New Formula One Overclocking Competition Announced

[The_Overclocker]

I know things are getting a bit heated, but there are some good ideas coming out of this so keep it coming please (but lose the personal attacks).

If people are starting to be put off - worry not - I am keeping this as simple as possible. At all costs. At least for season one. Some replies...

i reckon if Intel does support this event with their super cherries it should be more even then us using retail cause it's all about how much money someone can throw at it in such instance and some ppl will be able to do a lot more spending then others cough Andre cough haha

To be fair I mentioned very early indeed that Francois promised no cherries to anyone. It got forgotten along the way. Then came back. Then noone believed him. All the selected teams have access to good chips. We'll see if that's a problem after season one.

Let's give a chance to everybody and use a levelled play ground.
Francois

Yes and no. People will be binning chips. But of the 28 participants... they all will. Let's not say it's a problem until it is one.

If retail boards from competing manufacturer teams are not even in the same league, then its the manufacturer who looks like the tool for having hardware design.
I would like to propose that manufacturer teams are limited to their products only! While freelance teams can use whatever they want/can get.

I rather like the idea of a manufacturer using another manufacturer's board. Shamino said he'd use a Rampage when he was on for EVGA (for some tests). I pointed out that each competitor's kit will be listed for each round - that's the whole point - so the common and garden tech enthusiast can quickly scan the results to see who makes the best hardware. Imagine if the top four one month all used Gigabyte motherboards (Team Gigabyte and eg Team Australia). It would look good for Gigabyte over every other manufacturer.

If i wasnt working 50+ hours a week in a country where LN2 supply is basically a no go, high end hardware doesnt exist (and try buying online using an Indonesian credit card not to mention the tax ) and the nightlife is, hmmm, lets say, fun, then yes i would definately have volunteered to enter.

I hear ya!

Any of the prviate teams will have to put up a very hard fight in order to be competitive - purchasing multiple CPUs will become very costly. HWbot is a great place for an even playing ground. If the manufacturer teams have a big budget - they should have a nice advantage. For the private teams will there be any prizes? Or is this competition simply for the glory? I would like to assess how far the individual benchmarks are set in stone - to get a basic idea what kind of a bugdet it would require to be competitve in this.

Also I would really get a grasp on the rules. When I went to my first live competition at GOOC I was a bit shocked how loose the rules were - not that this is an issue, but it would help to know what to expect in advance. At the contest it turned out for example that things like "disable post processing" in 3Dmark06 were total fine to be done. No biggie - if we know - all tweaks are go - all tweaks will be go. Just takes time to prepare for that.

Every competitor picked gets free CPUs from somewhere. That's F1 for you. But all have got to that point by progressing on the HWBot ranks. Long may this contiune.

Rules for tweaks and mods will be formalised but we've had enough live comps to get a good idea of what's allowed... off the top of my head... all mods are OK... but manufacturing silicon especially for a test is not... unless it's available for retail before the month starts.

I am out of this thread, too many people interested into getting their own agenda established ... Too many free airplane tickets got distributed recently!
I am interested into the young kid who have fun with his hardware, not into the dude trying to make money out of it.

Francois

This shows how out of hand things got there. Chill people!

Mike, I don't see how this is an issue. Just becasue the teams are private, doesn't mean they won't have sponsors & backing

For example, Gigabyte has their own team, but they could also sponsor Tom's team with mobos & graphics.

I imagine lots of teams will be using the same hardware.

Is it in the companies best interests to do that? Funding a team that could beat their own with someone elses hardware involved?

I dont mean to be so negative, but I do see a lot of potential pitfalls. Im not sure pitting companies directly against each other will necessarily end well.

You worry too much!

I couldnt agree more, yet if you have a friend who wants to lend you hardware so you can prove how good of a clocker you are, they disqualify the score, saying you dont OWN the hardware... What about all the cherry ES chips taht some get given to them?

none of us regular guys stand a chance. If it werent for alot of my friends i wouldnt have half the stuff I have now or even had the chance to go subzero, but singling out and having a select few that get the best, means the rest of us buy the product knowing all too well that our product will probably never net us the scores like we see here.

F1 will not have this rule.

Personally I would like to see some of these top overclockers use something other than a Extreme chip. Now there's a test of skill and luck of a draw. How many i7 920's have we seen running 5GHz+ 3DMark 06 or Vantage. That would take us back to the not so distant day of the celeron 300A's we all chased off the shelves to overclock. Things were somewhat level back in the non extreme days.

Certainly - from season two we'll see how far people can clock lesser chips.

After checking with my hiearchy, i can confirm that we will not provide special samples, all divisions are in synch. That is better this way, the play ground is leveled on the Core i7 side.
Francois

I thought this was agreed ages ago. I'm sure manufacturers will have access to more chips. We'll change things in a reactionary way though. Not until there's a definite problem. No saying I told you so, mind

If I understood well, we will compete against each other AND against the Manufacturer's teams?.......

You guys write TOO much and I - personally - don't have that much time to read them all.....

You're all against each other mate. That's all. Simple

That would be a very boring contest then, I would mod a CPU to be able to run SuperPI at 6.5Ghz, and kill the contest ...
I don t think Manufacturer should have a team, that make all of the other team irrelevant.
Even in F1, they have rules for weight , tires, gas, and so on.

In the case of CPUs, the possibilities to modify one of the 730millions set of transistor allow you an infinity combinaison of cheat that only the manufacturer can do, I did a demo to show this in the past.

Creating a contest with the 2 teams from Intel and AMD would give a chance to compete to 2 x 2 people. Nothing interesting... exactly when Renault was killing F1 in the 80s with Alain Prost ... or Ferrari in the 2000's ... make the race boring, you know who will win. Ross Braun team is demonstrating the perfect spirit right now in F1, new idea got him ahead, with smaller budget and no sponsor at the beginning. Because he is good, he got 1 sponsor, and kick the b.tt of Ferrari, Williams and all the big one ... F1 is interesting again because of this! they implemented rules recently to make sure that underdogs can have space to grow! you don t want an OC championchip that go the otherway around.

it is much more interesting and exciting when you see young kids coming and kicking the B.tt of the old timers Overclockers ... because they tried to understand the binning of the CPU, or they find out a little tricks! Who ever does its home work better should be able to win!

Francois

Rule 1 - no modding silicon unless it's available for sale to the public before the round starts.

As for where Formula 1 car racing has evolved... it took 30 years to become boring. Then they reacted and fixed it. I hope we can do the same.

Complaining about having the same winners all the time before we've even had one season sounds strange. If one team wins every round for season one... that would be interesting!