Computer turbo button

[Lysander]

Whoever had one of these? My brother used to have a PC with a 'turbo' button on it, which would throttle the CPU from 8Mhz to a mind-meltingly fast 25Mhz.

Faster than the speed of thought.

 

[Lysander]

So could you run it in 'turbo mode' all the time? or would it throttle back when it got a bit toasty?

That's what I never understood. Why just not always run it at 25? It was probably just a gimmick, rather than an extra boost that was available when running demanding applications like... Minesweeper.