Turbo Button

[daft]

i was just wondering what the turbo button does on some older computers... i noticed it when we first got it, and i decided to press it, but it didn't do anything that i could notice. anyone know?

 

[badgtx1969]

Aw the turbo button, are we talking a 386 or 486 computer?
I thought it was supposed to overclock the processor - slightly in most cases.

 

[Heyyou27]

Some applications benefited from the CPU's higher speed, and some applications would not run properly at the higher frequency, so a switch was implemented for performance and compatibility.

 

[mothhive]

I remember using a PC with a turbo button about 15 or so years ago. There was a display on the front of the PC that showed the Mhz it was currently at. Went from 60Mhz to 75 when on. Never really understood why it was there and had turbo on the whole time just cause to me 75 is way better than 60, right, although I never really noticed much difference.

A quick search and I found the following link which seems to explain it's uses.

http://www.computerhope.com/jargon/t/turbo.htm

I've only seen a situation where that would have been useful once. Playing Toonstruck after upgrading to a PC with a 400Mhz processor made certain parts of it near impossible and some of the background animation was crazy fast.

 

[ainarssems]

I remember like in 1995 we had 386 or 486 computer and CPU ran at 16MHz without turbo and 32 MHz with turbo

 

[ainarssems]

And to play pacman on 16MHz was very fast and imposible to follow at 32MHz so we played it on other PC with 8MHz

 

[daft]

yeah, my friend just got a k6 and it has it.

 

[tipoo]

aww, good times with that button.

it was used to overclock the CPU, because some apps didnt work with the higher frequency and some did.