Master Overclocking Arena 2009

[miahallen]

[MOA] America OC rule:
1st Phase: 6/29-7/19
 Submit scores/screen shoot online
 Benchmark: Super PI 16M
 Platform: MSI P4 series or above with MSI NV graphic
 Top 10 for 2nd phase.

Trouffman, why is MSI NV VGA required for a CPU bench?

[Trouffman]

Trouffman, why is MSI NV VGA required for a CPU bench?

Dunno But for france I've remove this msi limitation it's only nv card !

I just asked about that to be removed

[jmke]

there was never an obligation for MSI VGA Card, that's not in the rules.
buying a good clocking CPU and capable memory is logic and doesn't matter what company is organizing the contest.

Not only the motherboard has to be bought. Those who don't have a good cpu are obliged to find a new one and, thus, have to spend even more money.

yes giving away free hardware is sure way to gain money... right? ;p

Making people buy their gear makes things more profitable? I think there's only a very few people who actually bother to BUY a motherboard just to be able to compete in the national qualifier.

tell me how it would look if none of the winner(s) of the qualifiers used MSI products to obtain top results.
try to sell that idea to your marketing director.

[K404]

LOL! How many of us could be so cheeky as to enter an MSI contest with...say....a DFI? It makes no sense. Its a competition MSI are holding to promote the OC ability of their gear...not someone elses!

[dinos22]

LOL! How many of us could be so cheeky as to enter an MSI contest with...say....a DFI? It makes no sense. Its a competition MSI are holding to promote the OC ability of their gear...not someone elses!

we didnt have a MUST HAVE Gigabyte board to enter GOOC2008/9 Australian qualifying so i dont see that being that big a deal. In fact i entered/qualified for the 2008 comp with a Biostar board lol

if they want a great comp dont restrict it to MSI boards/gear in initial stages in the regions that have to qualify for main comps i reckon

[K404]

Im susprised they didnt insist on using Giga gear, seriously!

[massman]

there was never an obligation for MSI VGA Card, that's not in the rules.
buying a good clocking CPU and capable memory is logic and doesn't matter what company is organizing the contest.

yes giving away free hardware is sure way to gain money... right? ;p

tell me how it would look if none of the winner(s) of the qualifiers used MSI products to obtain top results.
try to sell that idea to your marketing director.

Something doesn't completely add up.

Basicly, these competitions are PR only and have very little to do with actually ranking overclockers based on their overclocking skill. Actually, this is a very big point of discussion on which I could elaborate, but won't since it's not really on topic.

Now, since this event is to increase popularity of MSI-branded products, the marketing director (or whoever is in charge) is looking to maximize the PR of this event. So, instead of just one big final, they organise national qualifiers, regional finals and one worldwide final. This is pretty obvious since it increases the possibilities of marketing by a very big factor.

For these events, there are in fact two main audiences: the mainstream computer users and the enthousiast. The first group is already impressed by what these overclockers can get out of these systems on LN2, so it's fairly easy to attract their attention whereas the second group actually looks at the results achieved in the competition. The second group also is the group that has to be tricked into buying more products of the manufacturer organising the competition, so this group can be seen as the more important one.

Now, to attract the enthousiasts to either compete or follow this event, you actually need decent scores. It's fairly obvious that the group of enthousiasts will not be impressed when the winning score is much behind the world record in that benchmark. Now, how can you increase the interest of the enthousiasts:

1) You make the qualifiers open for everyone, so anyone can compete with any kind of hardware hoping to qualify for a live overclocking event
2) You make sure only the best overclockers/benchmarkers are on the live events to make sure you have high-end scores

By limiting the qualification rounds to those who actually have MSI-branded hardware, you limit the amount of people interested to submit a result. In addition, the amount of people willing to spend money on a new product is very limited: after all, you're only going to spend money if you think you have a chance on proceeding to the next round. It's fairly obvious that in the national/regional/worldwide finals only MSI products can be used.

My question now is how a solely MSI-based qualifying round is much better than a round in which everyone can compete with whatever hardware they want? You want the best overclockers to be present in the live finals, not the MSI-buyers.

These are just a few thoughts on the qualification process and the current concept of overclocking contests, though. I do realise that it's a little more difficult than this; in fact, I have a few ideas involving Hwbot that could increase the quality of these live events. I've running those ideas past some other people (Trouffman, for instance) and it seems that most of us are on the same page. Sadly enough, it's at the moment pretty difficult to actually make a change since there are so many different people involved in all this: it's virtually impossible to just sit down and talk things through.

