Correct. This makes benchmarks, at least on thermally limited machines like laptops, very unreliable. High-quality review sites like notebookcheck spend a lot of time dealing with this by doing prolonged benchmarks and measuring thermals.
And there's an honest question to ask: how do you use your computer? If you're just browsing the web 95% of the time and occasionally opening Word/Excel, then short bursts of high power when you need it is perfect. But if you run longer tasks like many programmers or artists do, these machines simply fall down in sustained use.
This is one reason why the M1/M2 architecture has been such a revelation for professionals who primarily work on laptops. It can run full-bore for hours, because the lower-end chips (which are faster than any Intel released at the time) barely hit 10W at max load.
You can keep it up if everything can handle the current and heat.
A typical Intel chip on default behavior will go to maximum boost, limited by watts, for about half a minute. Then it will drop to a lower number of watts. Note that base clock gets ignored here; in this mode the base clock is just a minimum promise.
Many desktop motherboards easily or even automatically remove the time limit.
And there's an honest question to ask: how do you use your computer? If you're just browsing the web 95% of the time and occasionally opening Word/Excel, then short bursts of high power when you need it is perfect. But if you run longer tasks like many programmers or artists do, these machines simply fall down in sustained use.
This is one reason why the M1/M2 architecture has been such a revelation for professionals who primarily work on laptops. It can run full-bore for hours, because the lower-end chips (which are faster than any Intel released at the time) barely hit 10W at max load.