Think of TurboCore on the AMD Phenom II X6 1090T like changing gears on a bike. Being in a low gear on easy, flat terrain (three or fewer cores loaded) is great for increased speed, but if you're climbing up hill and need more power (four to six cores loaded) you'll want less raw speed but more overall power. The best overall performance comes from shifting between power and speed as the environment changes for maximum efficiency.

By default TurboCore is designed to kick in when up to three CPU cores of the AMD Phenom II X6 1090T are put under load. Turbo Core will boost the speeds of these processor cores from 3.2GHz up to 3.6GHz (in the case of the Phenom II X6 1090T), while dropping the speed of the idle cores, and raising the voltage of the entire processor to ensure stability. The entire process happens on-the-fly, with the CPU constantly monitoring the operating system and adjusting Turbo Core frequencies as necessary. Should more than three cores become loaded, TurboCore will bring all six cores of the AMD Phenom II X6 1090T back to the default 3.2GHz processing speed.

According to AMD, TurboCore will never exceed the rated electrical or thermal limits of the processor, it will simply adjust the processor's speed as needed to achieve maximum performance within the rated TDP of the chip. TurboCore is all handled directly by the AMD Phenom II X6 1090T processor itself, with no special software or drivers required for the sped adjustment to work. Any socket AM3 motherboard can support AMD CPUs with TurboCore (BIOS updates may be required for Phenom II X6 compatibility however).

AMD OverDrive 3.2.1

AMD has launched OverDrive 3.2.1 alongside the AMD Phenom II X6 1090T processor, updated to support the new Phenom II X6 processors, the AMD 890FX chipset and adding TurboCore customization options. AMD's OverDrive overclocking software utility has worked well in the past as a system tweaking tool that's been quite easy to use while still giving comprehensive tuning options for AMD hardware, and this latest version builds on that strong foundation.

If you've acquired an AMD processor that supports TurboCore technology (you can identify TurboCore enabled chips by the "T" suffix in the model number, for example the AMD Phenom II X6 1090"T" processor), AMD OverDrive will let you access the TurboCore Control window.

The TurboCore control window makes it possible to set the number of cores to be boosted (from none to five, for six-core processors), the target core boosting frequency as well as the voltage increase settings for the CPU.