Variable clocks change frequency. PC and phones throttle frequencies based on thermals and ambient temperature, leading to downclocks in order to avoid overheating and shutdown. But as you can imagine, throttling is more likely to happen in hot environments than it is for colder ones, you can't have that happen in a console that's supposed to perform consistently no matter where you live. Instead PS5 has a set power budget, which results in the CPU and GPU having their own power budgets. Clocks change based on workloads. Some workloads consume more power than others. If the power budget is exceeded, clocks will lower on one or both processors. But I expect this downclock will be relatively small and quick. Worst case, a 10% drop in frequency to drop power consumption by 25-30%, or just 2-3% downclock to reduce power consumption by 10%. The GPU will be prioritized, so expect the CPU to downclock most of the times.