[dinos22]

massman
well said

[massman]

I just want to add that the text above actually contains a few of the reasons why I'm opposed to a competition in which people have to bench at a certain frequency to find the best tweaker. Although tweaking is indeed a part of the overclocking process, it's still called overclocking, not oversoftwaretweaking. If you want to see the best efficiency in Superpi, I'll install a Linux distrubition and run a windows emulator ... I'll beat everyone by miles.

(I really hope I don't offend anyone by this, though)

[jmke]

if they want a great comp dont restrict it to MSI boards/gear in initial stages in the regions that have to qualify for main comps i reckon

each PR department has a different approach

Basicly, these competitions are PR only and have very little to do with actually ranking overclockers based on their overclocking skill.

welcome to the real world that's indeed what this is about, driving sales, grabbing headlines. the fact that it promotes overclocking is by-product, not the reason they do these competitions;

we live in capitalist world, making money is the first order of the day.

By limiting the qualification rounds to those who actually have MSI-branded hardware, you limit the amount of people interested to submit a result. In addition, the amount of people willing to spend money on a new product is very limited: after all, you're only going to spend money if you think you have a chance on proceeding to the next round. It's fairly obvious that in the national/regional/worldwide finals only MSI products can be used.

again, enthusiasts and overclockers are by-products, the main goal is PR, getting the word out. even if they GIVE away TEST gear for free (like they did last year) the turnaround was extremely LOW in my humble opinion. so instead of a repeat performance, they are opting for the wiser choice in time; making sure that people who participate already have invested in your company.

My question now is how a solely MSI-based qualifying round is much better

better for who? Better for us? nope. Better for them? possibly, maybe.
again, it's not about finding out who is the best overclocker in the world, that's not what these competitions are about TO BEGIN WITH. they are a by-product of an industry which is geared towards making money; since you can charge to highest premium when selling enthusiast grade hardware, they focus on this group with "overclocking" friendly features; while the originally spirit of "overclocking" is long gone (**more for less**)

as soon as AMD, Intel, ATI, NVIDIA jumped on the overclocking bandwagon we knew we would be greeted with marketing plans aimed to profit as much as possible from the enthusiasts, special CPU, factory overclocked VGAs. IF you go back 10 years and told Asus and MSI that you'd want a pre-overclocked video card they would consider you crazy.

These are just a few thoughts on the qualification process and the current concept of overclocking contests, though. I do realise that it's a little more difficult than this; in fact, I have a few ideas involving Hwbot that could increase the quality of these live events. I've running those ideas past some other people (Trouffman, for instance) and it seems that most of us are on the same page. Sadly enough, it's at the moment pretty difficult to actually make a change since there are so many different people involved in all this: it's virtually impossible to just sit down and talk things through.

you're never going to be able to "sit down and talk about things" which don't generate cash-flow. these companies main goal is make a profit. The only way to really get a true overclocking championship is if it is organized by overclockers, for overclocks, with no input from any company or manufacturer in the process. the logistics and costs of such an operation would require and entrance and participation fee (even for the qualifiers) to be able to cover the costs.

HWbot.org can a platform for such events, but the costs involved would make participation costs ridiculously high

country competition rent a room for a weekend large enough to fit 10 teams:
- $10.000
- $1000 food, beer
- $xxxxxxxx hardware

then fly over the winners ($2500 per country) to one main location
then fly over those winners ($2500 per participant) to last location
add in all the hardware costs, man hours and preperations and you're looking at a number over $30.000;

At HWbot we have approximately ~2000 semi-active users, so best case scenario they all sign up, and pay $15 each for their admissions to try and beat the other scores.

how many of those 2000 would still participate knowing they had to pay for it? who will cough up $30.000 up front in hopes to recover it all?

[massman]

I don't understand how your arguments are any different from mine. Since these events are PR only, it's important to make it more accesible.

- Open qualifiers = more entrants = more exposure
- Open qualifiers = best scores go through to next round = better benchers go through => higher level of competition in the next round

The fact that this is PR-only doesn't really bother me. It kinda gives us the opportunity to overclock at live events with the latest high-end hardware and LN2 ... for free

[jmke]

I don't understand how your arguments are any different from mine.

you're whining here about this MSI contest not being open to none-MSI benchers, while I explain to you the reasoning behind it, where you reply that you agree with this and then you post an alternative idea, which I agree with, but put into more realistically numbers, to which you now say "I don't understand how your arguments are any different from mine." and then you blunder your way into "Since these events are PR only, it's important to make it more accesible".

