Does turbo actually do anything? And why doesn't it stay on when you reboot?

[C-R-T]

Hey guys,

I've tried the turbo mode, but it doesn't seem to do anything. It doesn't make speed up mode go any faster, either. And on top of that, it doesn't stay on when you reboot the core, even if you save the core settings. It's always off when you start anew. Bug?

What does this feature actually do?

[aberu]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GZwB1aaVfc

When enabling turbo in framebuffer-enabled GBA games that are limited by the CPU speed normally, it will increase their framerate. This doesn't have anything to do with the actual speed of the game, it's going to depend on the game you are playing.

It's sorta analogous to how the Super FX Turbo option on the SNES core doesn't work with every single game.

The option not saving might be intentional since it could probably create errors in other games (this happens in the Genesis core, people report issues but realize that they had cpu turbo on and the issue goes away when they disable it later).

[FPGAzumSpass]

Yes, correct.
It doesn't help in most games, but e.g. some framebuffer games profit from it.

It's auto turned off on purpose, as you would only activate it for a single game and never save it.

[jca]

Is there a way to easily find out which games will be affected or better a list of said games?

[FPGAzumSpass]

Not really.
If you have a game that suffers from slowdowns you can try if it helps.

Some (framebuffer) games however are capped internally at 20 or 30fps and giving more CPU power to them will not help.

[badvision]

For example in Aria of Sorrow, I notice background glitches (mainly, the moon keeps glitching in the background when I'm in the rooftop garden scene.) But turning on Turbo doesn't do anything on its own, nor does it make fast forward go any faster either. I was experimenting with this while experience grinding the lazy way.

[badvision]

Turbo gives a good FPS boost to this demo: http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=24571

[siskavard]

there's a Hot Wheels game whose framerates double with turbo turned on. I can't recall which Hot Wheels game it is but there's that.