A few days after Intel officially announced its 11de Generation Core Rocket Lake, the press received an email about a new feature coming to the platform that was not in our original briefing. The purpose of this feature is to deliver more performance to users with good processors, and Intel calls it Adaptive Boost Technology.
Adaptive Boost Technology is now the fifth frequency benchmark Intel uses on its high-quality enthusiast processors, and another element in Intel’s ever complex ‘Turbo’ family of features. Here is the list, if we forget one:
| Intel Frequency Levels | ||
| Base frequency | – | The frequency at which the processor is guaranteed under warranty conditions with a power consumption not exceeding the TDP rating of the processor. |
| Turbo Boost 2.0 | TB2 | If it is in a turbo mode, this is the defined frequency at which the cores will operate. TB2 varies with the number of nuclei used. |
| Turbo Boost Max 3.0 | TBM3 ‘Favorable core’ |
If you are in a turbo mode, the best core points on the processor (usually one or two) will get extra frequency if it is the only core used. |
| Thermal Velocity Boost | TVB | In a turbo mode, if the peak heat temperature detected on the processor is below a given value (70 ° C on desktops), the whole processor will get a frequency improvement of +100 MHz. This follows the TB2 frequency tables, depending on core load. |
| Adaptive Boost Technology | ABT ‘floating turbo’ |
In a turbo mode, if 3 or more cores are active, the processor will try to provide the best frequency within the power budget, regardless of the TB2 frequency table. The limit of this frequency is given by TB2 in 2-core mode. ABT dominates TVB when 3 or more cores are active. |
| * Turbo mode is limited by the turbo power level (PL2) and timing (Tau) of the system. Intel provides recommended guidelines for this, but these guidelines can be exceeded by motherboard manufacturers (and are often ignored). Most game motherboards will implement an effective ‘infinite’ turbo mode. In this mode, the observed peak power will be the PL2 value. It is noteworthy that the 70 ° C requirement for TVB is also frequently ignored, and that TVB will be applied regardless of temperature. | ||
Intel provided a slide to describe the new ABT, but the diagram is a bit messy and does not explain it so well. Here is the handy AnandTech version.
First is the Core i7-11700K that AnandTech has already reviewed. This processor has TB2, TBM3, but not TVB or ABT.
The official specifications show that when one to four cores is charged, it will rise to 4.9 GHz in turbo mode. If it is under two cores, the operating system will move the wires to the preferred core and Turbo Boost Max 3.0 will start at 5.0 GHz. More than four core load will be distributed as above.
On the Core i9-11900, the non-overclocked version, we also get Thermal Velocity Boost which adds another +100 MHz to each core maximum turbo, but only if the processor is below 70 ° C.
We can see here that the first two cores get both TBM3 (favorite core) as well as TVB, which results in the two cores giving a bigger jump. In this case, if all eight of the core charge are charged, the turbo is 4.6 GHz, unless the CPU is below 70 ° C, then we get an overall turbo of 4.7 GHz.
Now go up to the Core i9-11900K or Core i9-11900KF, which are the only two processors with the new floating turbo / Adaptive Boost Technology. Everything outside of two cores changes and TVB no longer applies.
Here we see what looks like a 5.1 GHz turbo, with three core points to eight core points charged. This is +300 MHz above TVB when all eight core charges are loaded. But the reason I call it a floating turbo is because it’s opportunistic.
What this means is that if all 8 core points are charged, TB2 means it will work at 4.7 GHz. If there is power budget and thermal budget, it will try 4.8 GHz. If there is more power budget and thermal budget available, it goes to 4.9 GHz, then 5.0 GHz, then 5.1 GHz. The frequency will fluctuate as long as there are enough budgets to play with, and it will increase / decrease as needed. This is important as different instructions cause different amounts of power subtraction.
If this sounds familiar, you’re not wrong. AMD is doing the same thing, and they call it Precision Boost 2, and it was introduced in April 2018 with Zen +.
AMD applies its floating turbo to all its processors – Intel currently limits floating turbo to the Core i9-K and Core i9-KF in Core 11 onlyde Gen Rocket Lake.
However, one of the things we noticed at AMD is that this floating turbo increases power consumption, especially with AVX / AVX2 workloads. Intel is likely to see similar increases in power delivery. What could be a small saving here is that Intel’s frequency jumps are still limited to 100 MHz steps, while AMD can do so at the 25 MHz limit. This means that Intel will have to take bigger steps, and will probably only cross that line if it knows that it can be maintained for a fixed period of time. It will be interesting to see if Intel gives the user the opportunity to change the access points for Adaptive Boost Technology.
The other difference is that ABT on Intel has been eliminated for the time being. Users should enable it in their BIOS devices to take advantage. On the scale, I suspect most will not do so simply because most do not enter the BIOS. Enthusiasts may also decide to overclock, leaving ABT in doubt. The other alternative is that motherboard vendors will enable it by default anyway, simply because Intel says it’s within the specification.
The final word
It’s a little strange that Intel decided two days after the official announcement of Rocket Lake to discuss this feature, to the point that BIOSs that enable ABT are only now being distributed (this does not affect our Core i7-11700K review ). This indicates that the feature may not have been ready in time for the announcement, or was even ready to go, and Intel was still debating whether to actually make it a feature? Then it seems like all the Z590 motherboards we’ve seen have been rebuilt for this generation of processors – Z590 starts at $ 175, which used to be a mid-market price, something like ABT should be ready. It does make me wonder if ABT applies to B560 motherboards, or is it just a Z590 feature. Intel has stated that ABT is under warranty and will not be overclocked.
There will be some users who are already familiar with Multi-Core Enhancement / Multi-Core Turbo. This is a feature of some motherboard suppliers and it is usually activated by default, allowing a processor to achieve an overall turbo equal to the single-core turbo. It’s somewhat similar to ABT, but it was more of a fixed frequency, while ABT is a floating turbo design. That being said, some motherboard vendors may still have Multi-Core Enhancement as part of their design, which bypasses ABT.
Overall, this is a performance plus. This makes sense for users who can also control the temperature. AMD’s implementation made it possible to achieve additional performance when it switched to TSMC’s 7nm. I have a feeling that Intel will have to switch to a new manufacturing node to get the best out of ABT, and we may see the feature on the more common CPUs.