and one could squeeze a little extra out of them. I'm just getting into computers so forgive me if I'm talking out of my arse.

 

from what i've heard, the video card bottlenecks before the processor usually.

 

With the proper utilities, yes. A mass-produced example of this is the Clevo W870CU, which comes with up to 4x BIOS based overclock for the 920XM. The problem is that there is generally not much headroom for overclocking in notebooks, due to simple heat issues, especially in a smaller notebook such as the M-15x (the W870CU is a 17 inch model, the 15 inch model from the same manufacturer lacks the BIOS overclock). Also, if Clarksfield behaves like Lynnfield when overclocked, to achieve any significant amount of overclock beyond turbo-boost, you'll also need to overvolt the processor... which could have some serious negative implications.

 

will core i9's come out for laptops, also do they have the same turbo boost as i7s...more importandly when will we reach are maximum amount of cores in a processor?

 

Ya, what Ghz a CPU runs at is irrelevant. What matters is how many computations per second the CPU can do. Also, keep in mind that the i7-720QM can handle 8 threads. So, the software behaves as if you have 8 CPU cores. So 4 threads would only be 2 CPU cores so you would get a nice Turbo Boost.

 

So, how does one know if they are utilizing one or more cores?

I have the 2.53 base that turbos to 3.06, from what I understand so long as I am utilizing a single core, I get the full effects of 3.06 (such as they are), but how do I ensure that I'm only using 1 core to get the full effect?

 

Hi can anyone tell me what speed the 620m operates at when using 2 cores?

is it 3.06Ghz

and the 720QM is 2.4Ghz

Thanks