Finding the thermal throttling limit via stress tests
When streaming gigs of map data, the controller spikes in heat and triggers a safety throttle, killing the PCIe 4.0 speeds of the ZhiTai TiPro9000. My initial 3DMark runs were all over the place, with absolutely no consistent loading pattern. I had to aggressively clear background cache, set the queue depth to 32, and add a beefier heatsink to keep the read/write temps capped between 50°C - 57°C. After that, the frame generation curves in 3DMark shifted from jagged spikes to a smooth line, and load times improved by about 14% - 21%. Honestly, these benchmarks are a slog, and chasing numbers doesn't technically make the game code faster, but knowing exactly where the thermal wall is was a epiphany. Everything now loads with a buttery smoothness.
