OH YEAAAH, another year, another GOOC, always bigger and better than the last year, and this year did not disappoint..
The Benchmarks
- SuperPI 32M
- WPrime 32M
- PiFast
- Maxxmem
In terms of 2D benchmarks (this year Giga decided not to go for 3D benchmarks) these are a good mix. We have SuperPI 32m testing everyones patience and tweaking ability, WPrime for that fit of 12 threaded madness, Maxmemm to test contestants ability to push memories and PiFast for high clocks and again memory tweaking,
The Kit
This is what we go to bed dreaming of, wake up to play with, and skip our wedding days to bench. Yes it is the hardware the contestants overclocked during the competition!
Gigabyte X58A-UD7 rev 2.0
Intel Core i7-980X Gulftown Processor
Gigabyte GV-R545OC-512I
ADATA XPG Plus Series DDR3-1866+ 2.0 Triple Channel Kit (yes these are Hypers)
Seagate Momentus XT (hybrid SSD and optical drive)
Gigabyte ODIN Pro 1200W
Envision G2461W Monitor
Gigabyte GK-KM6150 keyboard+mouse
Gigabyte partner with ADATA this year as they were able to provide the Elpida Hyper modules overclockers love for the best performance.
Competitions changes from previous years
A few key changes by Gigabyte this year, some controversial and some great ideas.
1. One large benching period - the good
Instead of having 'rounds' where you can only bench a specific bench, this year Gigabyte went with one big period where you could complete the benchmarks in any order. I think this is a great idea and worked really well. With a traditional round format, if you have problems with your setup and miss a benchmark you are out of the competition until next year. We had some proof of concept here when a number of benchers, including StephenYeong who finished second, being out of action for long periods but coming back to place strongly.
2. No GPU benchmarks - the controversal
Unfortunately with good there is often bad. The use of no GPU benchmarks has been a fairly controversal decision and some members of the community have been fairly vocal as to the impact this has had on who has made it through to the finals. One particular arguement has been, with no GPU benchmarks the CPU becomes way too important to the competition, which renders the skill of the overclocker redundant. Fortunately this year we were able to see after the competition who had the best CPU's and these were not the winners (or even high placed) in the competition. Of course if we have unbinned CPU's that are clocking hundrds of MHz higher than other competitors this is going to negatively impact the outcome of the competition, but with appropriate binning this type of model seems to work. It would be great to see the return of GPU based benchmarks in 2011, this way we will get to see more of the all round skills of the contestants. Let's face it, clocking GPU's is a skill of its own, some guys that are amazing at 2D benchmarks won't stand a chance when 3-way Vantage comes out to play.
3. Some last minute additions
The night before the competition started we had a few extra rules added to the list. The most prominent was there is no launchers or batch files allowed in the competition. This included editing the PIFAST batch file to add a pause or any kind of launcher other than a simple shortcut. This rule was enforced a number of times during the competition and in our opinion was a very smart rule to avoid controversy.
The Prizes
- 1st prize (USD $5,000 + hardware including motherboard, ram, hdd)
- 2nd prize (USD $2,000 + hardware)
- 3rd prize (USD $1,000 + hardware).
Our Predictions
The night before the competition started we had a round table discussion in the hotel over a few beers. Members of the conversation included Deanzo, Dinos22, Mikeguava, Sno to name just a couple. The general predictions for the top five, in no specific order, were as follows.
- Massman - with an impressive recent winning streak, it was hard to go past Pieter
- Mikeguava - Mike seems to be capable of anything, leave him out at your own peril
- Slamms - Slamms continually puts up impressive results
- ZolKorn - Zolkorn is a competition specialist with nerves of steel
- Perica_barri - Perica is king of efficiency, maybe his efficiency could bring him a top 5 place
Shows how much we know about overclocking as only Slamms made it into the eventual top 5!
The Venue
The venue was the Hau-Shan Creative Park in Taiwan. The area is great and features restrauants, exhibits and a large indoor hall that GOOC was held in. Here are some photos of the venue and surroundings.
Rolling out to the venue
Main arena
Tim Handley on the mic
all the contestants and signatures
outside the venue
The Contestants and Results
Matose - Romania - 1st
Pifast winner
When we watch Matose bench I think of Elmor. The way he so calmly gathers his scores, never looks under pressure and seems to have this confidence that he is going to win. From the very start of the competition Matose put strong scores up in each category and was never challenged. He went back and refined his scores for each bench and also took out the fastest Pifast time of the day. A great win for Matose and we think maybe it will not be his last.
Stephenyeong - HongKong - 2nd
Joint Wprime winner
Stephenyeong was someone I did not know before the competition started, but he was very impressive to watch and talk to. Stephen was using one of Aarons pots from LN2COOLING.COM and he used it to great affect. With seconds remaining it seemed Stephen winning the competition would be a formality, he only needed to post a half decent Maxxmem score. He was not able to get a score on the board and this cost him 1st place.
