Intel Turbo Boost

Intel Turbo Boost is Intel's trade name for a dynamic frequency scaling feature in certain versions of the company's central processing units (CPUs) that automatically raises the operating frequency beyond the processor's nominal frequency when demanding tasks are running, thus enabling a higher performance.

The frequency is accelerated when the operating system requests the highest performance state of the processor. Processor performance states are defined by the Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) specification, an open standard supported by all major operating systems; no additional software or drivers are required to support the technology. The design concept behind Turbo Boost is commonly referred to as "dynamic overclocking".

When the workload on the processor calls for faster performance, the processor's clock will try to increase the operating frequency in regular increments as required to meet demand. The increased clock rate is limited by the processor's power, current, and thermal limits, the number of cores currently in use, and the maximum frequency of the active cores.

Turbo Boost is enabled on the Core i3, Core i5, Core i7, Core i9 and Xeon series of processors manufactured since 2008, more particularly, those based on the Nehalem, and later microarchitectures.

Support across CPUs

Frequency increases occur in increments of 133 MHz for Nehalem processors and 100 MHz for Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge, Haswell and Skylake processors. When any electrical or thermal limits are exceeded, the operating frequency automatically decreases in decrements of 133 or 100 MHz until the processor is again operating within its design limits. Turbo Boost 2.0 was introduced in 2011 with the Sandy Bridge microarchitecture, while Intel Turbo Boost Max 3.0 was introduced in 2016 with the Broadwell-E microarchitecture.