Man Vs. Machine: Four Automatic Overclocking Techs, Compared

Manual Overclocking And TurboV EVO

We used the overclock settings from our P8Z68 Deluxe firmware description to set Intel’s Core i7-2600K to 4.73 GHz at 1.35 V. Actual settings include a 1.335 V CPU core with “Extreme” Load-Line Calibration at a 47x multiplier and 100.5 MHz BCLK.

Asus’ class-leading memory overclocking capability allowed us to simultaneously use our memory’s XMP-2200 values to reach DDR3-2145.

Asus TurboV EVO requires one reboot to enable live ratio changes from Windows. A few of the firmware’s clock and voltage settings are repeated here, though the software’s maximum overclock came up around 100 MHz short of what we were able to demonstrate using the firmware to dial in our desired settings.

Changes to the CPU core voltage showed up in both CPU-Z and Asus Probe II, but were not reflected in the TurboV EVO menu. This might be because we set the board's BIOS to fixed (rather than offset) mode. We believe the relatively large delta in overclocking capability between software and firmware settings is most likely due to differences in “Load-Line Calibration” between automatic (software) and manual (firmware) adjustment methods.