Speedtime.Wing - China - 3rd
Wing has been around for a long time and when you watch him controlling a platform you can see he has alot of experience. Towards the end of the competition it looked like Wing might be the winner but he was not able to score highly in SuperPI to get a win this year. Wing seemed very excited and happy to accept his 3rd place trophy and prizes.
Jengkol (Ekky) - Indonesia - 4th
Ekky was the unlucky one to just miss out on cash and prizes. His SuperPI 32M was looking good early in the day but he had some issues with his setup and was unable to capatalize on a great start. Ekky had a great spread of scores but no single score big score, that probably cost him a top 3 finish.
slamms - Russia - 5th
Maxxmem winner
Slamms was a picture of concentration for the entire competition, and sometimes also a picture of frustration. Slamms had nice efficiency in WPrime and Maxmemm, he proved this with his 1st place in Maxxmem overall. At the end of the day Slamms did not have the CPU clocks to get into the places.
e-Killer - Columbia - 6th
SuperPI 32m winner
Everytime I went past e-Killer all day I found him with a heatgun in his pot. He had some serious cold boot bug issues, benching at -170 but having to warm up to -110 every time he crashed, this seemed to be driving him (and the unnamed judge standing close to him) insane. To his credit he was able to achieve a result of 6th and put up the strongest SuperPI 32m result of the day with 6m 27s.
Mike 'Laxative' Guava - USA - 7th
Joint Wprime winner
Mike is one of those benchers the rest of the field is afraid of. Rarely showing his cards, but we all know that his hand will be strong. Many thought Mike would be the winner before the competition started but this year it was not to be. Mike was another that had problems with his setup, problems that were slightly more complicated because of his no insulation laxative mineral oil setup. Hence earning him his new nickname, Mike 'Laxative' Guava.
hero.ou - China - 8th
Hero.ou is an overclocker I was not familiar with before the competition started. Hero was very professional in his setup and achieved great results in all his benchmarks except SuperPI. I think we will see more from Hero in the future.
Nacho_arroyo - Argentina - 9th
I didn't get a chance to speak with Nacho much and most overclockers wouldn't of heard of him before. That is because he has only seen/used LN2 a handful of times before this event, WOW! Nacho arrived at GOOC world finals ready to bench LN2 in a competition environment without any experience, I take my hat off to you mate for putting up a great effort and finishing in the top 10. Imagine what this guy can do with a little more experience.
Zolkorn - Thailand - 10th
Your favourite overclockers favourite overclocker! Zolkorn is bags of fun and a highly skilled overclocker too! Another top 10 finish for Zolkorn but I can't help but think he could of placed or even won this year. Zolkorn did have some problems with his setup and totally rebuilt his setup a number of times.
Massman - Belgium - 11th
Everyones favourite HWBOT moderator was snapped before the contest bribing the judges, but unfortunately this did not help him in the competition. Massman was the short priced favourite before the competition started and widely anticipated to place highly. Unforunately Massman had a hard day at the office and was heard saying "Where is Frederick?" towards the end of the day
Shahryar_NEO - Iran - 12th
Shahryar doesn't believe in easing into anything! In the first 20 minutes he had his ram subzero and was going after the Maxmemm results, in which he took an early lead in this benchmark. Unfortunately for Shahryar condensation issues with his RAM meant he had to swap his motherboard and he was never able to recover.
Erdemolkun - Turkey - 13th
Erdemolkun is another bencher with limited experience with Gulftown, he has only benched Gulftown a few times in the past and does not have one to overclock at home.
Sno.lcn - USA - 14th
Sno.lcn or as we prefer to call him Sno.locken had a very bad coldbug around ~-80 degrees celcius. This caused problems for the whole four hours for Sno and for a bencher that is normally can achieve high clocks and good efficiency this threw his whole game plan out of wack.
Perica_barri - Serbia - 15th
Perica spent alot of time when we arrived tweaking his OS. While other guys were pouring LN2, he was pouring his heart into the registry and working hard to optimize his platform. I saw his 32M time at 4GHZ and it was around the 8m 42s mark, which is nice for a quite competition OS. Perica told me before the competition, as long as I don't finish last I will be happy. Sorry mate you did finish last, but you put in a good effort and it is obvious from previous results you are a much better bencher than that!
The Winners
Matose was as calm in victory as he was for the entire day. In fact we think Monstru was much more emotional. Admit it Monstru, I saw a tear in your eye when Matose won. It was very obvious the Romanians were very proud, if you take a look on Labs51.ro you can see the large public response for Matose. Well deserved mate and here are a few shots of the winner!
