Intel came up with a cool technology featured in its 32nm Arrandale dual-core processors coupled with 45nm graphics cores. The feature is called HD Graphics Turbo Boost technology and it is a part of Intel's integrated HD graphics on these CPUs. The feature will allow users to dramatically overclock the 45nm graphics chip, all on the fly.

In perspective, it works very similar to the Turbo Boost mechanism introduced in Intel's Nehalem architecture. For instance, if two cores in a quad-core processor are idle, the PowerGate transistors that feed the cores their supply current are turned off, and power is redistributed to the two active cores which can be automatically overclocked all the way to 2.26GHz. This feature will be possible on the Core i5 640UM.

Similarly, the HD Graphics Turbo feature found in Arrandale-based processors will boost graphics from default the 166MHz to an impressive 500MHz when it becomes necessary. This is a threefold speed increase and it should be enough for some basic 3D gaming and definitely enough for some high definition Blu-ray quality content playback.

The idea is that the basic 166MHz graphics core speed should be enough to run Windows Aero desktop and some YouTube video. If not, the graphics will simply overclock itself to satisfy the performance demand. Nevertheless, the technology looks interesting and we are excited to see it in action.