How would you distinguish thermal throttling from insufficient CPU capacity?

Monitor temperature, clock frequency, utilization, power limits, and workload behavior over time. Thermal throttling can show high temperatures accompanied by reduced clocks and declining sustained performance even when the workload is unchanged. Insufficient CPU capacity can show sustained demand without thermal-limit behavior. Check cooling, airflow, dust, fan operation, and supported power settings using vendor guidance. Compare a short burst with a sustained test. Do not infer overheating from a warm case alone or disable protective limits to force a benchmark result.