Here it is in PDF format if you want to print it or read it on the go.

http://www.mediafire.com/?ala55zrlaaloqa7

With the release of Intel’s 2nd Generation processors, code named Sandy Bridge, come a variety of
boards from a variety of companies that fulfill every need that can be imagined. Today I will take an in
depth look into overclocking these new CPUs and take an in depth look at the performance offerings of
GIGABYTE’s new P67A-UD7.

Previously I did in in depth analysis of the board and all of its various ICs and components P67A-UD7 in
Depth Look at The Board

The performance review includes: Voltage read points, SLI performance, Overclocking and CPU
performance, SATA6G performance, power consumption, and a look at some board features.Continue
to Overclocking Made Simple if you just want to learn to OC, if you want to only see performance review
click here:

Overclocking Made Simple:

If you are brand new to overclocking or a veteran from the Pentium 4 days you are in for a crash course
in the “new generation” of overclocking to go along with a “new generation” of processors. Turbo
multipliers are a new name for ratios and K series chips are the only ones that want to overclock past 4
GHz.

What you want to initially do is increase your turbo multipliers or CPU clock ratio. Now if your board is
properly certified for Serial VID, you can usually tell by VDR12 Certified or if you’re VID changes after
changing the multiplier. If this does not occur, skip down to the voltage section. If you board has proper
SVID implemented you can keep reading (most do).

First you need monitoring and Stability programs. You need CPU-Z, at least one Temperature monitor, a
stability tester, and one voltage monitor. You will also need a K series processor to overclock and a P67
Chipset motherboard like this one:

REQUIRED: CPU-Z will give you processor frequency info as well as Vcore
REQUIRED: Stability program, Intel burn Test is popular as is LinX (they are basically identical), Prime 95
is also very good.
Required: Pick one or more or your own monitoring software:
HWMonitor will give you voltages and temperatures
Motherboard Software (such as EasyTune 6(GIGABYTE), TurboV(ASUS)): will give you voltages and
temperatures as well as in windows voltage and multiplier change options.
Core Temp for Temperatures
Real Temp for Temperatures
Speed Fan: system monitoring
Step #1: Do not overclock RAM yet, let it run at stock frequencies. RAM is not like it was on previous
platforms, it can run at 1333mhz and you can do 5.2ghz, believe me I have. Let’s tackle one thing at a
time.

Set the frequency you want for a high but modest overclock (not your final), something like 4.0- 4.5 GHz,
set ratio or turbo frequencies (40x-45x), if you only have the option for turbo frequencies make sure
they are all the same. If you are on a GIGABYTE board, and just want to use one Ratio setting, you can
enable Ratio Change in OS option; this will disable the Turbo Settings (or you can also disable Turbo and
OS Ratio Change).

If you enable Turbo Mode (which you do not have to and I recommend not doing) you will need to set
each multiplier. Note that on many motherboards you do not have the option to OC without turbo, its
ok, 52x multi is 52x multi whether its turbo or not. On GIGABYTE boards, enabling turbo shouldn’t make
your multiplier go crazy, I have tested on the latest and even old BIOSes and you can use Turbo and the
multiplier not drop. Turbo Mode or no Turbo Mode, your multiplier will stick steady. If for some reason
it is jumping around, you have the option to disable Turbo Mode.

I want to also mention that Turbo Mode, Real Time Ratio Change in OS, or even just disabling both make
no change to your Overclock or affect its stability. The only thing that can help is with turbo mode you
have the options to extend and set maximum TDP and TDC, I will talk about this later. If you have retail
CPU please enable Internal CPU PLL Overvoltage option.

Make sure you DISABLE all of the following advanced CPU features (to stabilize multiplier and voltage):
C1E-DISABLE (With some boards like ASUS please keep C1E, EIST, and C3/C6 enabled at the moment,
MSI and Intel boards you can turn these things off, but I am guessing Asrock will need it on as well)
EIST-DISABLE
C3, C6 States-DISABLE
CPU Thermal Monitor-DISABLE

Do not touch BLCK right now as it always needs to be lowered as you overclock higher, at stock or low
OC (under 4.3 GHz you can increase BLCK no problem). Make sure you make note of Stock
VID/Vcore/VCC (found under voltage options). Upon reboot if the system boots into BIOS check the new
VID under voltages settings or CPU Vcore (VCC) under health monitoring, take this value and compare it
to this:
Stock-4GHz on Stock VID
4.0-4.3GHz 1.300v-1.325v
4.3-4.5GHz 1.325v-1.375v
4.5-4.8GHz 1.375v-1.450v

Above you can see the VID change from 1.23 to 1.370 for 3.4 to 4.5 GHz automatically, if this occurs
SVID is working properly.

