That's better, we've normal folk have heard nothing about this in 12+ months of PS5's release so to get some form of actual confirmation that it does happen is nice!
Being cheeky.......did they happen to say what it drops too? Is there a min clock it simply will not drop below
I think what's happening here is a mix up of technical terms. Not reaching maximum boost all the time is
normal behaviour for all GPUs, PS5 included. Considering the type of yields they must support and having a universal algorithm, is even more so on PS5.
Throttling as a result of insufficient voltage would only apply to PS5 if the CPU is drawing on more power that it exceeds the SOC.
The former should always be happening PS5, it does not maintain a permanent 2.23GHz clock on a boost strategy as the frequency is not fixed. I myself, am pointing to this technicality when we refute the discussion around _always being at 2.23Ghz_.
If the CPU is drawing a lot more power beyond the allocated budget and pull from the GPU, I would call that throttling.
If you want to say the PS5 rarely ever throttles, and in only rare circumstances, I would agree with you.
If you want to say that PS5 never leaves 2.23GHz like a fixed clocks, you are absolutely incorrect. The average for most GPUs will often be 90% of max boost for most GPUs, and we can go look at a large number of performance/watt graphs.
6600XT operating here at 95% of maximum boost if you eliminate outliers.
6700XT - 95% of max on average if you eliminate outliers.
Interpretation of these graphs are trivial. If you are a fixed clock system like XSX, the graph would look like a straight line. The Series consoles can only scale their core voltage on the GPU to account for workload. Less work load means dropping the voltage down further. ie, moving to the left on the graph. As workloads increase, the Series consoles will move to the right increasing core voltage since it cannot adjust frequency.
Deciding which frequency you go with has to do with the yield of chips per wafer that can handle the voltage amounts. If they decide the cut off for core voltage is 0.8V then they have to find a fixed frequency that at maximum workload will not exceed 0.8V. Deciding what a maximum workload is unfortunately difficult - which is the problem that Sony decided to solve by going variable.
PS5 with variable clocks enable it to move left and right on the graph as well as up and down. The caveat is of course, that more clock speed will result in more core gpu voltage to accommodate for all the additional signaling happening faster. But like MS they must choose a cutoff point to obtain reasonable yields to ship a mainstream product. If they choose a hypothetical 0.8V, the chip will stop increasing core voltage at 0.8V and it can only vary frequency from that point. If the workload keeps increasing it will have to bring the boost down to keep the voltage within 0.8V.
I stress again, this is normal behaviour and PS5 clocking algorithm is universal to ensure all PS5s perform the same; it must accommodate the lowest common denominator in core voltage yield.
The likelihood a boost clock PS5 has a voltage frequency curve that resembles a straight line like XSX is highly improbable, perhaps impossible. It will likely look something like the above.
Even the 6700XT drops below 2000Mhz at 1.2V, there is a small dot just between 1900 and 2000. The limits of how far the clocking can drop is variable, only the core voltage (maximum) is fixed. If the workload keeps pushing the system beyond the core voltage limit, it will just keep downclocking.
None of this is dependent on the CPU.
CPU throttling would imply it's reducing the core voltage limit from 0.8V to 0.75V or 0.7V in order to feed the CPU - and that would directly impact the clocks as well.
