Rapidly Fluctuating CPU Frequency

[Daharen]

So the way this question is normally asked I think incurs the 'wrong' sorts of answers. I want to phrase this very carefully:

Is it normal for people who use variable frequencies to NEVER have stable low frequencies when idle, that is low frequencies are AT BEST only momentary while the CPU frequency rapidly swings between the lowest frequency and high frequencies... OR is there a way to make the processor stop rapidly fluctuating and maintain 'low' frequencies in idle unless it REALLY needs to use all cores or significantly overclock for the current processes? 

[Enderman]

That's how CPUs work.

When they need to compute something the frequency boosts up.

Even at idle there are thousands of things happening in the background of a computer.

[Mira Yurizaki]

The clock speed at which the CPU operates in is controlled entirely by the CPU. The OS can request it to go to certain power states, but this does not directly control how fast the CPU operates or how many cores are being pushed.

[Daharen]

Just now, Enderman said:

That's how CPUs work.

When they need to compute something the frequency boosts up.

Even at idle there are thousands of things happening in the background of a computer.

So, to be clear, the idea of a constant or stable downclock during low usage states is simply not a thing in modern CPUs, and I'm also assuming that presumably there is no actual overhead, stress, or additional power consumption or heat generation from rapidly fluctuating frequencies? 

[Enderman]

1 minute ago, Daharen said:

So, to be clear, the idea of a constant or stable downclock during low usage states is simply not a thing in modern CPUs, and I'm also assuming that presumably there is no actual overhead, stress, or additional power consumption or heat generation from rapidly fluctuating frequencies? 

If you have no programs running then a clean OS might downclock and stay there for a while, or on low power modes that prevent boosting.

No there is no harm done other than slightly higher temps.

[Bitter]

Do you mean C states? For Intel at least the CPU will have a minimum speed (Haswell is around 800mhz) that it will idle at while using very very little power (under 2W for the whole package) when there is nothing happening. When things happen (mouse moves, background process wakes up, etc) the CPU will change state from say C6 to whatever speed is needed to do the work. Seeing the cores bounce around from .8ghz to a few ghz is normal. If you're running windows check your minimum processor speed in the power plan settings, it should be 0% minimum, there's no reason to not set it to that or none that I'm aware of.