Why isn't my i7 720QM hitting 2.8 GHZ

I tried to do some benching to see how this turbo boost works, and when running a full system benchmark via CINEBENCH 11.5, when the single core part comes up the Turbo Boost gadget is reporting as if im running on three or 4 cores. What could this be? I also have tried installing the intel turbo boost drivers, and I receive the error that my system is not compatible anyway here is a screenshot. your Help would be appreciated

 

Well for starters you've got Steam running in the background. Also, I've found it's not always accurate. Compare your score to others on the net and see where it falls. Having task manager up could help you see how many cores are actually being used as well.

 

Steam is just pinned to the task bar its not running basically nothing is running except console and mcaffe. i have never seen it go upto 2 its always been either 1.73 or 1.87

 

Even though you may designate the app to only one core background processes will use other threads and cores including even the GPU and procceses as needed. There are many things to consider with this.

About the only may to use just one core/thread is use something like SuperPI and set the affinity to one core, but even then you are having background threads. Even the windows blinds you are using takes up cpu resource.....................

 

just marketing , the cpu doesnt boost for long.

 

It's not marketing at all. Disable turbo and run some benchmarks or even encode a video or and two and tell me you don't see a difference.

They designed it like this so the quads could compete with the higher speed Core2's. They wanted to sell the quads, because they make more off them, but if Core2's were still winning in single threaded apps (which most apps still are), they'd be competing against themselves. Quads would use too much power and run too hot at 2.8.