Excellent, thanks. That's been my impression overall with every machine I've used, and indeed it makes some sense: after all, doesn't throttling exist for a reason? If machines weren't meant to throttle as part of overall thermal management strategies, then Intel and other processor manufacturers wouldn't build the capability into their chipsets. Instead, they'd probably just rate their chips for lower temps and have a safety cutoff to avoid catastrophic failure (e.g., when a machine turns on accidentally in a car with ambient temps of 120 deg. F or greater).
It seems to me that throttling provides a good mix of maximum performance when really needed by increasing operating parameters, but avoiding extremely limited lifespans by providing a means to managed thermal performance. I know that I'd rather have an SP3 that's as thin and light as it is and that throttles when it needs to, but that's capable of bursts of higher performance when I really need it--as opposed to simply hard-limiting the performance or making a thicker and heavier machine.
