Sandy Bridge contest @ Futuremark

[Pasi_FM]

Hey guys,

We have a Sandy Bridge contest running currently with weekly hardware prizes at Futuremark.

Project: Sandy Bridge

There are two categories, one for Sandy Bridge integrated graphics only using 3DMark Vantage (P) and one for any Sandy Bridge desktop CPU with a single discrete graphics card using 3DMark 11 (P).

We recently made 3DMark Vantage Basic edition free to use, so anyone can enter the contests for free, but remember to register or login to 3dmark.com so we can reach you if you win!

Weekly contest roll over on Fridays at 14.00 GMT, contest ends May 15th.

Note that as always we require Futuremark approved drivers, for the integrated series the latest 8.15.10.2342 drivers have been approved, but for AMD cards the latest approved driver for 3DMark 11 is still Catalyst 11.1.

[K404]

Well..... while I am involved in site promotion and making things look as good as they possibly can... do FM REALLY REALLY think 16900 people have entered this competition in...what... 2 weeks? When I say "entered" I don't mean "just so happen to submit a result that's within the rules of the competition"

I dont think an individual will submit THAT many results, so I suspect submit count is quite close to the "number of people" "competing"

What if FM hosted competitions on a separate page or had them submitted to a separate database..... asked for submissions to have a certain name added to the title on the ORB?

I hope FM are not "cooking the books" to get undeserved kudos from companies.......

[Hondacity]

we don't have z68 yet? booooooooooo

[Leeghoofd]

Wow we are almost breaching 17K submissions lol... yet only 9 REAL scores up...

... score counter is bugged for sure (intentionally or not ?)... FM has to show me a 16999 score list right now... bad bad bad bad... only entries ofcourse for this competition :p


So funny to click on the scores and to see RESULT NOT FOUND... why does the same user get listed 10 times ? Is it just to fill up the leaderboard ?


Play it fair FM guys this is completely ridicilous. You are only gonna cut your own wrists with exposure like this...as this sort of scams will fireback at you , someday somehow...

A very corrupt marketing strategy is installed here... Get the data straigthened out, for your own sake...


PS : Please don't try to make me to believe over 16000 submissions have entered for this competition, as you will epicly fail in trying to persuade me...

MONEY SELL OUTS ARE A BAD THING !!

[CryptiK]

wow um lol fail?

[dinos22]

hahaha 17K submissions, seriously how dodgy is FM

[CryptiK]

DODGYMARK - "The way it's meant to be exaggerated"


Dodgyness aside, SB being the platform that it is, its just a boring chip binning competition. Winner = person with most disposable income to waste on chips. Wow. Scintillating.

[G.Foyle]

DODGYMARK - "The way it's meant to be exaggerated"


Dodgyness aside, SB being the platform that it is, its just a boring chip binning competition. Winner = person with most disposable income to waste on chips. Wow. Scintillating.

You can compete in discrete category, where any half decent sandy will suffice.

[Lucky_n00b]

You can compete in discrete category, where any half decent sandy will suffice.

Agree.

Btw, is that u with 1260Mhz GTX580 bro?
Nice to see finally a decent score for the single card category

[G.Foyle]

Btw, is that u with 1260Mhz GTX580 bro?

Yeah, that would be me, thanks
Too bad all our 580's are that weak. There were some cards at MOA Europe that should reach 10000+ when benched on a fast motherboard.

[SuicidePhoenix]

dual gpu single cards allowed? hm

[[XC] gomeler]

Good luck guys

dual gpu single cards allowed? hm

Saw that. Looked at the prizes and decided a HD 6990 wasn't worth the cost.

[Leeghoofd]

Already reaching 18.5K submissions and counting wOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOt, that's 2000 a day... any bets for the total amount of submissions at the end of the compo ? 50K ?



Scoreboard is weird : the 4st 4 entries for the integrated are weird... Laptop beating Desktop platform ? bad hardware detection ?I'll have to pull out my SB laptop myself to see if this can be possible... Also score 1 and 2 are the same , so are 3 and 4...

Good luck to the contestants, I hope the prices are more real then the above screenshot...

[Lucky_n00b]

Scoreboard is so messed up : the 4st 4 entries for the integrated are weird... Laptop beating Desktop platform ? I'll have to pull out my SB laptop myself to see if this can be possible... Also score 1 and 2 are the same , so are 3 and 4...

I guess that's because the laptops have discrete GPU with them, but the systeminfo is reporting the integrated HD Graphics instead.

It's been explained in futuremark forum , and will probably be deleted afterwards

[[XC] Oj101]

18319 entries.

