MultiCore Enhancement: The Debate About Free MHz
 

If you have been keeping up to date with any of the AnandTech motherboard reviews lately, there has been one topic that has been hot on my lips, and it is called ‘MultiCore Enhancement’. As an exercise in explanation and opinion, we would like to know your thoughts on this, and how it would affect you as a user.

To start, let me describe what we are talking about. On the latest line of Intel CPUs, we have multiple cores all willing to provide computational throughput. The CPU itself has a listed stock speed, and a thermal window to ensure stable running. At the stock speed, the CPU does not hit the thermal window, so Intel assign higher speeds depending on how much computational power is needed, and this is adjusted to fit inside the power requirements. Thus when a user requires only one CPU core, the CPU can be allocated the maximum turbo speed – when more cores are requested, the speed of the CPU drops until all cores are in use. This is what Intel designates the ‘Turbo Boost’ for the CPU.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6214/m...about-free-mhz