Groo (charlie.delete@this.semiaccurate.com) on November 26, 2020 1:46 pm wrote:
> Chester (lamchester.delete@this.gmail.com) on November 25, 2020 3:36 pm wrote:
>
> > Integrity is down to how much you trust the reviewer running the benchmarks....if a
> > reviewer does something dumb, intentionally or not, I don't think rules will stop them.
> > By dumb I mean stuff like leaving MCE enabled and presenting results as 'stock'.
> >
> Doesn't Spec mandate disclosure of such things? I haven't looked closely at such things but
> it makes it hard to do things like that and hide the fact. Which is how it should be.
>
> -Charlie

https://www.spec.org/cpu2017/Docs/runrules.html#rule_4.4.2 isn't very clear.

If you've over or under clocked, you're supposed to put that in nominal or max frequency fields.

It's not clear whether MCE counts as overclocking though. A 9900K official result lists 3600 MHz as the nominal frequency, even though at stock a 9900K will run all cores at 4.7 GHz. So the 'nominal frequency' field is pretty much meaningless.

Another thing board vendors do is raise or remove time limits on PL2 power, allowing Intel chips to sustain higher power targets (and higher clocks) for longer. Technically this isn't stock either, but it's also questionable whether it's considered overclocking.

There's a lot of debate about how reviewers should treat this stuff. But it doesn't seem like SPEC cares - they only care that the system vendor supports the configuration (which is irrelevant to people buying their own parts).