MSI Brings Back the Turbo Button
Turbo buttons on the PCs went extinct after the 386/486-era. But now, according to TweakTown it appears that MSI will be trying to resurrect it for the button happy crowd with the MSI GeForce N9600 GT Diamond graphics card.
After some reconstructive surgery, MSI turned the sleek single-slot reference design of the GeForce 9600 GT into a honking dual-slot port-happy behemoth featuring an unmarked red button. The button located along side the plethora of output ports will allow users to overclock the GPU core, memory clock speeds, and increase the voltages.
However, MSI indicated that the turbo button currently does not support SLI mode. Meaning when two of these 9600 GTs are paired up, the shiny turbo button will be there for aesthetic reasons only — bummer. However, as with all new technology, MSI is continuing to improve support, and expects SLI support in the near future. MSI did not reveal however, that a SLI-compatible turbo button will be available by a simple firmware upgrade.
Details on clock speeds were not revealed, but the card will feature 2GB of GDDR3 memory, dual DVI, HDMI, DisplayPort, SPDIF, and of course the turbo button. Enthusiasts nostalgic of the good-old days of turbo buttons can expect to pick up their GeForce N9600 GT by the end of June with an expected street price of $250 to $300. Reference 9600 GTs can be found at the rock bottom price of $99 during sales. A quick glance at Newegg puts the average price to be around $150. Quite a price premium for a turbo button that only works half the time. Only time will tell if turbo buttons will go the way of the Dodo again.
The reason the turbo button on the 386/486 went away was because no one ever switched off turbo.
However I could see the use of this Turbo button since the GPU is gulping more energy overclocked. By the simple button click you could lower clock speeds and energy usage/heat generation when simply using Open Office or Firefox.
I would love this if it switched between O'C for gaming then 1/4 speed energy usage for non-3D intensive uses.
Currently by I am using Windows XP with Firefox, Thunderbird and iTunes Running and my GPU is just gulping down energy, belching out heat and spinning my fans for no good reason.
So... you open your case move all them water cables to hit the button every time you want to go moderately faster, Ill pass.
Ill place this with other stupid inventions… like a Pay toilet.
http://students.ou.edu/R/Basil.G.Rayan-1/
- Ejector seat for helicopters
- Waterproof cups
- Braille TV guide
- Turbo button on graphix card
- Caffeine-free Diet Coke
- Flashbulb tester
- Inflatable dart boards
Just overclock the damn thing. Rivatuner isn't that hard to use.
This busch league mediocrity is now turning into some kind of weird as resurrection of Romper Room or some shit...
BUSCH!
LEAGUE!
I have a HD 3870 and I think the minimum clocks it uses at idle are way too high (I use either XP in classic look or Linux Gnome without any visuals - visual effects, skins etc. are just useless crap anyway). The CPU and memory could also go much lower on clocks/voltages.
I would like the option of building a high-end, power-hungry rig and turning it into office-grade power-savvy machine with one click.
Sounds to me like they are putting the button on there in case you want to OC. I dont think it OC's for you. Sounds like it just unlocks certain features like voltage, w/o having to do a vmod.