The other Steve screwed up big time completely ignoring frequencies. You have to limit the frequency (and voltage dependent of the frequency) to increase efficiency. It would be unfair comparing 7800X3D running at 5.0 GHz and at 5.5 GHz, the latter one would
always have worse efficiency (fps per watt) results.
EDIT: 7800X3D at 5.5 GHz would also overheat and peel off its secret sauce topping...
It would become 7800X-lost-3D.
Stock to stock is how every review collects and presents it's data. Supplementary OC / UV data may be provided but stock data always take precedence. I would not call it a screw up to follow generally accepted bests practices presenting data that is most applicable to the vast majority of PC users.
Setting / limiting a CPU to an arbitrary frequency like 5 GHz would not yield useful effciency data relevant to anyone. This is for multiple reasons:
1) Setting / limiting frequency hampers the CPU's boost algorithm. By setting / limiting the CPU frequency you are not allowing the CPU to fully control one of it's most crucial levers controlling it's efficiency.
2) It leaves performance / efficiency on the table. If you were to set a CPU's frequency to 5 GHz for example and that CPU could have boosted to 5.1 GHz within the same power envelope you in effect just reduced the efficiency.
3) There's really no rationaly in selecting 5 GHz specifically other than perhaps that being the 7800X3D's max clock. One could make an argument for testing at any frequency from 0.1 GHz to 5 GHz to compare the 7800X3D to the 14900K, with each different frequency producing varying results depending on where that frequency lands on the voltage curve for that processor and how well the architecture oeprates at that frequency. One could easily make the argument that it's baised to run the 7800X3D at it's max clock, which is naturally going to be at the more aggressive end of it's voltage curve. Again, an argument can be made for any frequency.
4) No one looking for efficiency is setting / limiting the frequency directly. They are setting the TDP / power draw of the CPU as that allows the CPU to dynamically scale performace according to the selection option.
In essence you'd be providing data that worthless to both regular consumers and ethusiasts. Frequency limiting is typically done to do IPC comparisons and even then the selected frequency is typically much lower to ensure much greater cross-comparability with older CPU generations.
The TLDR of this entire thread is that the 14900K can get to reasonable power consumption levels when UV'd. It's not as efficient as the 7800X3D as mutliple videos have demonstrated but des it really need to be? No. This thread was great for a few pages when people were talking about tweaking their 14900K, I liked reading that. Most of it though has been non-productive for the people dragged into the convo but to be fair, given the opening post most people should have been aware from the start the quality of discussion to be had.
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