This is wrong, intel gives their TDP with CORRECT turbo enabled. The problem is that nearly every popular motherboard out there enables turbo on all cores simultaneously ("enhanced multicore" for example on ASUS boards) which blows the TDP out of the spec massively.
As a Small Form Factor enthusiast, I can attest to this with utmost confidence. The chips will run at their expected TDP when configured as specified by the factory, that's just not the default on almost any enthusiast board from known companies. In the case of ASUS it can actually be a bit of a battle to get things to run as intel specifies, both with MCE and automatic overclocking behaviors.
> The problem is that nearly every popular motherboard out there enables turbo on all cores simultaneously ("enhanced multicore" for example on ASUS boards) which blows the TDP out of the spec massively.
If that's the case, then also the performance is "massively blown out", since essentially all the benchmarks around are based on popular motherboards.
Anantech did a test some time ago with a real, fixed, 95 W TDP[¹], and it ain't pretty.
It's definitely good for Intel that "every popular motherboard" is, uh, guilty of going out of spec, otherwise, the popular opinion of Intel chips would be significantly lower.
Regardless, I'm also not really convinced that this can be considered "cheating" by the motherboards. According to the official Intel page [²]:
> The processor must be working in the power, temperature, and specification limits of the thermal design power (TDP)
so ultimately, it's the CPU that sets the performance/consumption ceiling.
And you can do the same on quite a few AMD boards with "Precision Boost Overdrive", which gives you a 300W TDP on 1950x if your cooling can handle it.
Or you can ignore turbo and flat overclock the thing, which depending on workload will produce better results.
As a Small Form Factor enthusiast, I can attest to this with utmost confidence. The chips will run at their expected TDP when configured as specified by the factory, that's just not the default on almost any enthusiast board from known companies. In the case of ASUS it can actually be a bit of a battle to get things to run as intel specifies, both with MCE and automatic overclocking behaviors.