M14x r2 i7 processor turbo boost question

Sorry for the newbie question but I'm coming off a Mac and haven't used a PC in a few years. I just got this new laptop and am wondering how the turbo boost mode or overclocking works. I upgraded to the 3rd gen ivy processor and called tech support which was horrible(couldn't even speak English) and they said that the Turbo mode was an option I had to pre order. Also they said I'd have to pay a software customer service upgrade fee to have this done manually. Can someone please explain this all to me. I just wanted a sweet laptop to game on.

Thanks

 

Turbo boost is basically built in the CPU (Your Ivy Bridge Processor) when an application requires more processing power, then your turbo boost will kick in making your application run faster. Once that's done your CPU will throttle down back to stock clock speeds. Turbo mode an automatic thing, that will up your CPU temps a tab bit. That dell tech obviously didnt know what he/she was talking about that they just wanted more of your money since all they want to do is sell sell sell.

It's a good feature in theory similar to nVidia's optimus but there's still certain drawbacks since its sort of a new technology so they will need to do some tweaking.
In games like SC2 for example I have turbo boost disabled since it causes micro-stutter in my gameplay.

Anyways hope this help, this is all according to my knowledge/experience
If anything is wrong I'm sure someone will correct me

Thanks in advance

Here's a link from wiki to learn more about it
Intel Turbo Boost - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Thanks for the response. It's nice it's a built in feature. I think I'm going to be happy with this laptop, I just dread calling Dell about anything technical related. You said you could turn off the turbo mode. I don't even want too try that since I'm not very PC savy but is that option accessible in the control panel settings? One more quick question. Since it is a new laptop is there anything I need to tweak around with that wasn't done in the factory? I do notice that everything on screen seems to have a slight purpleish blue tint to it but it may be just because I'm used to working on a older Mac.

 

TurboBoost option is in the bios. There is a program a lot of people use that is called throttle stop it lets you set a maximum boost without going into the bios, can't really break anything and can always uninstall it if you want.
Alienwares tend to come pretty clean from dell, not too much to monkey with. The screen could be adjusted through the display settings if you want. I have an r1 and those monitors are fairly bluish, but the blue is actually easier on the eyes in my opinion.
You should check for the latest drivers from Dell's site.

 

Important note = throttlestop is NOT working properly at this time with Ivy Bridge as unclewebb doesn't have a machine to develop with (that has Ivy).