Offset OC, worth it?

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mikedp5

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Jan 8, 2010
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Looking at the MSI Z77 Mpower vs Gigabyte UD5H.

Gigabyte UD5H over the MSI Z77 MPower

- has offset OC (is it worth it? Any workarounds for the mpower to have offset OC?)
- has better looking UEFI bios (don't know if MSI is good looking too, though I'm thinking that I won't be spending too much time in the bios just one time for OC)
- cheaper about $180 newegg

Mpower over UD5H

- has better looking board than the blue heatsinks of UD5H
- has wifi and bluetooth

I don't know which has better VRMs or components but I'm just planning to OC to about 4.5 ghz, I don't know if the VRMs, PWMs and components make a difference to that speed between the two.
 
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nukemaster

nukemaster

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Nov 23, 2004
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Either board has MORE then enough of a voltage system for your clock speed target.

So base your purchase on the features YOU want.

I personally like offset voltage. I have used it both for increasing and decreasing voltage. I like that you do not NEED to have full voltage all the time.

One thing I noticed on my 2600K was even will full voltage all the time, the cpu still cooled off very well at idle(maybe Intel just has improved the cpus ability to clock gate or something. It clocked down for sure.)
 
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nukemaster

nukemaster

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Ok.

Offsets are a voltage, negative or positive that is applied to the stock voltage.
Fixed voltages are just as they sound, FIXED at all times. Fixed voltages are used sometimes to hit MAX clock speeds(I surely got more out of my old 920 with fixed, but by that time the power consumption and heat had become rather hard to manage. This does not mean fixed will overheat a cpu, just that too much of anything can be a bad thing ).

Offset allows you to say increase the voltage by lets say 0.050(you can go much smaller if needed, I just pulled a number out of my you know what.) if you need just that little bit extra for stability.

So if the board normally gives the cpu 1.20 volts, it will get 1.250.

The reason some users like offset is that you can set it and still have idle voltage.

So if the cpu idles @ 0.90 volts, it will idle at 0.95 instead(with a + 0.050 offset), but it is "better" then being at 1.25 all day long.

This offset can also be used to decrease voltage for users looking to save power. One of my systems has an offset of -0.08750. This LOWERS the voltage at both idle and load resulting is less power consumption. I could not have done that without the offset. While I could reduce the load voltage, it would be like that all the time.

Undervolting is not as popular and requires as much testing as overclocking because you are feeding the cpu LOWER voltage then it normally gets.
 
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mikedp5

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Wow, thanks for the explanation. So with Mpower which has fixed voltage, I can't lower the voltage fed to the CPU even if it throttles down due to Speedstep? I mean, the CPU is supposed to clock down when there is no big load going on right? When you say idle, this is like in standby or browsing load?
 
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nukemaster

nukemaster

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I do not have that board so I will tell you what happened on my 2600K's board :) I am guessing it will be similar.

If I used fixed voltage, while it would be at 1.25 all the time, the cpu still clocked down and cooled down into the 30s at idle. I just wanted to use offset to squeeze every ounce of power savings out of the system. Honestly, the temperatures stayed about the same.

Now when I had older boards/cpus, fixed voltage would lead to higher idle temperatures for sure. I am not 100% sure if this is a board feature or Intel's new cpus just being that damn good.

I would check out the manual, The board may not advertise it, but may still have it. I do not think Asus advertises offset's but seem to have it on most new boards.

With a fixed voltage, you can lower the voltage, but it would be lowered all the time.

I hate to toss a wrench in things, but most boards have a feature called LLC(Load Line Calibration) that can actually increase the voltage at load. This again is all for getting more overclocking headroom. Intels specs call for a slight fall in voltage at load, this feature lets you stop this and even go as far as to increase the voltage of a loaded cpu. So in one sense, your fixed voltage will still have some play under load(v-droop by default or a small bump with high llc settings).

You will have to play with settings and keep an eye on the temps to find the best settings for you. The goal is to get your clock speed with as little extra voltage as you can, but not to have to little and crash because of it.
 
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