Adpative vcore on z170 k6

Hi, i purchased a new Asrock board, never owned one before, i must say im very happy with it, several features, dual bios, nice and good.

Now a question: using i6700K, the auto vcore reach a very high voltage on stock, the highest i measured was 1.37.  So i decided to keep it on 4.4ghz, managed to make it functional max @1.26v vcore.

All good, no issues, just prime 95 FFT have errors with less than 1.28, but since im not getting error anywhere else, im good.

Question is, i know its not much of an issue to keep a fixed vcore @1.26v, but when i set up vcore voltage i didnt see an option for adaptive vcore, so there isnt an option for it? Im running latest bios btw.
Another question is about LLC, considering im setting the vcore fixed, does llc have any impact? When i set target vcore @ 1.26, core usually runs on 1.24v, only when reaching top 4400mhz actual 1.26v is pushed.

thanks for help.

postem wrote: Hi, i purchased a new Asrock board, never owned one before, i must say im very happy with it, several features, dual bios, nice and good. Now a question: using i6700K, the auto vcore reach a very high voltage on stock, the highest i measured was 1.37.  So i decided to keep it on 4.4ghz, managed to make it functional max @1.26v vcore. All good, no issues, just prime 95 FFT have errors with less than 1.28, but since im not getting error anywhere else, im good. Question is, i know its not much of an issue to keep a fixed vcore @1.26v, but when i set up vcore voltage i didnt see an option for adaptive vcore, so there isnt an option for it? Im running latest bios btw. Another question is about LLC, considering im setting the vcore fixed, does llc have any impact? When i set target vcore @ 1.26, core usually runs on 1.24v, only when reaching top 4400mhz actual 1.26v is pushed. thanks for help.

For whatever reason, the CPU stock clock VID/VCore for Skylake i7-6700Ks on any manufacture's mother board were crazy high. Stock VID/VCore of 1.4V were common, and even a bit above that. The Skylake i5-6600K does not have the same high stock VID/VCore.

As you saw for yourself, you can OC an i7-6700K at a much lower VCore than the stock clock VID/VCore.

I recently read in an article at a PC tech website that the high stock i7-6700K VID/VCore values is something the mother board manufactures programmed into their UEFI/BIOS, but IMO that does not make sense. The stock clock, Auto VCore setting values should be taken from the processor's VID table. That VCore is usually an indication of the over clocking potential of a CPU, lower being better. The consistency of the high stock, Auto VCore values for i7-6700Ks between different manufacture's UEFIs/boards IMO indicates it was not the manufacture's setting.

The question about the Adaptive voltage option is a good one that I have wondered about myself.

Adaptive voltage was introduced by Intel with the Haswell generation processors. Haswell is also the generation that introduced having the final VCore voltage regulation circuitry in the CPU itself, and the then new CPU Input Voltage being the main voltage supplied to the processor by a mother board. That was completely different than any past Intel processor. The mother board had always been the source of the VCore voltage. The Broadwell generation processors also use the same design as Haswell.

Skylake processors changed all that, going back to the standard of all the VCore voltage regulation circuitry being on the mother board, and of course no more CPU Input voltage. With that change, Adaptive voltage also seems to have disappeared. Which does make sense.

If you run the Intel Extreme Tuning Utility (IXTU) software, which is one version for all supported Intel processors, you will see an Adaptive Voltage option button, but it is only active/available on systems that have Haswell and Broadwell processors.

So you're not missing anything without an Adaptive voltage setting. Actually, Adaptive voltage was hated by many people, since during CPU stress tests it would automatically increase the VCore beyond the value set in the UEFI/BIOS, when AVX2 instructions were being executed. But if you were a power savings type of user, Adaptive voltage would reduce the VCore to zero volts under idle conditions. That is what inspired the "Haswell Compatible" PC power supplies, which would allow the +12V rail to remain stable with no load on it whatsoever.