[STRML]

Turbo will move the processor above the rated TDP when there is thermal headroom to do so. Turning it off means you'll max out at the rated TDP.

Now, TDP used to mean the max power of the chip, but as Intel's process failures left them holding the bag with no significant performance updates to speak of, they started overclocking their chips more and more so they could claim that the new gen was faster than the last.

Try turning off Turbo Boost on a 2020 i9 Macbook Pro - you actually get a usable machine with reasonable battery life with it off, instead of the hot toaster with 2hr battery life that Intel gave you. But it'll max at something like 2.2GHz when you paid for just over 4.

[hsuduebc2]

Wow. How to they get their score in benchmarks? You can't "temporarily overclock" your cpu for too long right?

[STRML]

Correct. This makes benchmarks, at least on thermally limited machines like laptops, very unreliable. High-quality review sites like notebookcheck spend a lot of time dealing with this by doing prolonged benchmarks and measuring thermals.

And there's an honest question to ask: how do you use your computer? If you're just browsing the web 95% of the time and occasionally opening Word/Excel, then short bursts of high power when you need it is perfect. But if you run longer tasks like many programmers or artists do, these machines simply fall down in sustained use.

This is one reason why the M1/M2 architecture has been such a revelation for professionals who primarily work on laptops. It can run full-bore for hours, because the lower-end chips (which are faster than any Intel released at the time) barely hit 10W at max load.

[Dylan16807]

You can keep it up if everything can handle the current and heat.

A typical Intel chip on default behavior will go to maximum boost, limited by watts, for about half a minute. Then it will drop to a lower number of watts. Note that base clock gets ignored here; in this mode the base clock is just a minimum promise.

Many desktop motherboards easily or even automatically remove the time limit.