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    What is turbo boost and hyperthreading?

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by shadowzoid, Jul 5, 2011.

  1. shadowzoid

    shadowzoid Notebook Enthusiast

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    I've read lots of articles but I still don't understand. First, is turbo boost automatically activated when i need more power on my processors? And can I run turbo boost indefinitly? Also, what is hyperthreading?

    In the end, I'm trying to decide between an i5 or i7
     
    shadowzoid, Jul 5, 2011
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  2. Hungry Man

    Hungry Man Notebook Virtuoso

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    Turbo boost is when your processor overclocks itself when under stress. You can not force turbo boost.

    Hyperthreading is more complicated. I'm not going to go into the details of how it works... but basically if you have a dual core it "acts" like a quad core. It isn't as effect as having those two physical cores though, it gives a 20% increase in speeds when you're lucky.
     
    Hungry Man, Jul 5, 2011
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  3. zippyzap

    zippyzap Notebook Consultant

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    Turbo is automatic. Basically the processor will have three normal performance states. The lowest one is an idle/power saving state. Then there is the normal speed, followed by the Turbo speed. What mode your CPU is running in depends on the load it is experiencing.

    Can Turbo run indefinitely? It can, depending... if the CPU stays cool enough then it can keep running. Otherwise it will go down to the non-turbo performance mode.

    Hyperthreading is kind of a fake extra core per core, so for instance Pentium 4 with Hyperthreading are seen by Windows as a dual core (so are single core Atom). A Core i3 with Hyperthreading is seen by Windows as a quad core, because it is a dual and each core has Hyperthreading.

    Hyper-threading - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

    I think that sums it up pretty succinctly.
     
    zippyzap, Jul 5, 2011
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