Stephenyeong and Wing also worked very hard for their wins. I have met Wing before but this time he was very excited with his 3rd place.
Competitors in action
my favourite photo of all, massman in pain
mike doesnt like what he sees
e-killer realizes he has to heat the pot up again
Nacho looks to be in some sort of trouble with judge Deanzo
Erdemolkun benching
Stephenyeong
Shahryar heavy on the LN2
then heavy on the heatgun
I think Zolkorn said this was Matose
Slamms cold bugging
Perica too
Perica zoning out
Sno benching his -80 chip
Should of seen this guy behind the keyboard, serious speed
Tim poking fun at Mikes laxative setup
I think this is where the judges are splitting the profits of Massmans donation
Stephen doing his thing
Zolkorn touching his setup up
I found this on Wings desk, some sort of temperature monitoring device
Honorable Mentions
Xyala and Trouffman
If you have not seen this guys working before it is hard to appreciate what they do. Trouffman was so busy he didn't even speak for the entire 5 hour duration of the competition. Overclocking-TV is a great service we have in the community and we take it for grant. My hats off you you Trouffmand and Xyala for your month long stay in Taiwan and the hard work, and sometimes hard partying you go for us!
Monstru
My friend, if you throw rocks at my Grandmother..... We will let Monstru tell you his story when you meet him yourself! Monstru you are a top guy, it was great to meet you and celebrate Matose's victory with some beers in front of the hotel.
MACMAC
Anyone that steals a sword from the hotel, weilds it around in the street, in front of a police car, in a forgein country and does not get arrested, deserves a mention!
Hicookie
Cookie we always have alot of fun when we hang out, this time is no exception. You did a great job to organize and run the competition. There were no problems, no dodgy scores and everyone was happy afterwards. Well done mate.
Marc Bro Beier
Gigabytes BIGGEST FAN in the entire world. Marc seriously bro your a champ. We all think you take alot of crap and do a great job doing it, cheers mate.
hey dude you know the camera takes a photo in the direction it is pointed, not where you are looking, right? LOL
The Judges
Deanzo, Dinos22, Benny, T_M and all the Gigabyte judges. You did a great job, but we noticed some of you spent alot of time talking to some of the marketing girls! Are you sure you did the best job you could of? In all seriousness the judges were committed, even going for 4 hours on the day before the event to learn how to judge.
Nick "Pimp Hand" Shih
Nick is always at the big events and made his presence felt at GOOC. We wish we got a photo when someone finally beat Nick at something, be it only ten pin bowling!
I like this photo, Nick and Marc Beier sharing an emotional moment together
Insulation and platforms
We thought it would be nice to collate some images of the different way overclockers do their insulation and setups. Maybe give you a few ideas for your own setup.
SF3D's inflection
Oh hey Shahryar what are you doing?
Whoa WTF dude
Erdemolkun uses a couple hanging fans to try and keep the platform dry
Sno painting his board with nail polish
Wing maybe time to replace your towel, it doesnt make for great photographs
Wing had an interesting way to get rid of condensation
Stephen also used a similar method
Erdemolkun air cooling
Shahryar preparing for subzero rams
Ekkys sweet benching platform
Temp probe analysis
We took it upon ourselves to grab temp probes from a number of stores in the Taiwanese computer markets to test. The test was simply, a good quality probe capable of reading down to -200 and a jug of LN2. Then see which temp probes read closest to -196, unfortunately most of these probes don't have brands but in most cases all the same color and style perform the same. We have purposely included pictures of the cable and connector so if you want to try and purchase accurate temp probes you can attempt to match them.
Yellow - HOLA branded -177.6
Green - Unbranded -173.1
Blue - HOLA branded -173.9
Brown - Unbranded -182.7
Brown/Yellow cloth - Unbranded -194.9
Yellow - Unbranded - 191.2
Hicookie can more than likely give us some more information as to the location of the shop that sells the -194.9 probes, they retail for $330NT or around $11-12 USD.
Hanging out
The best part about any overclocking trip or event is that there is a chance to meet everyone, hang out and learn something new. There is always people from all ends of the earth with a common interest.
Erdemolkun and pro
T_M, Benny, Massman and Dino
I think Massman learnt how to prep his setup from Sampsa
Thanks
Thanks to Gigabyte Australia and Gigabyte HQ for sending TheOverclocker to Taiwan. We really enjoyed meeting the overclockers, watching the event unfold live and Gigabytes hospitality. We hope we will be back next year! Cheers Hicookie and all of the Gigabyte girls for putting on such a great event, you work hard and don't get alot of thanks for your work! Thanks Sacha for baby sitting me on the last day!
After a crazy 5 days, alot of fun and new friends, I still have one question!
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by T_M
as i did this summer (M.S.G high temp club 
)
....but too much M.Bier in the photo LOL !
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