Intel’s Turbo Boost dynamic overclocking technology has been around for almost two years and it has brought a smile to the faces of IT veterans who were used to Turbo buttons on their old 286 rigs.
Now it’s time for a revamp and Turbo Boost 2.0 should deliver a few more features and even more performance to upcoming Intel parts. The concept remains the same, the CPU will be able to throttle certain cores depending on the load. However, with Sandy Bridge Intel has incorporated the graphics core in its power sharing algorithm. This means that the graphics core will clock independently from the CPU cores depending on system demands. As with regular Turbo Boost, this will work as long as there is thermal headroom for higher clocks.
Intel claims Turbo Boost 2.0 will deliver more performance and more energy efficiency than its predecessor. It will incorporate new power averaging algorithms that should enable lower energy consumption and, more importantly, make more thermal headroom for overclocking.
Details are still quite sketchy and it’s unclear just how much Sandy Bridge stands to benefit from improved dynamic overclocking. While it might not bring about any spectacular gains over the current Turbo Boost tech, it’s still a very welcome addition.
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