Quote Originally Posted by kidsafe View Post
Don't try turning on LLC...do it now and leave it on. You are supposed to be using at least a LLC of High at your clock speed, and possibly Ultra High. Ask anyone else for their opinion, they'll say the same thing. There is no reason for you to be running a .085V offset just to run 4.6 GHz. It's forcing your idle load to be almost 1.1V when it should be at or below 1.0V. And as you point out, you can barely even hit the 4.8-4.9 GHz range on an even more ridiculous offset headed into the +1V territory. You are doing it wrong.
Been playing with it a bit and it's working. Thanks!

I tuned the LLC and the offset so that the load vcore is the same as it was before and it seems to be just as stable. The only difference now is that the spikes are gone and my idle vcore is low (since the offset is lower).

I didn't zero the offset. I turned it down by a lot though.

I didn't realize the LLC increased the base voltage as the load is increased. During the original i7 days, LLC only eliminated the vdroop (with very little overshoot). I turned off LLC because of the unwanted voltage spikes and the rumors that it was killing CPUs.

Now, LLC seems to actually increase the vcore - so I don't have to (as much). I guess SB is very different. (or at least the mobo...)


Right now I'm testing 4.8 GHz:
LLC = Very High and offset = 0.025.

If this is stable for a few hours, then 4.5 GHz will be my new 24/7. (I do need the safety margin since I'll be doing software dev work - so I need some degree of reliability.)
I'll be retesting everything once I get Win7 SP1 with AVX LinX... I know that's gonna put a lot more extra stress on the chip.