[HN Gopher] The return of the turbo button
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The return of the turbo button
Author : d1stc
Score : 49 points
Date : 2021-11-07 18:31 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theregister.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theregister.com)
| jraph wrote:
| Today's turbo button which does what it says (speed things up) is
| the two last buttons of uBlock Origin's first toolbar... which
| block web fonts and javascript. The fastest code is the one that
| is not downloaded and run.
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| I bet there is a whole team at Google discussing how to prevent
| people from doing just that - and push it as a technological
| improvement.
| kuu wrote:
| Does Google Chrome sound familiar to you? In that case, I
| have some news...
| keyle wrote:
| Let me introduce you to my friend Safari...
| chungy wrote:
| > it's repurposing something you already have but never use: your
| Scroll Lock key.
|
| You can tell the author doesn't use Excel :)
| MauranKilom wrote:
| TL;DR: Games may look at the efficiency cores of new hybrid Intel
| CPUs and determine the CPU is too slow to run the game. Intel
| fix: If enabled in the firmware, you can disable those cores
| (leaving only the beefy ones) by pushing scroll lock.
|
| (Disclaimer: No fact checking was performed on my end).
| Aerroon wrote:
| > _Better still, you won 't need any new hardware, because it's
| repurposing something you already have but never use: your
| Scroll Lock key._
|
| But I do use it. It's a great key for toggling screen
| recording, because it's right next to Print Screen and makes
| logical sense in terms of positioning. It also doesn't do
| anything useful, or didn't.
|
| Obviously it's not a real problem, but you can't really assume
| people don't work buttons that aren't used into their workflow.
| the8472 wrote:
| I sudo echo 0 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/boost (for AMD)
| to get constant clock rates when doing wall-time benchmarks.
| Sure, instruction counts would be more accurate but not
| everything has perf-counters built into it for measurements. I
| should hotkey that to have a turbo button too.
| rawling wrote:
| > Which is a problem if the hapless app finds a shiny new 12th-
| gen processor that looks like a bunch of Atom-class cores - it
| complains that this new-fastest-ever-chip isn't quick enough.
|
| From the article I assumed this was different from the DRM issue,
| but it links to the exact same Intel KB article.
| iggldiggl wrote:
| Years ago, Sim City 4 and The Sims 2 had a similar problem -
| depending on the processor frequency and GPU model they'd
| automatically enable or disable certain graphics features.
|
| The problem with that was that the processor frequency to
| high/medium/low-performance class mapping was being done based
| on _Pentium 4 clock speeds_ , so if you were using an AMD
| processor (or even one of the first generations of Intel's own
| Core i-processors if you still happened to be playing those
| games a few years later) with a lower clock speed but higher
| IPCs (so a roughly equivalent performance), those games would
| mistakenly assume your processor was slow and disable various
| graphics effects and other settings.
|
| Somewhat annoyingly, Maxis/EA never fixed that issue even
| though AMD processors weren't totally obscure even at that
| time, either.
|
| The saving grace was that at least things weren't totally hard-
| coded - there was a rules file in a plain text-based format
| controlling the various things that should be enabled or
| disabled based on the detected performance level, and so it was
| comparatively easy to just change the expected clock speed
| levels to something more reasonable for a non-Pentium 4
| processor.
|
| Later this was also helpful because the GPU detection started
| having its own issues a few years down the line: When AMD
| started recycling model numbers for its graphics cards, some
| newer models were then being mis-identified as some slow, older
| model that would require various workarounds/lower graphics
| settings, so again you had to manually edit the rules to fix
| things.
| mlyle wrote:
| It's basically the same thing. DRM and anticheat software is
| deliberately picky to make sure it's running in an expected
| environment: nothing that looks like processors changing,
| varying in speed, etc, that may indicate debugging.
| raunometsa wrote:
| I never knew what the button did on my old computer. I tried to
| push it for more speed, but never worked!
| corysama wrote:
| The original IBM PC could have been 5Mhz. But, it was set to
| 4.77Mhz instead because that way the NTSC out feature of the
| video card could piggyback it's signal generator off of the CPU
| clock rather than paying for an additional clock. That way you
| didn't necessarily have to buy a computer monitor. You could
| cheap out and use your existing TV instead.
|
| Later models obviously ran faster, but that broke the TV out
| feature. It seems bad to sell people a newer, more expensive
| model that loses a popular feature. So, a TV back-compat button
| was put in so you could still use your TV in cases where you
| really need to. Technically, you didn't lose the feature when
| you upgraded.
|
| Also, some games were written with the assumption of a fixed
| 4.77Mhz clock and would run unplayably fast on newer machines.
| The back-compat button would slow the machine down so you could
| still play last-year's games.
|
| But "NTSC Backwards Compatibility Button" is not a sexy name
| for a feature. So, some genius labeled it the "Turbo Button"
| even though it actually slowed down the machine.
|
| Once the early machines had it, all the later machines had to
| have it too. For a long time it simply cut the clock rate in
| half. Eventually, it did nothing and was abandoned soon after.
| phicoh wrote:
| The 286 could still run at a low enough clock speed that
| changing the clock frequency made sense.
|
| On the 386 that didn't work anymore, but there was an
| external cache. So typically, the turbo button would disable
| external cache.
|
| Then the 486 came with built-in L1 cache. And it was always
| way too fast. At that point the turbo button didn't make
| sense any more. I guess there were software solutions, but I
| don't recall any name.
| mlyle wrote:
| I turn off 486 cache (in software -- bits in CR0) to run
| 386 games. Works rather well to hit mid-386 levels of
| performance.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| On my 286, it made it go at 12MHz rather than 8MHz. It had a
| couple of 7-segment displays on the front to let me know the
| frequency.
|
| The difference was usually quite noticeable.
|
| I did use it on some older games which just ran too fast on the
| 286 with Turbo on.
| RedShift1 wrote:
| Back in the day when Pentium machines started appearing, lots
| of cases still had the turbo button but it wasn't connected.
| themitigating wrote:
| Slightly off topic but Porsche came out with an EV and the top
| trim is called "Turbo S" which lines up with their other gas car
| naming.
|
| Some people got upset because it doesn't have a turbocharger in
| it and felt it was wrong to use the word in the name.
|
| Because of turbo buttons on PCs when i was growing up, turbo
| buttons on 3rd party console controllers, and many other
| experiences i always associated with just fast, not a specific
| car part.
| Shivatron wrote:
| Critics of the Taycan Turbo badging usually make some argument
| about "Turbo" meaning the-model-that-has-turbocharger(s), but
| Porsche hasn't been consistent about that for some time. The
| iconic 911 Turbo is turbocharged, but since 2015 the regular
| non-Turbo 911 is as well.
|
| (Next we can discuss whether a "Mustang" is a kind of horse, a
| two-door sports car, a four-door electric crossover, or...)
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