Intel Advanced Voltage Offset

Intel Advanced voltage offset, commonly known as V/F Points, is an extension of the Adaptive Voltage which enables manual V/F curve tuning.

Advanced Voltage Offset was first introduced with the Comet Lake architecture in 2020. The amount of V/f points is not architectural and can differ between SKUs.

The primary purpose of the Advanced Voltage Offset is to provide end-users with the ability to under-volt their CPUs at specific parts of the V/f curve. In addition to undervolting, this feature also allows overvolting. Overclockers commonly use the Advanced Voltage Offset function in two ways.

First, you configure a positive voltage offset for the highest V/f point, which helps achieve a higher single-threaded boost frequency.
Second, you configure a negative voltage offset for the second-highest V/f point. That helps achieve lower voltage for all-core boost, which results in a lower temperature in all-core boost, and thus potential additional overclocking headroom.

On Comet Lake and Rocket Lake, there were a total of 8 distinct voltage-frequency points as I illustrated in SkatterBencher #25.

On Alder Lake and Raptor Lake, there are 15 distinct voltage-frequency points. However, only points one to eleven are used. Furthermore, some points can be copies of other points. For the Raptor Lake K-SKU CPUs, the V/F points are as follows:

Often you’ll find that the V/F points match the Turbo Boost 2.0, Turbo Boost Max 3.0, and Thermal Velocity Boost ratios of a specific SKU. Also, it can occur that some V/F Points are copies of others. On Raptor Lake, V/F Point 10 is a copy of V/F Point 9.

Ideally, you adjust the V/F points with the following modifications:

Offset V/F Points 6, 7, 8, and 9 with a negative value to undervolt the CPU. That reduces the effective voltage when the CPU reduces the frequency in extreme workloads, resulting in higher average frequencies
Offset V/F Point 11 with a positive value to overvolt the CPU. That enables additional frequency headroom, allowing us to push the CPU frequency higher in single-threaded or light workloads.

Lastly, unfortunately, it looks like the implementation of the V/F Points on Raptor Lake is not mature yet. There are quite a few issues when using it for a daily overclock. Two problems, in particular, can be frustrating:

Sometimes the V/F Points don’t work correctly in combination with 100 MHz BCLK. An easy workaround is to have the BCLK frequency slightly lower or higher than 100 MHz.
Sometimes programming V/F Point 9 conflicts with V/F Point 10. The easy workaround is to program both V/F Points to the same value.

Also, sometimes motherboards have auto-rules that automatically set an adaptive voltage when end-users set high CPU ratios. It’s important to know that V/F Point 11 adds to the adaptive voltage. If you’re not careful and leave the adaptive voltage set at Auto, you may end up with really high voltage. The easy workaround here is to set the adaptive voltage manually.

Note that Advanced Voltage Offset is also available for the Ring, although it is not exposed currently in any BIOS. Below you can see the V/F points for the Core i9-13900K Ring.