06-03-2020, 07:52 AM
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/intel...00/22.html
Quote:Things are different once you start unlocking the power limit. Intel intended for the Core i7-10700 to operate at 65 W, which is simply way too low for this 8-core/16-thread processor. In order to achieve their 65 W TDP promise, Intel has set the PL1 power limit to 65 W. For short, in bursty workloads the PL2 power limit will override PL1 for a few seconds as it is set at a generous 224 W. Manually adjusting the power limit is possible on all multiplier-locked "Comet Lake" processors; on all motherboards, with all chipsets. While in previous reviews, we saw very little benefit from playing with those power limits, this capability has turned into a wonderful new overclocking knob for the Core i7-10700.
Our "Max Turbo" benchmark run shows impressive results. In applications that scale across all cores the gains are up to 30% (!!); that's better overclocking potential than I've seen in a decade, even on overclocker-friendly processors. Unlike traditional overclocking, unlocking the power limit is guaranteed to leave the processor in a 100% stable configuration because it will continue to use the factory-programmed boost algorithms and voltage-frequency tables—it just works. Unlocking the power limit is best for applications like rendering, encoding, science, and simulation. For low-threaded applications, it makes no significant difference because with those, the power limit is hit rarely, so removing it brings no improvements. Gaming is similar—while it surely doesn't hurt to have a lot of cores available, these are usually only lightly loaded because the bottleneck is at the GPU. At the scientifically important resolution of 720p, we can clearly see that unlocking the power limits helps in some games.
Dialing the power limit up to the maximum has some drawbacks, though. First of all, temperatures will go up. Previously, the processor operated at 65 W, and now, it runs closer to 150 W, even 180 W with Prime95. This energy is converted into heat, which the heatsink has to transport away from the CPU surface. We measured an increase in temperatures from 43°C to 76°C—same Noctua cooler, same fan settings, just with the power limit adjusted. The Core i7-10700 comes bundled with the Intel standard stock heatsink—it won't be powerful enough for the fully unlocked processor. The good thing is that the power limit settings are very fine-grained, in 1 W steps, so you can dial in exactly the power output your cooling solution can handle, and the processor's boost and turbo algorithms will take care of the rest. The beauty of this solution is that you get to keep the boost ladder and all power savings mechanisms at low thread counts. With multiplier-based overclocking, you usually force the CPU to xxxx MHz all the time, losing a lot of power efficiency in the process.
Multi-threaded power efficiency with the power limits unlocked isn't good. It's around 20% lower than with the Core i9-10900K, which disappointed with efficiency, too. Against the Core i5-10600K, the loss in efficiency is 10%. I'm sure there's some headroom for optimizations because you can always lower the voltage a bit through the CPU Voltage Offset option in the BIOS if you want to mess with that. At stock, the Core i7-10700 is very power efficient, though. In our multi-threaded energy efficiency test, which the Zen 2 Ryzens clearly dominate, the Core i7-10700 manages to sneak into 4th place, which is better than the Ryzen 5 3600 and 3600X and right behind the 3900 and 3700X.
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Looking back at the last paragraphs, it seems the Core i7-10700 ends up as a jack of all trades, but master of none despite its huge overclocking potential. For gaming, the 10600K is just as good and cheaper unless you absolutely want to go 8c/16t for future-proofing purposes. Applications will run just as well for less on the Ryzen 7 3700X; if you have more money to spend, the Ryzen 9 3900X will make a difference. That surprises me a little bit—shouldn't there at least be one scenario where the Core i7-10700 with its amazing performance headroom can make a difference? Did I miss something? I would love to hear your thoughts, let me know in the comments.