I know it's a feature of the processor, but the motherboard chipset must also "understand" the feature, otherwise it won't use it. It's like giving eyeglasses to a blind person.
I get your point but why should they bring out an CPU that has a feauture like Speed Shift technology and it would not be supported by the MOBO ? If it so that would be an awfull markt strategy to let people want an newer chipset to get the full capacity of the CPU !
It was kind of driving me a bit batty, but now I got answers from Raja I have been able to to just forget about it for now. There is so little info available on this new feature. For desktop it will reduce latency up to about 50ms for CPU power ramp ups. It is more geared towards touchscreens.
It's called marketing. Most people don't check the BIOS or even CPU-Z, but they are happy about the new "feature" of their new CPU.
Because you might not want to use it--some people like running their cpus at full bore even when they are browsing the Internet... Don't know why. But I'm a believer in having an "off switch" for everything even if I don't ever want it off... The illusion of control is seductive. Even in desktops these features are very nice, as for example my desktop at home houses an AMD FX-8320E, an 8-core 95W TDP cpu that default clocks @ 3.2GHz, but with AMD Cool'nQuiet activated it runs as slow as 1.4GHz (web browsing) to 4GHz under load (game, etc.)--and switches between modes (on a core by core basis) so fast you're never aware of it--which is the idea. I would think that in any laptop in which the feature is not listed in the bios that it would be turned on by default, though, as nothing else makes sense for a laptop. Unless the motherboard bios hasn't been updated to support a new cpu, as would appear to be the case here.
Speed Shift is a new power saving feature that ramps up faster do to low level hardware control vs the running OS control, so less latency, however it is does not exists in desktops bios even though it is now supported in Win 10 Nov update. It it up to the manufacturers to update the bios. And yes it is similar to the speedstep. Both can work together as far as the limited info that is available. Speed Shift is primarily for touch screen and laptops hence why it exists there but not in desktop. As I understand it, this feature returns control from the OS to the Hardware for power needs, which benefits all platforms but the desktops see the least benefit. But yes just like any turbo or power savings features you have to choose to use them or not, like the c states and so on. Eagerly awaiting for it to implemented in various bios.
On "select" such as the Surface pro 4 it is enabled by default, these "select" devices include certain laptops as well. Now if your referring to desktop, it is not implemented in the bios at this time, that is why all the test using it only use Surface Pros or Laptops. See my previous links, Raja from ASUS explained it.