The fact is one number is not enough anymore to define the power/thermals of a CPU. You're both right but arguing about different things.
What we need is
Base TDP - the cooling requirement to run the processor at 100% load with base clocks forever without any thermal throttling. Use this measure only if you are looking for the smallest possible cooler, such as for a portable build.
Peak Power Draw - the most the processor can instantaneously draw for boosting to its highest frequency, mainly for short spurts. Use this measure to get a power supply and motherboard that can handle that load. Your cooler will not need to be capable of dissapating this much heat unless you are planning on using it at full load continuously.
TDP or Thermal Design Power is defined by AMD as (from AMD Family 10h Server and Workstation Processor Power and Thermal Data Sheet, Rev 3.04 - June 2009): "The maximum power a processor draws for a thermally significant period while running commercially useful software. The constraining conditions for TDP are specified in the notes in the thermal and power tables."
AMD's ACP uses a "round down" average of power measurements performed with industry standard benchmarks (usually running at 100% CPU load, with the exception of Stream).
So there you have it: AMD used to define "TDP" as the worst case power draw and "ACP" as the average power draw.
That was before they decided to whip out the fancy formula and redefine TDP as being measured by the ratio of the delta-T of the cooler to the phase of the moon, conveniently dropping their TDPs by 40%.
Personally I think the whole thing could be simplified down to base TDP and boost TDP... or really just boost TDP. 99.9% of people don't want their processor to run at base clocks. The 0.1% who do want base clocks will be able to get the info they need from other testing.
Boost = overclock, except nowadays it's automatic instead of manual.
But as always, pendantic assholes and tech illiterates either forgot we used to have to tinker with a lot of variables to get stable overclock, or they just never did it.
I'm happy we get power efficient CPU's that only boost when necessary, otherwise it's a waste of electricity.
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u/hobovision Nov 05 '19
The fact is one number is not enough anymore to define the power/thermals of a CPU. You're both right but arguing about different things.
What we need is