Core clock speeds are just some of the many variables that need to be adjusted on the fly. Everyone wants to provide as much performance as possible within the platform power limits. But a sudden change in the instruction stream can cause a big swing in a CPU core's power draw even if the core's clock speed and target voltage remain constant. And new instructions can show up a lot faster than the voltage regulators can respond. So handling transients is tricky, but it also looks like this case may be less about transients and more about a particular motherboard not being able to supply stable power for a workload that's tuned to push the limits as much as possible. Gigabyte may have missed their mark when considering what the worst-case power draw situation is that they need to design and test for.