So 18391 people happen to have a Sandy Bridge CPU
They also happen to have 3DMark Vantage or 11
They also happen to have run the benchmark in the alloted time
That's a LOT of people to fit the criteria, more than any other competition I've seen - and that's with hardware which has only been out a few months
There are seven entries in the Integrated Vantage list and eight in the Discreet 11 list - that means the lists are probably top ten for each so there are only fifteen total
Subtract at least two duplicate entires (both in the Integrated Vantage list) and we're down to thirteen
Notice there are four entires by 11961771 in the Discreet 11 list? That means only ten people tops have entered
I don't think ten people made 18319 entries

FutureMark you've FAILED!

Oh, and several scores say Result Not Found

Before you say they're probably marked private, note this rule:

Entries must use approved drivers and scores must not be marked private.

[SF3D]

Knowing how many people take part in to those international OC competitions, I really have to wonder where that 18K is coming from.
It must be all results submitted to database, cause I saw around 2 score in a 2 minute period increase constantly.
Also knowing how much vendors are looking just that participant amount it just making me sad.

Of course it is easy to show those figures to some marketing people. "There was 50 000 results submitted to this competition" --> The big boss is very very happy.

To guys at FM: We do not work like this in Finland, so please fix that clear error before it hurts your reputation. I think none of us wish that to happen.

E:I got a bit annoyed, so I have to add, that this type of false advertising is ruining the scene in some specific parts.
You are thinking your own business of course, but making these online competitions look so popular,
that vendors see no point in keeping live competitions anymore. That is hurting us directly, cause we loose one very important part of this hobby.

I think live competitions are in all possible levels better for business than these online ones.
That is just my opinion, but maybe someone else agrees with me.

[[XC] Oj101]

I agree.

1. Live event
2. Booth babes
3. Hardware sales at the booths
4. ?
5. Profit

[Leeghoofd]

I did some exploring ( I got nothing better to do anyways :p ) to where this magical submission number comes from. It seems SF3D analysis is pretty spot on.

At first glance I thought it was sort of a hit counter... To try that theory I logged on/off... But the submission nr didn't budge...

mmm Plan B then : Time to test a Sandy Bridge setup. I ran Vantage on the 3000HD and wanted to see if my scores was listed yes or no. I didn't verify it online so it was quite normal it never showed up on the leaderboard. I redid the run and verified via the online function. And YES my score (I'm user unknown btw) was displayed on the leaderboard.

SO I'M PARTICIPATING WITHOUT EVEN KNOWING IT MYSELF (so also not with my permission ). OFCOURSE COOL IF EVER I WIN A PRICE :p





I redid my previous screenshot with my added result ( sorry for being an A S S , it's just me :p)



CONCLUSION :

1) submission counter = PURE FAKE
2) ranking is not based on competitors, but just database entries
3) your score, even if just to check online, is used to fill the ranking ( software bug ????)

Futuremark is presenting fake submission rates to make it look like the competition is very active. If marketeers think this is very good marketing campaign, it will hurt our live events (as SF3D mentioned before)


Let's hope for a positive reply and rectification by the Futuremark guys...

But thank you, I have a new F1OC on my hands and loving every second of it... (just don't tell the Aussies)

[Lucky_n00b]

I think live competitions are in all possible levels better for business than these online ones.
That is just my opinion, but maybe someone else agrees with me.

Marketing/business aside,
I LOVE live competition because instead of seeing nicknames,I can meet REAL people and having fun with overclocker from all over the world
~now that's priceless ~

[Leeghoofd]

FUTUREMARK REAL COUNTER : 10 not yet validated Submissions on the scoreboard... question remains, did all submit the listed score intentionally or not :p

[Trouffman]

Not new to me, for me it has always been competition within the database... So actually every new submitted scores get automatic entry in the competition, what ever the competition is.

Actually would make sense to have in the Term of Use (i haven't checked... maybe leeghoofd cqn as he have time ti kill...) that all the new submission meeting the requirements are automatically added to the competition engine.

On the other end, Yep it's a wrong marketing approach for sure... can make sens if sponsors are billed per result, but i think it's more per event basis than submissions, also would be better to have "submission meeting the requirements in the database" or similar texte but not SUBMISSION as this suggest users agree / enter / approve to play in this competition.

Maybe last point would be that, Live OC event is a MUST HAVE it's the BEST way to get feedback / enthusiast and OCer talk about it / products, LIVE action with LIVE coverage is something that is (like this happens in the gaming world) a MUST HAVE event for anyone, scope will be different depending on the companies of course.

Online keep the people active / marketing happy Live keep everyone happy (expect the budget guys )

[K404]

At the moment, 7 out of the 8 top results in the discrete section are by the same person.

Awesome leaderboard!

[dinos22]

pretty sad that FM is deliberately doing this since they would be very much aware of this nonsense by now and not doing anything to fix it

[K404]

Well... vendors read XS and the competition section..... karma is a .




Oh.... karma is 5 dancing bananas.

[Trouffman]

oO and the competition seems ended ? oO