I'd like it to show how much work it does, relative to how much work it could theoretically do in the current state, and/or how much more work I could give it.

I'd like it to show how much work it does, relative to how much work it could theoretically do in the current state, and/or how much more work I could give it. Not just "how utilized is it at the current clock speed, which could change at any moment". That is: if we simplify the case to a single core laptop which has 2 power states: laptop plugged into wall, it has a min freq of 1Ghz and a max freq of 2Ghz. If on battery, it has a min freq of 500MHz and a max freq of 1Ghz. It will scale this frequency if it can, but the external constraints on whether the power cord is connected is still a hard limit. Now I want to know "how much work is being done" and "how much computing headroom do I have to add more work". So in the case of the laptop being plugged in, if it's fully utilized and running at 1Ghz then it should show 50% even though its fully utilized at the throttled clock speed. Because the current clock speed is just half of the current theoretical max for the power state. As you say, it being fully utilized should very quickly cause it to throttle up to 2GHz or something is broken. But when it does throttle up to 2GHz, hopefully in a short amount of time, it will now have half the occupancy at 2Ghz so it will keep showing 50%. And that's consistent with both 1) how much work it's actually performing, and 2) how much more work I can give it. Edit: Lol, Raymond Chen agrees and basically said exactly this in his blogpost. My comment was just a new old thing.