Voltage and dynamic vcore

[slugman]

Figured I'd make another thread since it's straying from the topic of the last one.

I'm trying to achieve a stable 3.36 overclock with an i7 860 and a gigabyte P55A-UD4P board. Have a coolmaster 212+. Stock @ full load with prime95 CPU is at 60C.

I have 1600Mhz Adata RAM.

Turbo disabled, everything else enabled.

Setting: Vcore: Normal, Dynamic Vcore= +.10625 temps get way hot at load (85+C)

with dynamic Vcore disabled and Vcore set to 1.17 temps at load are 72C ish.

Vcore=normal, dynamic=.05625 gives 80Cish load temps.

I really want dynamic vcore for the idle temp/power saving benefits, but also want lower load temps. I notice that with a dynamic vcore of +.05625 my CPU goes down to .928V on idle, way lower than Normal minus dynamic setting. So clearly it's not giving me the Normal vcore -/+ dynamic vcore. A little confused as to what's going on.

At any rate, what would be the recommended settings for dynamic vcore with my 160 bclk and what exactly is it doing on the low end? What do negative dynamic vcore settings do?

Thanks for any and all advice.


Also: With a bclk of 160 and those settings, is it safe to turn turbo on?

With turbo on Prime95 temps push 80.

EDIT: disabling line load calibration made Normal +.10625 acceptable. Temps now 75C max at full load @3.36. This is fine, yes? What does line-load calibration do? compensate for a cpu voltage drop? was this causing higher voltages than I though I had?

 

[Ben90]

Line Load Calibration does exactly what you suggested, compensate for voltage drop. There is a debate going on whether or not LLC is better than just using a higher starting voltage to begin with in this thread: http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=271760

LLC for the most part is great however in situations when your not pushing voltage to the absolute limit.