If that fails to boot into BIOS, then set it to 4 GHz (40x), and SVID should work upon reboot. You should
end up with a stable 4 GHz overclock with automatically increased Vcore/vcc. Those values listed above
are optimal voltage for optimal overclocks up to 4.8 GHz. You want to stay within the low spectrum of
those voltages for temperature and processor integrity sake.
Both my 2600Ks will boot into BIOS at 4.5 GHz without anything else changed, only multiplier to 45x, VID
changes from 1.18 to 1.365 on one and 1.23-1.370 on the other. While both boot at 4.5 GHz into BIOS,
one only can do 4.8 GHz while the other can do 5.2 GHz (the one with higher VID), both D1 stepping
chips. Retail D2 stepping chips should be better overclockers.

Step #2 Step up the multiplier one by one until the system fails to boot. If this happens, clear CMOS.
Many boards have auto recovery that works perfectly in this manner, such as this P67A-UD7. I was able
to step up frequency until 4.9 GHz. At 4.8 GHz VID was 1.375v.
Now if none of this is working or even if it is, let’s move on to Voltages. NOTE: many have told me that
manually setting voltage is causing them problems, here is what to do to get around that, I didn't need
to do it but every chip is different. Enable Turbo Mode, set the proper multipliers, and set TDP to 300
and TDC to 300.(If you want to skip to Step #3 please click here)

Voltages:
Now let’s move to voltages, this is very important and I think anyone looking to overclock should have a
thorough introduction to the variety of voltages that the user is able to control.
Make sure to pay attention to my tid-bits on Vcore(VCC) and VTT(VCCIO), these are most important for
overclocking, other voltages can help too.
Here is a table I put together from Intel’s product data sheet; it defines the processors maximum
voltages and maximum amperage- These are OFFICIAL Min and Max Values:

thanks to hootyhoot for the new table

Here are the technical signal names as well as a short description as well as explanation of every one
and what it has to do with overclocking:

VCC: Commonly Called Vcore, the voltage supplied to the processors inside the CPU. This voltage is a
large part of Sandy Bridge overclocking. Now from personal testing, and weeks and weeks of headaches
and hard ships, I have a few things I would like to share about this voltage.
I say maximum voltage for Vcc/Vcore is 1.50v for 24/7, 1.55-1.60v for extreme benchmarking, please
stay below to 1.6, and don’t use any type of Load Line Calibration past 1.55v. Please not that high
temperature teamed up with high voltage will kill your processor faster than anything else, it creates a
perfect environment for processor degradation.

Load Line Calibration or Vdroop control is a setting that eliminates/reduces processor voltage droop under
load and in many extreme cases many reverse voltage droop. Voltage droop is there so that under load
conditions where current (amperage) is increased the processor stays within TDP (Thermal Design
Power). There is also vdrop which is implemented by the motherboard manufacturer, vdrop is there and
it drops every voltage on the board from what is set in BIOS, no matter the load. LLC can reverse Vdroop
and Vdrop in many cases.

Let me explain.
Voltage x Amperage = Wattage.

As you can see in the table above there is a TDC and a TDP. Now TDP is max heat output of the
processor (wattage), let’s say we stick within Icc (current/amperage) of 85amps at load. 85amps x
voltage=95watts (TDP). So If voltage is increased for overclocking, then at idle the processor needs to
droop the voltage so that amperage x voltage doesn’t exceed TDP, you do not want to drop amperage
because it is almost all the power (plus you don’t have control over it), voltage is nothing but a signal
without amperage behind it. Of course with Sandy Bridge you can set the upper limit on TDP and TDC
and you won’t push that much amperage until critical point, plus Sandy Bridge can exceed TDP on its
own.

Many people are 100% against LLC and many are 100% for it, I sit on the fence as I find it useful, and
haven’t killed a processor from it, but other things can occur and the life span of the processor will be
reduced by too much voltage, with or without LLC. LLC will improve stability, please read the lesson that
I learned with 1.5+V on Sandy Bridge.

