AVX/AVX2 also cause downclocking, to various degrees depending on which instructions you use, and which CPU. Some older CPUs will downclock the entire CPU if e

AVX/AVX2 also cause downclocking, to various degrees depending on which instructions you use, and which CPU. Some older CPUs will downclock the entire CPU if even 1 core is doing AVX instructions, newer ones downclock just the core. In general, when AVX-512 is used in any sensible way, the performance gain from it is rather large. It isn't just twice as wide as 256bit AVX, it also is much more flexible, allowing more efficient vectorization of many algorithms. You often get more than a 2x speedup, despite the increased downclocking. And AVX-512 is present on the newest intel cpus. Hopefully AMD will introduce it with the next generation, since their downclocking method is superior in some ways. (you could use AVX-512 with less care to be sure you are doing enough AVX-512 work at a time, but benchmarking is harder since clock speeds vary in real time depending on heat and other factors)