Why Did Old PCs Have Turbo Buttons?

LGR August 24, 2015
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LGR

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Coverage of retro tech, PC gaming, and more! Classic computers, Oddware, games, thrifting, Tech Tales, etc. __________ Formerly known as Lazy Game Reviews. It is now simply "LGR."

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Looking back at the turbo button! Personal computers came with these things for years, then they just disappeared. But they're not forgotten. To clarify further: the turbo button does not overclock your CPU or make it go faster than its intended speed. Even if pressing your turbo button made things faster, that just meant it was allowing you to use your normal CPU speed. The initial function of the turbo button is just a matter of which method the PC booted up in: turbo enabled or disabled. This is what I talked about with the BIOS settings at 03:15. It made sense to have the default boot setting be "turbo disabled" for most manufacturers, because otherwise you'd have lots of people using their computer at a slower speed all the time, not knowing they had to press the turbo button to run with the advertised performance! Turbo buttons are no longer needed because programmers stopped designing software that depended on clock speed to run correctly, and people by and large stopped using older software that still did. There are exceptions to this of course, but for the most part the turbo button ceased being a requirement due to popular software of the late-90's running fine on any CPU. Nowadays, there are games that depend on frame rates to run their physics correctly, but this is another issue entirely. ● Consider supporting LGR on Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/LazyGameReviews ● Social links: https://twitter.com/lazygamereviews http://www.facebook.com/LazyGameReviews ● Music used: "Sydney's Skyline" by ALBIS https://www.youtube.com/audiolibrary/music

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