this post was submitted on 02 Nov 2025
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Kids these days with their 5% overclocks.
Back in my day we had 100% overclocks!
You might have meant it as a joke but just in case someone else isn't aware, this button actually made your CPU slower ๐ค
Depends on the motherboard version. On later ones, the turbo actually worked to make your PC faster.
As far as I understand, it's purely marketing semantics.
The point of the 'Turbo' button is to slow the CPU down to provide compatibility with old software that was written with a fixed clockspeed, where the software would become unusably fast on newer CPUs.
Calling this a "slow" mode or "compatibility" mode wasn't very marketing-sexy however, so manufacturers just flipped it around and called the normal speed 'Turbo'.
With later systems, developers all became aware that varying CPU frequencies were a thing, and started to base their software timings on the realtime clock instead.
So in later systems there was no longer any need to have the CPU run at anything other than its maximum (normal) speed - and the turbo button simply went away.
...we had finally achieved permanent turbo.
"We called it Purbo. It didn't catch on."
If only. Not sure how common it is nawadays - definitely still happening on occasion, but for example GTA: Vice City's physics get screwed up with uncapped framerate.
Yeah, I didn't think anyone would get the joke if I posted a picture of a 486DX with the J20 jumper set. You have to be a greybeard to remember that.
My first thought was "hey I'm not a greybeard"
I am. I am a greybeard.
A 486DX with the J20 jumper set! HAH!
Turbo bumped my 8MHz 386 to sixteen megahertz
It never got switched off, except in some games that a slower CPU made easier (some games back then ran just as fast as the hardware could run them, expecting the computers or turn to be the state of the art) By the time of the machine in the picture unturbo wasn't enough so we used a TSR* program called goSlow to get specific performance
*Terminate, Stay Resident; a program that could run in the background
Run in the background? Look at you with your fancy multitasking OS
It was the wondrous system "DOS 6.2"
Doesn't that require Extended memory? I don't think that's going to catch on
It did, extended memory came about the same time we needed to show down the system
This brings out nostalgia...
66 MILES PER HOUR!