Let me share a little about electron

Important Learning Lesson about high VCC and high LLC(Processor Degradation):
migration and processor degradation. When I first received these beautiful 2600Ks, one could boot 5.2
GHz with 1.475v with Load Line Calibration enabled to level 2(Vrise / Total Vdroop eliminated), real
processor voltage was at about 1.5v. Temperatures were through the roof under load. 80C-100C was
common and so was thermal throttling (I will talk about cooling problems in a little bit); using handy
software I was able to monitor the throttling. Through the next few weeks the processor voltage for 5.2
GHz stable (even boot in some cases) eventually rose to 1.55v LLC Level 2, which gives a total voltage of
1.58v. Benchmarking with CPU intensive load (100%) was impossible because of the heat produced.
Eventually I was able to back down frequency one multiplier to 5.1 GHz and use 1.475v with LLC level 1
(elimination of vdrop and slight elimination of vdroop (still droops under load)) with my air cooler:
Eclipse II. Temperatures don’t even touch upon 70C at 5.1 GHz. I have a heavy duty watercooler that can
handle 220W load, and my i7900 series at 4.5 GHz with 1.55v (more calculated/measured power output
than this chip). With these chips unique thermal capacitance features, thermal output at high loads is
very intense, make sure you buy a good cooler. One thing to mention is that my chip is a D1 stepping
processor and the PLL Overvoltage unlock feature does not work with these earlier revisions, but all
retail chips will be D2, and should overclock significantly better with less vcc/vcore.
VCCIO: more commonly known at QPI/VTT voltage, this is the VTT voltage. Formally known as Processor
Power for I/O it is the voltage for the integrated memory controller as well as the PCI-E controller. While
Intel’s Maximum is 1.05 +/- 3% = 1.08v, you can go higher, much higher. I would recommend staying
below 1.2v for 24/7 use, but depending on the quality of the IMC on your chip, I have seen 2133 MHz
done on as little at 1.1v. I used 1.12v for overclocking my Dominator 1600 MHz to 1866 MHz, and it did
it without any problems. Do realize that this voltage contributes heat as well to the whole thermal
package.

VDDQ: more commonly known as Vdimm or Vdram, this is the voltage for your memory. Formally known
as I/O voltage for DDR3, Intel states maximum at 1.575. YOU should run this at whatever it says on your
RAM. At the time I am writing this article, 1.575 is not the standard, but 1.5v has been stock voltage on
many DDR3 RAM modules for a long time. While at 1.5v you can run at stock speed of 1333 MHz and
SPD 9, 9,9,24 to run your RAM at a higher speed, such as 1600MHz, most RAM requires 1.65v. Do not be
afraid, if it says 1.65v on your RAM stick, set it to 1.64 or 1.66v. For overclocking higher than what your
RAM is rated for you can take this up, I have used up to 1.76v, but for my tests I used 1.72v to run my
1600mhz Ram at 1866mhz. I wouldn’t run this voltage over 1.8v unless you are going for some crazy
high clocks.

VAXG: internal graphics processor voltage, not applicable to this processor.

VCCPLL: Commonly known as CPUPLL, this voltage is for the internal clock generator for the CPU. Intel
states maximum at 1.89v, and stock at 1.8v.

What does the PLL do, you ask? Here is how you get 3.4 GHz. A constant frequency input (BLCK) is
generated by the PCH (P67), the BLCK is then multiplied by the core ratio by the internal phase lock loop
(PLL) and then you have a greater resulting core frequency. CPU PLL is the PLL that gives you 3.4 GHz at
stock and 5.2 GHz overclocked.
I would leave this voltage at stock, at one point I thought this voltage helped me lower Vcore, but it was
just the processor playing tricks on me. In fact on X58 systems lowering the CPU PLL was thought to help
lower temperatures and thus improve stability, on the other hand at very high frequencies this voltage is
creased by many overclockers. I say increase it to 1.89v if you like, but don’t go north of that, if you want
to save power and keep temperatures low turn it down to 1.71v.

Instead of messing with this, use the Unlock CPUPLL Overvoltage Option under frequency control; this
should help you get past 5.2 GHz on D2 stepping chips and beyond, if you need more oomph after
that, increase it. (This setting if enabled on a D1 chip will actually cause it not to boot, like mine)
VCCSA: More commonly known as System Agent Voltage. Intel’s maximum System Agent Voltage (Vccsa)
is 0.971v and minimum is 0.879v. Stock is 0.925v. System Agent Voltage should NOT be touched, it is
supposed to be a fixed voltage, and it powers many things that the VCC does not power. One of the
most important is the Power Control Unit (PCU) which controls internal power allocation of the
processor. This voltage is to be generated by a separate VRM than used for SVID. So on the P67A-UD7
this voltage is generated by a two phase buck analogue PWM, with 4 phases, this voltage and the VTT
(Vccio) come from the same VRM(not surprisingly voltage read points are right next to each other as
well).

