Quote Originally Posted by nijel2@comcast. View Post
Why there is only 2 LLC levels? Other boards has 5. Is it a hardware limitation for this board or something?
Yes the other boards with multiple levels have digital VRM systems, this has an analogue system. You have three levels, standard, level1, and level2, you have what 2 less levels than the ASUS boards?

Either way Standard is meant to be for normal people or those who want a energy efficient system, level1 is supposed be for mild overclockers who want really low vdroop and vdrop, level2 is supposed to be for extreme ocers who want the most stability in voltage delivery. That is why level2 will never drop voltage under 10mv of what you set it at idle and will increase voltage during load. So what you set is what you get plus more, a lot more actually.

In the past there was no LLC, then we got smarter PWMs(analogue and digital) and now most of them use separate ICs for loadline equation and phases switching. Now we have LLC in multiple levels on the good boards(Gigabyte and ASUS mainly) not every digital vrm board has multiple levels of LLC.

For instance digital PWMs can do all this loadline stuff from inside the PWM is one of the benefits of a digital PWM, the VRM is under software control. With the Rapamge3 extreme and other x58 board with digital PWMs the max we saw was 3 levels of LLC 0%, 50%, and 100%. For X58 GB had almost all their X58A with standard, level1, and level2 in an analogue vrm, this is was pretty damn good because it countered all mainstream ASUS boards with a more complex PWM system. So they were on par in the top Rampage/Maximum VS. UD9/UD7(formula=UD5).

Now that Analogue and digital PWMs are just as precise this kind of ruins of one digital PWMs strong points of being more precise(precision comes from the PWM logic circuit in the case of PWMs software is much more complex than hardware thus is more able to be more precise in theory) because they usually always are(a few mv). Anyways with VRD12 Intel is trying to force everyone to use digital PWMs by the end of 2012, so that is why you see the shift toward a requirement that all PWMs allow a minimum of 5mv voltage increase as well as an extra SVID digital channel. This is pretty damn huge, not many analogue PWMs OR Digital PWMs have this ability, but companies that spearhead this industry(Intersil=analogue) (Chil=Digital) really hit the ball with it, Intersil got its VRD12 certification before Chil did which is impressive as well.

Intel also added in stuff like 4 phases server boards that boast 180amps which is pretty damn hard to do. This new spec demands that the VRM industry basically improve heavily on the analogue(or make it semi digital which it already is) or adopt even better digital. It is pretty impressive what Intel has done. The thing is that analogue and Digital PWMs aren't all that different, right now we have a large mix of analogue and digital signals and both types of PWMs have to use ADC(analogue to digital converter) or DAC(the opposite converter) to change all the signals to what they need. in the past they were almost all analogue in the future they will almost all be digital, its on Intel's time. Digital allows for much smaller VRMs though.



This is VRD12 PWM spec its a damn good read:
http://wenku.baidu.com/view/7e1bbcd8...6f533221c.html