[mmarks]

You're correct that I just meant a lower power state.

The author mentioned blinking cursor, so it reminded me of graphics issues. A more efficient CPU state has the possibility of slowing an app due to CPU-GPU sync points. A blocking CPU in an energy efficient state can reawaken slower from GPU done notifications, so FPS is lower. So both c-state and p-states can affect performance. General point was just utilization may not be utilization at max power.

I've worked on problems where utilization was 15% at lower power and it was a problem. But to compare different workloads, it'd be < 1% at max power.