So Intel turbo, to my understanding, works by increasing the clock frequency as long as temps are fine and the processor isn't drawing too much power. But what exactly defines and enforces that control over power draw? My 2600k, a 95w chip, was constantly drawing 110w+ according to coretemp during my testing, and yet it never dropped below the speed I set (4GHz) nor did it throttle down due to power. It chugged along happily at 4GHz while constantly drawing 110w+ for hours, not seconds. I ran a quick test at 4.6GHz with a little overvolt to see what would happen, and the system never dropped below 4.6GHz or power throttled, despite even higher power draw (around 135w I think). I never changed any power settings either... so why is it these power limits evidently don't work?
The truth is that for years now, everyone has been overclocking with Turbo exclusively, but in order to do so, the locks have to be removed so that you can get the "most you can" out of your CPU. They've ALWAYS worked... but everyone turns them off without understanding or knowing or caring.
I'm mostly curious what happens to newer systems, since it has been claimed that the new systems respect these limits, while older ones ignored them, or set them to impossible levels (you're not the first one to claim ridiculous settings like that 4095 watt limit).
This makes me wish I had a 9900k system, just to satisfy my curiosity here. I don't even care about upgrading, I just want to know how it works...
They still do this. This is the BIOS engineers either playing the benchmarking game or simply tossing the locks off so we can tune things how we want.
Newer CPUs do offer more adjustments, for sure, but they could still use a bit more improvement for truly fine-tuned overclocking, especially considering the number of cores that we have at out disposal these days. The idea of overclocking in and of itself hasn't really evolved that much and most haven't been taking advantage of all these features that can tune things to really give you the most a CPU can offer, but it takes a lot of time to be able to get this just perfect. The perfect example of this is AMD's new Ryzen CPUs showing better benchmarks when things are left at "stock"...
...So I don't think a lot of people are going to have delved that deeply into that sort of thing. Intel's offered OC capabilities that you can tune to per-core loading, but most people just tune things to the same speed and then get stuck by the slowest core.
Sure, but when the time duration is only a finite range, and usually for a small time (measured in seconds) how is it holding these power levels forever?
Every time a task completes the CPU can "idle" for a short bit and then get going again. Clocks modulate all the time and load really isn't all that consistent, and that's why it is common to use simulated (fake) loads to test CPU stability. The time range is actually pretty long in that regard, and one short bit idle allows that timer to be reset.
Now we can set the maximum multi not just per load type, but we can also set it per core. So you can really have the potential to get a whole lot more out of a CPU that you could before. X299 CPUs have been able to do this for a while, and when you have 18-28 cores and a large die, you can even literally physically rotate the heat load around the chip to where you like.
With the 9900K... meh. Maybe someone else can show what it does. Anyone here got one?