Is it safe to use Turboboost on a laptop CPU?

[Animal]

Hi all,

I will soon be receiving my new toy, an Omega Supreme laptop (as detailed in my signature). The thread title is a little misleading as I believe the CPU is actually able to be used in a desktop PC.

I am aware that it is not advisable to overclock a laptop mainly because of cooling issues, however it is safe to use the Intel Turboboost functionality? I presume this is completely different to overclocking but don't want to risk causing any damage?

 

[Toxophilix]

Turbo-boost is a like a kind of limited, officially supported overclocking. That's to say, it's like overclocking in that the clock speed of the processor is increased but the speeds reached are within the design envelope of the processor. So, in general, it's 100% safe to run with the turbo-boost feature enabled.

One thing that might be relevant: on at least some of their laptop chassis Clevo themselves disable the CPU turbo-boost while the discrete GPU is running. So you can have Intel graphics + turbo or Nvidia/AMD graphics and no turbo. It's presumably a rather blunt-instrument approach to restricting temperatures. This is true, at least, of the Inferno and, according to a discussion on here the other day, the Optimus 15.6". I've no idea whether this is true of the chassis used in the Omega.Supreme.

 

[Animal]

Thanks Toxophilix, I guess if you decide to enable you just need to keep an eye on the temps? is this functionality controlled from the BIOS or an application?

 

[Wozza63]

Turbo-boost is fine, it only clocks up when needed and when its safe to do so, and once the temperatures reach a certain point, it will clock down to its standard speed, maybe lower