Does intel turbo boost count towards a minimum-requirements?

Question

I have been asked at work to find cheaper alternatives to the default laptops being ordered and used currently by the various departments at work.

Come across a few laptops which hit a solid price point but come with intel Celeron or pentium 3700 cpu's which have base clocks of around 1.6ghz but boost up to 2.4ghz.

The software the sales force use currently is Bria 4, which states it needs a dual core 2 2.1ghz as minimum and i5/i7 2.4ghz as recommended, I don't want to suggest the cheaper builds for the sales department unless the work correctly.

Does a turbo boost speed contribute towards meeting a minimum requirement and does it maintain its clock speed to ensure the application, in this case Bria 4 works correctly?

Answer 1

Ask yourself the obvious question: If the processors ran consistently at 2.4Ghz, wouldnt they market them at 2.4Ghz?

From Wikipedia:

The increased clock rate is limited by the processor's power, current and thermal limits, as well as the number of cores currently in use and the maximum frequency of the active cores. When the workload on the processor calls for faster performance, and the processor is below its limits, the processor's clock will increase the operating frequency in regular increments as required to meet demand. When any of the electrical or thermal limits are reached, the operating frequency automatically decreases in decrements of 133 or 100 MHz until the processor is again operating within its design limits.

Basically, this means it can only keep up the higher speeds for short "boosts." When the processor gets to hot, or there isnt enough power, it will slow down again.

I just googled Bria 4 and it appears to be a softphone application. I wouldnt expect that to be a power hungry application. But, they do list minimum specifications.

If possible, purchase a laptop and test the software. If it doesnt meet your expectations, you can return the laptop.

Answer 2

The clock speed requirement is meaningless. The software doesn't care how the CPU gets its performance, just how well it performs. Minimum clock speed requirements have been obsolete and close to meaningless for about 10 years now.

A typical i5 2.4GHz dual core laptop CPU will have a passmark CPU rating of about 4,000. A typical 2.1GHz Core2 dual core laptop CPU will rate about 1,300. The 3700 ranks at about 1,900. So its performance is on the low end of the range, but inside it.