FYI Shadowsports " bouncing back and forth and not staying put" is actually what you want. It will dynamically adjust vcore and clock speed based on need.
anyways here we go, good news:
I finally got it. With a response from Gigabyte support I got a starting reference point and went from there.
I now have a stable adaptive off set resulting in a load vcore of 1.237v under load at 4.6ghz. I'm happy. All power saving features enabled and it properly under volts and underclocks under low load, while reaching and staying at a peak 1.237v under load.
FYI Shadowsports " bouncing back and forth and not staying put" is actually what you want. It will dynamically adjust vcore and clock speed based on need.
Stress tests that use AVX excluded. Intel Extreme Tuning for example it goes up to 1.251 under load which is still perfectly fine. Anything that doesn't use AVX which is apparently limited to certain stress tests like newer versions of Prime95 will abide by your bios setting. Be careful when using stress tests and a high overclock! a vcore setting of 1.4v for example will climb alarmingly high using Prime95 or IET.
Still kinda annoyed this board does not include LLC control but it seems fine without it.
A safe starting point if you're curious is + 0.100. This will give you too much under load but still safe. Decrease from there.
I ended up at -0.015 if I recall correctly.
In the end I'm glad I finally got a handle on offset voltage but customer care seems lacking. They don't come to this forum it seems and my first response with my ticket was a canned, copy/paste answer like he didn't even read my question.
I do recommend at least avoiding auto vcore Shadowsports and setting a manual vcore if not a adaptive one. And overclocking isn't as scary or hard as you might think!
My 4790k for example does 4.6ghz at 1.23v under load! That's nothing. If I cared to I'm sure I could get 4.7ghz out of it but I don't find it necessary. I would have to use somewhere between 1.3 and 1.35v if I was to guess. Not a lot but there's no point. 4.6ghz however is a shoe in. Too easy, may as well. Some people push for 4.8-5ghz, and if your chip is good it can do it...but then we're talking 1.4v or higher and stress test load temps nearing 100c. I'm just not that type of overclocker
but when you can get 4.6 or 4.7ghz and barely hit 55c while gaming you really may as well.