Pick anything over the 800$ range that isn’t a macbook and you’re way more likely to hit clocks than not.
Note that workstation-class (H) laptop CPUs also make compromises on performance - the Ryzen 9 4900H is 8C16T but only has 4MB L2$, 8MB L3$, and a max TDP of 54W. A desktop Ryzen 9 3950X by comparison is 16C32T and has 8MB L2$, 64MB L3$, and a 105W default TDP (and will go much higher with even basic PBO if your cooling allows). The differences on the Intel side are even starker.
Yes. And as a bonus, I can use my Alienware 17 R4 as a throwing weapon. Or for workout. And the power brick is a perfect cup warmer.
But I like it, nonetheless.
It’s obvious that it’s impossible at the moment to get 3950X performance in a laptop format, but you can get laptops able to keep temps reasonable with 35-50W, and that’s what a lot of laptop SoCs target as total power.
Those SoCs hit (and sustain) their top clocks, whatever those are for that specific SKU.
What I understood from OP is a common complaint for macbooks, that fail consistently to sustain their specified to clocks, because Apple deliberately under specifies their cooling solutions for better ergonomics (and design reasons).
This is actually completely wrong. Almost no laptops sustain their top (boost) clock on heavy workloads. Most usually only sustain max performance for minutes (or seconds!) before throttling. Here's an example chart that shows how various premium Athena/Evo U laptops perform: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Asus-Zenbook-S-UX393JA-Laptop-...
On the workstation side, people complain about Macbooks, but recent MBPs actually throttle their Intel H processors less than a comparable XPS 15 for example: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-MacBook-Pro-15-2019-in-r...
If you are interested in how modern Intel laptop chips throttle and what base and boost clocks mean, you want to do a search for PL1, PL2, and Tau. For AMD chips, you will want to look up STAPM, Fast and Slow PPT.
Note that while a i7-10875H's top "boost" clock is 5.1GHz, the sustained "base" clock is only 2.3GHz. This is so low to be meaningless as a top speed. In practice, unless your laptop's cooling is absolutely terrible, you'll probably end up mostly running in the 3-3.5GHz range under full load. In comparison, on a properly cooled desktop system, a same-gen i9-10900K desktop system should be able to maintain a sustained (all-the-time) clock of about 5GHz (very close to its 5.3GHz boost). AMD chips scale a little bit better due to 7nm having better power efficiency and how PPT works, but the same ratio roughly applies.
