Ah! Thanks for clarifying. Yeah, his comment does say "high 80s" as you note so that is good if it stayed at full clock speeds.
That said, I sure wish the processor industry (Intel, AMD, NVIDIA, Motorola, Via and all the rest) would get together and come up with an industry standard on sensor placement and terminology. And then I wish all motherboard/chips makers and all the hardware monitor software programs would agree to follow those standards too.
I note the ARK says under Package Specifications for that CPU 74.04°C for Tcase but HWMon reports the "core" temps which often are higher than Tcase. But without a direct comparison/sensor reading, it is hard to really know how close those "high 80s" really are to the throttling thresholds.
Even among Intel processors, they are inconsistent. Note with the i7-3612QM, the
ARK makes no mention of Tcase or Core temps under Package Specifications but instead, shows a smoking hot 105°C for the Tjunction temp - which is measured "at the processor die" somewhere.
At any rate, a 20°C drop is significant - assuming the previous application of TIM was still intact.