Hi all sifus and pros..

I just realize that my processor is running faster than the maximum speed. As far as I can remember I did not temper with any Bios setting or overclock it at any point.

Is this some sort of driver issue or its just a Windows 10 bug?. If my processor keeps running at this speed for long term will it shorten its lifespan substantially?.

uh? that's called turbo boost from intel. your processor has this feature. it's normal don't worry

Ahh I see... but is it normal to have turbo boost even in idle? o_o

I have a Y50 which uses the same processor as that in your screenie.

Mine turbo boosts even when I am doing nothing. To stop it from doing that I need to change the power options in the Lenovo battery tool to medium.

The dumbest thing is that when I play games, it doesn't boost

I see I see.. Mine is a Asus G551JM. Don't think asus provide such tool to set the power management..

yes it's normal. in general your computer will do 2 things when it runs: 1. to interact with you (user); 2. to run background processes (os related, or software-related, eg. checking for windows updates, retrieving latest antivirus patterns). usually if you installed anything (os, software) with their default settings, these software will do their own things in background (especially when the computer is at idle state). all these things are made automated for your convenience as a user. when they run in background, they will use your cpu and ram to do their tasks. so, you will notice that even if you do nothing with your computer, the cpu might be still boosted to handle such tasks.

note that this also means the more software you installed, the more background processes might be introduced to your computer. all these will impact the system resources in your computer (eg. cpu, ram, internet bandwidth) this is why most of the times we will configure the os, and each software, by disabling features that we do not need, so that we can free up things like cpu and ram for our own usage.

This post has been edited by horns: Jan 28 2016, 11:13 AM

oo.. okay.. haha

Just worried that its gonna harm the processor in a long run..

Thanks for the explanation

Is it possible to disable the turbo boost??

Yes, can disable in BIOS.

will it cause harm to computer if i enable it ?

It is enabled by default as it is a feature from Intel, no harm to your PC but it will generate extra heat due to higher clock speed, if you think you are ok with base clock, then disable it in BIOS.

Sorry, I mean will it cause harm to the pc if I disable the turbo boost ?

Should not be a problem

I am happy with 4ghz on my i7 after 1 year

You'll see max turbo boost when the process uses fewer cores.

In gaming, it's likely many cores are used so the turbo boost may not kick in.

No harm, it is a feature which can be enabled or disabled after all.

That makes sense. Thanks for the explanation. So far there isn't much noticeable performance difference from boost or not so I never made any concern out of it.

Glad it's behaving normally though.

Every processor come to my lab will get overclocked, unless it's on a notebook.

That said, I only feel the difference when I do processor intensive work. For general purpose, you won't even feel the difference.

One easy way to look at things is that you launch the Windows Task Manager and observer the CPU utilization.

On idle it's pretty much around 2- 3% utilization, rarely going being 10% unless it's a low-end processor. Even as I'm typing this my CPU utilization is only 2% with occasional spike to 5% - 7%. I'm on an AMD FX-8350 processor.

if lets say you only want your processor to work at normal speed not turbo (even if it can),
got to power config, set the max processor power to 99%. I am now using desktop, cant show you where the page is. try this.

edit: and set the min to 5%.

This post has been edited by ai_m: Feb 15 2016, 11:35 AM