"Turbo" button

MSI GX600 Gaming Laptop



Anyone remember the "Turbo" button on older computers ? Well, MSI is bringing it back on some of their gaming notebooks. In this case, the turbo button overclocks the Intel Core 2 processor approximately 20% from 2.0 to 2.4 ghz

I've read that the "turbo" button on old computers like my 386 was due to the fact that certain programs such as games would run to fast to be playable on the processor's normal speed and switching off the "turbo" would slow the clock speed down so the games could be run normally.

I all ready have one that i made myself. During games if my pc lags, all i do is hit hotkey 6 on my keyboard and the quad rockets from 3.0 to 3.6 :devil: but if i do not slow it down within 15 minutes the pc will produce enough heat to give my koolance system a run for its money. Just a little homemade program i made

We used to have a tower that could switch between 8MHz and 33MHz.

All of the desktop computers I've had prior to 2002 or so have had "Turbo" buttons - these buttons would allow the CPU to operate at two speeds.

My old computer has a turbo button, we got it back in 95 and now have a new one but the old one still gets used mainly for school work, the turbo button has been depressed ever since we got it all those years ago.

Ha. Turbo button... on my old 486, it simply disabled the on-die cache.

But speaking about old stuff:

Anybody remember back when having a LED display showing your frequency was on EVERY case? That was something strange, in retrospect.

I mean, it wasnt even diagnotic... it had no conneciton to the MB besides power. And just showed what was jumpered in.

But it seems nobody would have bought a case without a shiny flowing "66" or "50" on it...

IMSabbel said:

Anybody remember back when having a LED display showing your frequency was on EVERY case? That was something strange, in retrospect.

I mean, it wasnt even diagnotic... it had no conneciton to the MB besides power. And just showed what was jumpered in.

But it seems nobody would have bought a case without a shiny flowing "66" or "50" on it...

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I have an old 386 sitting on my desk right now which has both a turbo button and a display. It's still in perfect operating condition. The display shows either 8 (turbo off) or 40 (turbo on). Totally silly in retrospect. I understand the need to go to 8 MHz to get some old games to run properly, but calling it a "turbo" button just seems silly. I probably would have simply labeled the button 8 MHz/FULL SPEED. Because the button was called turbo instead, some people used to think the PC would overheat if you kept it on continuously.

I remember those turbo buttons, never figured out what they do since the computer acts the same either way.

Turbo Button: Press Here

Edit: Hint, That's Floyd R Turbo......................

Yep, and I did work in retail computers when the turbo button and the seven segment LED displays finally began to slip out of fashion, and we'd get a small, but steady stream of customers who were upset those "features" were missing and strongly felt the newer computers weren't as fast or faster than the old ones, and no amount of explaining that the display was just a static pattern with no inteligence or monitoring, and that "turbo mode" was really just "normal".

There was also a minor scandal with a shady local shop back in the 90's who was selling 486-33Mhz sx's as 486-66Mhz dx's just by re-jumpering the seven segment LED display in the computer case to say "66". :thumbsdow

I've performed the same "modification" to ***MY OWN*** computers - reconfiguring the jumpers on the "frequency" display so that the display read a significantly higher value than what the CPU actually operated at.

jzmtl said:

I remember those turbo buttons, never figured out what they do since the computer acts the same either way.

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The vast majority of early games used counters to make games playable.
Do something
count to 1000 to allow a slow human response
do the next thing.
This works fine if computers never get faster.
But when you go from 4.7 MHz to 8MHz or so the game runs almost twice as fast because the count is much faster.
I've not done it since I had a 300 MHz machine but some of those old games are fun to watch on such a system. Like a video on fast forward. Start - ZIP - game over.

Ohh that makes sense, I had an game like that actually, runs insanely fast on my new computer so completely unplayable.

jzmtl said:

Ohh that makes sense, I had an game like that actually, runs insanely fast on my new computer so completely unplayable.

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There's a bunch of freeware utilities available that will "slow" down those games for anyone that wants to play them.