Overclocking Continued:
Now Serial Vid was discussed in short in the in depth preview, it’s a new way for the processor to
basically communicate with the motherboards voltage regulator module (VRM). Serial Voltage
Identification or SVID has the ability to automatically scale processor voltage up to 1.52v.

Step #3: If for instance you are at 4.5 GHz and 1.35v that is excellent, I would try to boot at 1.35v and run
some stability tests. If it’s stable back off the voltage, take it down 5-10mv (1-2 voltage steps) at a time.
Test and repeat until it is unstable, then push Vcore/VCC back up a few notches. Run stability tests until
you are satisfied with your Overclock; make sure you set the tests to 100% load on all threads. Make
sure to watch temperatures. If you are hitting 80C at 100% load then that is your Vcore/VCC limit, go no
further until you get better cooling.

Step #4: BLCK Options. Now let’s face it, sometimes it’s just not practical to OC to 5 GHz and use that
every day, the heat output is harsh and the system is loud and you want a lower overclock, but you want
to maximize performance along with it. Here is where BLCK adjustment comes in handy. You cannot
increase BLCK at your maximum OC, it is better to lower OC 1-2 multipliers and then try to take up BLCK.
Boot into BIOS, do not try to change BLCK in Windows, and try raising BLCK by 0.2mhz, I have found that
even at 5.1ghz I was able to boost BLCK a fraction of a MHz If you want to push more than a fraction of a
MHz, you will need to increase Vcore yourself. Try 0.1MHz per 5mv adjustment. I personally do not think
it is worth it, I would rather the extra vcore go to multiplier, but hey every little bit counts. At stock I can
do 107.7BLCK on my worse chip; I haven’t tried the better chip yet.

Decrease BLCK if you are getting stuck at 5.2 GHz and 100blck, many people use lower BLCK to allow for
a lower vcore to be used for 5.2 GHz and beyond. Even try increasing PCH voltage one notch, I found
that increasing it a tiny bit may help BLCK in some instances. Make sure you don’t go over 1.1v for 24/7
use, I have also found the CPU PLL also helped a tiny bit, you can try up to 1.89v, but this also increases
heat output. I was able to do 107blck no problem at stock, at 5.1 GHz I messed around with BLCK and
brought it up to 100.8, this put me right up at the same 5.2 GHz frequency but I ended up with the same
Vcore and even more heat. I found that adjusting BLCK up 0.2-0.4MHz was no problem below 5 GHz, but
above 5 GHz you need to watch your BLCK, drop it or lower it to accommodate your OC the way you like.
Step #5: If you are still unstable upon boot, and be stable, then try these options:

A. Select CPU PLL Overvoltage to enabled, this allows most people to go beyond 4.8 or 5.2 GHz whatever
your barrier is. If you have a D1 stepping processor, enabling this option will cause you to fail to boot.

B.If not already using turbo options, please do so. Now set upper limit on TDP and TDC at 200-300 to
removed TDP and TDC limitations. If your board has OCP (over current protection) you can disable this if
you want a very high overclock.

C.You can try to enable Load Line Calibration to its full extent.

D.Try disabling Fan control under health monitor

E.Try disabling extra features not in use, such as extra SATA6G controllers and USB3.0 controllers (make
sure if you have mouse and keyboard in those ports to move them to USB 2.0 ports.)

In the end if you are unable to get above 4.8 GHz then hey 4.8 GHz is still a heck of a lot of power for
only the cost of a 2600K or even cheaper chip. I have two 2600K chips, both are the same batch and
both are D1 stepping. One will OC to a max 5.2 GHz and one to 4.8GHz no matter what I do it won’t
budge any higher. Goes to show you every processor is different.
Here was my Max OC, seems to be the max for any chip that is D1 stepping, D2 stepping chips should
use PLL overvoltage enabled to get past 5.2GHz if your chip can. Also notice max BLCK of 107.5 stable.

5.2GH/z and 107.5 BLCK

HEAT:

(You can see in the above picture that the CPU is throttling, Tmonitor shows throttling of each core
separately.)

