Is Turbo Boost even a Desirable Feature of the M11x?

I am confused as to what turbo boost is even good for. From what I've been reading on these forums it is suggested under the topics on saving battery life to disable turbo boost. I have also seen talk of disabling turbo boost (+ overclocking) featured under topics that refer to increasing the performance of the m11x.

My question is, if turbo boost doesn't increase battery life (which is what I thought its original purpose was) and it doesn't increase performance, then what the hell is it good for?

 

Speed Stepping is suppose to save battery life, but even that can be questionable (IE the theory behind the ThrottleStop app). Speed step reduces the CPU clock when its not needed.

Turbo Boost increases the cpu clock when the performance is needed. It has limitations though, it only increases the cpu clock if it thinks there is head room (based on heat).

I personally think Turbo boost is pretty useless for gaming since games usually keep the cpu under load and after say 10-15mins the cpu is so hot that turbo boost will no longer kick in.

However, Turbo boost can be very useful for desktop applications. Like if I was programming the cpu would be pretty much idle and cool, but when I go to compile, turbo boost would kick in for a short burst to help compile the application quicker. It works in this situation because for the most part the CPU isn't under constant load in desktop applications.

Its similar to Intel Dynamic Acceleration that was on most of the older Core 2 Duo/Quad Cpu's, but its not limited to a single core and the C2D's only accelerated 1 multiplier level (IE ~200MHZ).

I haven't done enough test on battery life to see how TB affects battery life, but I can see it doing so a bit.

For now I'm keeping turbo boost on while overclocked. In my test so far overclocked is still better than not on the R2.

 

Cool, thanks for the reply. Any advice for overclocking on this laptop that will not kill it or lessen its lifespan?

 

In general, overclocking always lowers lifespan of computer parts, mostly from the added heat and/or voltages applied to the overclocked computer part. A powerful cooling unit can help with this, since it can remove the additional heat generated. A part that is damaged from overclocking will become unstable at higher clock frequencies, BSOD frequently, or refuse to boot.

In a practical sense, your hardware will likely become performance-obsolete long before it starts failing from overclocking damage. Alienware has intentionally designed this laptop to allow overclocking, so they also most likely designed the CPU/GPU cooler to handle the added heat.

The advice that I can give is the standard - if your system refuses to boot or remain stable at a certain clock speed, then don't push it. The other piece of advice I can give is to run tests to actually measure the practical benefit of an overclock to see if it's even worth it. My personal rule of thumb is that if an overclock gives me less than a +15% performance boost, then it isn't worth it.