having people win MSI qualifiers with none-MSI hardware in a PR event where the aim is to sell MSI OC gear, doesn't really compute

a) Open qualifiers = more entrants = more exposure
b) Open qualifiers = best scores go through to next round = better benchers go through => higher level of competition in the next round

a) exposure comes AFTER the qualifiers; not during.
b) they don't care who gets through to the finals, doesn't matter how "tough" the competition is;

you are listing reason PRO end-user. companies have nothing to gain in PR with "open qualifiers" as you say



disclaimer: Massman & Me are friends, we have worked together and know each other for more than 3 years now, I'm not attacking him

[massman]

I'm not really whining as in fact the limitation to MSI-only products play in my hand since I actually own an MSI X58 motherboard. I'm merely pointing out that the fact that this is a PR event does not line up with the choice to use MSI-only products in the online qualifier. Once the online qualifiers are over, no one really cares about the results. Did you see any coverage regarding the pre-selection rounds in Belgium for the GOOC contest? Exactly.

What really matters is how many people will be following the live overclocking events. And how can you raise interest:

- Have more people to be part of the competition.
- Have a higher-skilled field of competitors in the live overclocking finals.

It's really simple: having an open qualifier competition will lead to a higher number of participants. Even those who don't go through to the next round will be following the rest of the competition. The higher the number of participants, the more likely the winning results will be top notch and the more likely those results will be achieved by the more-skilled overclockers. And that leads us to the second point.

Let's be honest here, who would you rather see competing in the live overclocking competition: the top10 of hwbot or n° 1100 to 1110.

Did you actually take the time to read my post?

There's only so much PR as the interest of the target audience. If you don't care what the enthousiast audience thinks about the competition, there's less PR.

[jmke]

Once the online qualifiers are over, no one really cares about the results

WTF ? Are you serious? You're saying that there won't be mass coverage of your trip to .TW for the Gigabyte Finals? that is what you are saying here; You are saying that after the qualifications nobody will be watch who will eventually when the event.

Did you see any coverage regarding the pre-selection rounds in Belgium for the GOOC contest?

nope. I only saw coverage of the events that transpired AFTER the qualifications. You are contradicting yourself here:p

There's only so much PR as the interest of the target audience. If you don't care what the enthousiast audience thinks about the competition, there's less PR.

that's because not all PR teams are enthusiasts; so they it's very possible can make bad judgment calls when looking at it from an enthusiasts' perspective! hey hey

they might also plan their events to collide with other competitions. It's like organizing the Fifa World Cup at the same time as the UEFA finals and the top players having to choose if they play one of the two competitions, making the competition at both end less interesting

Did you actually take the time to read my post?

did you read them ?

[massman]

WTF ? Are you serious? You're saying that there won't be mass coverage of your trip to .TW for the Gigabyte Finals? that is what you are saying here; You are saying that after the qualifications nobody will be watch who will eventually when the event.

Is there anyone who cares what score I put forward in the online qualifiers of the competition? Or Pt1t's?

I'm actually talking about the online qualifier stage, NOT the live competitions. As said before, the live events are what's most important, especially in terms of PR. Hence, it's important to have a fierce line-up in those events, preferably a field of the best overclockers.

I am saying that after the online qualifiers, no one cares about THOSE results anymore. Thus, it's not really important what hardware was used to win the qualifiers. Hence why I think it would be better to have an open online qualification system so that MORE people get acquinted with the competition.

nope. I only saw coverage of the events that transpired AFTER the qualifications. You are contradicting yourself here:p

Exactly my point.

that's because not all PR teams are enthusiasts; so they it's very possible can make bad judgment calls when looking at it from an enthusiasts' perspective! hey hey

As said before, that is indeed correct:

For these events, there are in fact two main audiences: the mainstream computer users and the enthousiast. The first group is already impressed by what these overclockers can get out of these systems on LN2, so it's fairly easy to attract their attention whereas the second group actually looks at the results achieved in the competition. The second group also is the group that has to be tricked into buying more products of the manufacturer organising the competition, so this group can be seen as the more important one.

Now, to attract the enthousiasts to either compete or follow this event, you actually need decent scores. It's fairly obvious that the group of enthousiasts will not be impressed when the winning score is much behind the world record in that benchmark.

Again: this is a PR event organised to INCREASE sales. Is the mainstream user suddenly going to buy an MSI motherboard because there was an overclocking competition? No. The main target is the enthousiast market in which there are loads of people choosing their components. Those are the people you want to have interest in the competition.

they might also plan their events to collide with other competitions. It's like organizing the Fifa World Cup at the same time as the UEFA finals and the top players having to choose if they play one of the two competitions, making the competition at both end less interesting

Each 4 years that's exactly what happens: the soccer tournament at the olympic games almost interferes with either a European championship or World cup. Fifa decided to oblige the Olympic Games to set the maximum age of the players to 21, making the official Fifa/Uefa tournament look more important. In the end ... it's just more important.