Now along with the new turbo multipliers comes a technology that is aimed at pleasing the end user,
and that is Sandy Bridges ability to shortly for (25 seconds implemented, but motherboard
manufacturers extended this to allow TDC and TDP extension) exceed TDP to utilize thermal capacitance
of the internal heat spreader and heatsink. What this means is that frequency can be increased as well
as overall thermal load resulting from voltage and current increase, and that the system can absorb
more heat as soon as the high frequency is engaged to take advantage of the heat up time of the
internal heatsink and external cooler. Intel found that in the beginning of high thermal output load, the
“package” (cooler) can absorb much more heat than the processor puts out normally, so they
incorporated the ability for the processor to give off more heat at the beginning and operate at max
frequency. Now this is great and all because the processor can run cooler, but this also means that the
processor is going to run extremely cool at idle, so cool that you will inadvertently take it for granted,
and then when you apply load and the turbo multiplier increases, you will have a huge amount of heat
that needs to be dissipated, instead of predictable heat output. Now don’t worry, Sandy Bridge has an
internal overheating turbo throttle, which will reduce the multiplier by one and then take a voltage as
low as it can and then re-measure temperature to make sure it is getting cooler, if not then it will reduce
frequency again.

This reduce and recheck cycle happens at an astonishingly fast 2us (microseconds). All of this thermal
throttling control is part of the Thermal Control Circuitry (TCC). I have tested and found that this
throttling happens at 90c-95c. At 5.2ghz that was my problem, I have to use LLC Level2 and 1.53v and
well that was just way too much heat at 1.56v real steady and the high amperage. That is why most of
my benchmarks are run at 5.1ghz instead of 5.2ghz, 5.1ghz needed MUCH less voltage.

Crazy Cold Bug:

Above you can see Gflops performance increase drastically at 5.2 GHz, I used subzero air from Mother
Nature to cool down the Heat Sink. The problem is that at 5.2 GHz my D1 stepping 2600K has a cold bug
below 20C; the system has to be above 20C to boot, as well as bench. This cold bug is being
circumvented with each new stepping Intel is releasing, so hopefully this will improve, because 20C cold
bug is terribly high. My problem would be I could bench the processor, but as soon as the CPU load
stopped my system would hang because temperatures drop below 20c. BUT the cold bug is not the
same at every multiplier, at 51x there was no cold bug, I could go as cold as I want. This is very weird
indeed, so watch out for it.

Overclocking RAM: Now I am sure many of you know how to OC RAM. But you have to be aware that
RAM is not like the processor, it cannot usually OC 50%+. If you have a kit with low latency you can
probably push it up to the next level by increasing the latencies and RAM voltage. Make sure you
increase VTT/VCCIO voltage along with it. You shouldn’t need more than 1.25v VTT/VCCIO. I have seen
2133 MHz on as low as 1.1v. Be aware that RAM amount makes a huge difference. 4GB (2GBx2) will OC
easier and on less voltage than an 8GB (4GBx2) or 16GB (8GBx2) kit. The amount of Ram Modules makes
a difference as well because each pair of slots has its own IMC/Channel (not to be confused with dual
channel) if you have four sticks of Ram you are going to need more voltage for the VTT/VCCIO than if
you have only two sticks. The same goes for 1 stick vs. 2 sticks.

I was able to overclock my Dominators from Cas 8,8,8,24 1T 1600 to cas 9,9,9,24 1T 1866, 4gb kit.
Now X.M.P. profiles are very attractive to mainstream users, as it is a performance profile that increases
speed, decreases latency, and increases VTT voltage. Now most DDR3 high performance Ram out there
to date is built for X58 and P55 systems, watch out for the X.M.P. settings, if you want to use X.M.P.
make sure profile VTT voltage is below 1.2v qpi/vtt(Vccio).

BDOS CODES:
Here is a list of Common BDOS Errors and what to do to get rid of them; these suggestions are from trial
and error, and many BDOSes from hundreds of hours of overclocking. I have gotten many of these
BDOSes and checked them out (tried to cause them) and I have modified that list, here it is.
BSOD Codes
0x124 = add/remove vcore or QPI/VTT voltage (usually Vcore, once it was QPI/VTT)
0x101 = add more vcore
0x50 = RAM timings/Frequency add DDR3 voltage or add QPI/VTT
0x1E = add more vcore
0x3B = add more vcore
0xD1 = add QPI/VTT voltage
“0x9C = QPI/VTT most likely, but increasing vcore has helped in some instances”
0X109 = add DDR3 voltage
0x0A = add QPI/VTT voltage