Poll: Poll pls: Turbo buttons

Is diddums a prat?

  • Yes

    Votes: 67 89.3%

  • Yes

    Votes: 47 62.7%
  • Total voters
    75

Diddums x

Diddums x

Diddums x

Caporegime
Joined
24 Oct 2012
Posts
26,358
Location
Yer nan's knickers
A: Always on, all the time!
B: I like to conserve energy!
C: Diddums is a prat!



Right, turbo buttons. You know them, I know them, odds are we've all had them in some form or another our entire lives. Remember the old PCs with a turbo button? I certainly do. Never turned the bugger off, may as well have been a jumper on the mobo. Just doing a bit of vacuuming with our little battery operated Dyson jobbie I was thinking about the turbo button and how it's always on. Does anyone turn these things off? Am I being a prat and wasting teh energiez and killing polar bears?

Discuss. Personally, I'm an all the power, all the time kind of guy. Unless it's a vehicle or something which would be more uncomfortable with the max settings on.


GO!
 
Did turbo buttons on the old 486's etc actually do anything... I thought they were just connected to an additional LED, sure that wasn't any motherboard connection.

Option C I think.
 
I remember hearing it was useful for some games that didn't work well with higher clock speeds, as they worked on clock ticks rather than actual time. Turning off turbo throttled the cpu back to a speed at which they worked better.
 
Armageus said:
Did turbo buttons on the old 486's etc actually do anything... I thought they were just connected to an additional LED, sure that wasn't any motherboard connection.

Option C I think.
Click to expand...

Yes some programmes couldn't run at faster clock speeds IIRC so had to be slowed down.

Also, on vacuum cleaners, if going around delicate paintings/furniture/equipment I turn the suction down to prevent any potential damage.
 
On my first PC (486 DX33) I felt sorry a bit sorry for the computer having the turbo button on as felt like I might be pushing it beyond its comfort zone... Trouble was it was very slow without so I left it on regardless.
 
Vonhelmet said:
I remember hearing it was useful for some games that didn't work well with higher clock speeds, as they worked on clock ticks rather than actual time. Turning off turbo throttled the cpu back to a speed at which they worked better.
Click to expand...

Yeah, Scorched Earth was certainly a game that played better with the turbo button off at the time. It was impossible to control the turret when my Intel DX4-100 was cranked up to max.
 
Vonhelmet said:
I remember hearing it was useful for some games that didn't work well with higher clock speeds, as they worked on clock ticks rather than actual time. Turning off turbo throttled the cpu back to a speed at which they worked better.
Click to expand...

Yes, that was it. Manual clockspeed throttling. Actually a "slow" button rather than a "turbo" button, but relabelling "slow" as "normal" and "normal" as "turbo" was better marketing.
 
Diddums said:
No idea if they did. I know on my 386 they changed the little display from 30mhz to 33mhz :cool:
Click to expand...

The display showed 99 MHz on my 386. I even briefly kept a straight face when I told some people I had a test sample of a new model of CPU that wasn't on sale yet :)

The displayed number was determined by jumpers behind it in the case and had no link to actual CPU clock speed. In that particular case it was just for show.
 
Turbo mode off on the little Dyson is perfect for getting fluff off hard floors or general dusting, and you get a longer runtime out of it. Turbo mode activated for doing softer materials with the brush attachment thing.
 
I had a fan assisted oven with a turbo grill.
It was my setting of choice for most cooking.

Not strictly a button though.
 
I still remember trying to play Wing Commander on my 386 and having it run at ludicrous speed because it was about 4 times faster than the xt :D
There used to be a program you could run in dos (moslo or slomo?) to waste cpu cycles to get the machine down to a speed such software could run at.

I don't think the turbo button was actually connected on most machines after the 386 as software wasn't so dependent on the actual clock speed (or at least programmers had learned not to tie things directly to clock speed), unless it was an EA game (Ultima 9 I'm looking at you!), but now console games often seem to tie some functions to the screen refresh rate for reasons of idiocy resulting in issues if you want to run a PC port at a better frame rate.
 
At university I built a turbo button for my turbo button and then stuck a mirror either side so I could watch myself turboing the turbo into infinity and beyond. We all need more Turbo, MOOOOOOORE I tell you, MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORE!
 
I'm of the era where the Turbo button wasn't really used, more just an LED that lit up. I think it's the el cheapo third party controllers that had it as an option.
 
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