What Msi, Gigabyte and all other major companies are planning in the future, I have no idea. I'm sure they're smart enough to not risk a loss of PR due to a badly planned event. But, that's not the point here really.

[jmke]

Exactly my point.

your point is moot; online qualifiers don't matter (your words), as long as there is something to see at the live events, which will be the case no matter if there are hardware restrictions or not

But, that's not the point here really.

the point is that MSI decided to play the "you have to have MSI board" card, it was their decision, and depending on your perspective it can be a good one (MSI point) or bad one (end-user point).
Their competition, their rules.

doesn't matter how many pages we continue to type here , that won't change the outcome of either the online qualifiers or live events.

[massman]

your point is moot; online qualifiers don't matter (your words), as long as there is something to see at the live events, which will be the case no matter if there are hardware restrictions or not

No.

The results of the online qualifiers don't matter as in no one gives a crap about the hardware used to obtain those scores OR how high those scores where. The only important aspect of those online qualifiers is to select people to compete in the live competitions AND, in general, to raise the interest of people for this competition.

The online qualifiers are for the competitors actually a very important part of the competition. Just look at the comments on the first overclocking events that were invite-only.

Btw, the observations/points of discussion I'm bringing forward are not intended to have an effect on this competition, but rather as a general opinion regarding the overclocking events. In the end, as you say, we play according to their rules.

[jmke]

but rather as a general opinion regarding the overclocking events.

And like I mentioned, the only way you can make them into something that's not a PR event is by doing it yourself (or HWbot or overclockers united,...).

The results of the online qualifiers don't matter as in no one gives a crap about the hardware used

incorrect. PR staff cares about what hardware is used
hence the restriction;
hence why I keep on saying that you are looking at it from a single perspective.
from PR's perspective having the qualifiers done by customers of your brand is a good thing.

[K404]

If the qualifying stage was open-ended in terms of hardware used, the company makes nothing. Everyone sticks with their proven gear for the qualifier, then realistically for regional/global finals, the gear is all supplied by the hosting company.

If the gear used HAS to be from that company, a few people will make the jump....possibly boosted by their confidence- "I reckon I can win this"

Its scraping the barrel a bit, but id rather have 25 people enter a compatition and have 15 of them spend money on my company first than have 45 people enter and have 10 of them using my gear that they had anyway....and risk a rival companies gear overshadowing mine.

Qualifiers arent as important, granted but people still pay attention. If the leaderboard reads: Asus, Asus, Gigabyte, Asus, DFI, DFI, eVGA, Asus, MSI....how does that affect someones future buying decisions? Muuussssttt.....buuyyyyyyy....Assssssuuusssssssss

kinda harsh comment- MSI are not the first choice of many benchers for mobos. Exceptions...yes, obviously but they are overshadowed. People already owning MSI gear is less likely than for some other companies.

[jmke]

K404, thank you for rewording what I've been trying to tell Massman
from our point of view having an unrestricted qualifier is the most appealing, but for the company hosting the contest might not look that good in the end;

[SF3D]

Haha.. this is looking like crew section in HWbot.

I am with Pieter here. Qualifying stage should be open to all hardware.

We have to use MSI P45 boards here and I said after last year, that I will never put my hands on those again. Now I am forced to do so.
MSI X58 board would have been a lot better choice, but that would have limit the amount of participants even more.

[GeorgeStorm]

I agree, (feel a little out of my depth, :P)
But the qualifiers should be there to get as many people as possible into the comp
As the later stages will be bigger, and you want as many people as possible using MSi later
Whereas, if you need MSi to begin with, it stops soooooo many people from entering.

[jmke]

I am with Pieter here. Qualifying stage should be open to all hardware.

Earth to SF3D

From our point of view having an unrestricted qualifier is the most appealing

of course I also agree with having the contest OPEN to everybody. I find the restriction to MSI only motherboard ALSO a downside.

but from MSi's point of view, having the competition OPEN does not unnecessarily mean more PR exposure.

We have to use MSI P45 boards here and I said after last year, that I will never put my hands on those again. Now I am forced to do so.
MSI X58 board would have been a lot better choice, but that would have limit the amount of participants even more.

MSI Finland is making you BUY MSI P45 board? Here the rules just state ANY MSI Intel board, including X58?

[hey]

"thank u MSI" for not assigning us for MOA 2009

[SF3D]

To John!
I might have missed your statement in those huge quote monsters. Sorry.

MSI does not have office in Finland and it is looking to be a very poor qualification. Sampsa is trying his best to get some sense on it.

We should have more information soon.