On Friday me and Massman arrived at Tones. Not only because we knew it was french fries day ( yes belgians have certain rituals we strictly adhere too) but also to setup and pretest the brand new Gigabyte X58A-OC boards. Myself already had a week to play with one of the G1 series boards : The Sniper.

Idea was to setup 4 platforms with identical hardware. Though I suggested to use the available CPUs : i930, i975X and two i990X CPUs. As the participants could get a better idea of the performance difference, OCability,... Plus for the 930 CPU, it requires a bit more work as you need to play with the Bclock too. Giving you a better idea of overclocking in stead of just increasing the multiplier and Vcore.

The available hardware was :

3 x Gigabyte X58A-OC boards
1 x Gigabyte G1 Sniper board

1 x i930 , i975X and two 990X CPUs

6gb Kingston HyperX 1600C9  rams per setup ofc

GPUs were ASUS infamous GTX580 Direct II Cu cards

SSDs Vertex 2 80Gb from OCZ

PSU provided by Antec :  High Current Gamer 750W series

Cooling 3 setups on Scythe Mugen2  and one on high end watercooling  ( EK waterblocks )

Pretty clean setups to play with. Even Massman surprised friend and foe as he even cable tied the PSU cables.

Gigabytes provides some cool backgrounds, which we kindly used... Pieter Jan giving thumbs up coz the food arrived. Bert ( the "I look more intelligent then you guy" on the right ) kindly assisted us with installing the software. Windows 7 64 bit ultimate, latest Nvidia drivers. Software allowing to OC the CPU  was Gigabytes own Easytune soft and MSI's afterburner (non extreme version) for the GPU overclocking.

All setups were pretested in OCability. The 930 reaching up to 4.3Ghz stable in Vantage, 975 around 4.5ghz and both the GulfTown 990X setups topping out at 4.7-4.85Ghz. The GTX 580s were only allowed to be overclocked via the Afterburner software up to 1150mV. One card did 975Mhz, the worst 925Mhz.

To be sure about the air coolers performance, Bert opted to swap the original boxed cooler with a higher RPM rated version.

Filling up the dewar and as usual loads of food. Testing the setup for the Tones Grid 3 launch date. The setup was not yet configured correct for triple monitor usage (so I had an excuse for my bad performance :p)

After some delicous breakfast and a strong cup of coffee we explained to the participants what the planning of the day was.

First up : A small introduction on Gigabytes latest offering the X58A-OC. One of the systems was used to set a reference Vantage score. The 990X CPU at 4ghz ( hail to the 4G button on the OC board ) and the GTX 580 GPU at stock clocks . Since we had one real overclocker amongst us, we opted to go for the Entry test iso the the Performance preset. (otherwise chiller would have an idea about he CPU/GPU scaling as we use the same test at HWbot)  The shown score was a to serve as a guide line as some never even heard of Futuremarks Vantage. Each contestant then had to write down a high score, that he thought was achievable on the fastest available setup. The score submitted closest to the highest score, reached by one of the students, would go home with a brand new Intel I7 930 CPU and one of the X58A-OC boards

Then it was back to the school banks ! We divided the students per two. Myself, Massman , Gamer and Teemto ( one of the participants of last years edition ) tried to carefully explain how to squeeze that little bit more performance out of the available hardware.

Like in last years edition it surprised us how quick people get suck into the world of overclocking. Once the ahum "Pros" deemed their padawans to be able to work independantly we allowed them to "free" play.

Some worked  step by step with little increments in CPU speed, other went straight into CPU and GPU overclocking. Our reference score of 86K was rapidly beaten, as the participants were quickly soaring over 4Ghz.

The watercooled setup based on the G1 Sniper was able to plus minus compete with the high clocks of the other teams. Running 3DMark Vantage at 4.7Ghz, being operated by newbies is quite impressive.

After a few hours of playing with Air and watercooling it was time to move onto the real work : zubzero cooling. Last year we only did  CPU cooling, but Gamer wanted to abuse his own Gigabyte ATI 5850 on liquid nitrogen too.

Team Captain of Madshrimps mista Luc aka Gamer explained the the wonders and dangers of liquid nitrogen. How to setup the board and prepare it for -100°C action and maybe even lower temps.

Pieter Jan brought his own setup and prepped for some ATI 6990 Crossfire action. At first we let the students to play with the demo setup and the CPU on LN2 only. Sadly the used Tones ES CPU was not happy to run over -100°C, so we were stuck with 5.7Ghz 3D action. It might have been better if we used one of our own retail CPUs as those easily do 6Ghz and more. After a while Luc started to prep his Gigabyte ATI 5850 car for LN2. Too bad his Vista install was very stubborn to accept any ATI driver. Also our extreme version of Afterburner didn't pick up the videocard correctly, this to allow for higher volts and clocks. So we had to settle for 1090Mhz on the core and 1200mhz on the GPU RAMS. Not bad, but the card already ran 1000/1300 on air. We were in fact aiming for 1250Mhz on the GPU core under extreme cold. The next day, Luc got it all together and crushed the 5850 ranking at Hwbot hard.

Pieter Jan reached a pretty easy 6400mhz on his 990X  Gulftown CPU ( maybe he is really talented ? ) and set a nice new crossfire record in 3dmark03 with the ATI 6990s. Also leading the board in Vantage and 3Dmark05

Not really requiring any text, some of the action, some sillyness ( as usual )

The fastest team on the left, hard at work (Drazharm and Chiller ). And on the right the highest score they achieved. Using the multiplier button they ran the 3D tests at around 4.85Ghz and the CPU test at +/- 4.7Ghz.

Niki from Tones is a die hard casemodder and showed off one of his creations. The Award winning Tones Phantom power on the right.

After the Air/Water overclocking the highest score achieved in 3DMark Vantage Entry preset was E98558. The Team with the Sniper board came very close and breached 98K too. Not surprisingly both setups ran Intels almighty 990X Gufltown CPU. But it was in fact the versatility of the OC board that gave the highest scoring team that little edge. The use of the Bclock and Multiplier buttons to change the CPU speeds during the 3D and CPU tests was the key factor for the win.

The estimated scores were pretty close. But ofcourse only one can win, congratz sir with your brand new Gigabyte X58A-OC board and the Intel i930 Bloomfield CPU.

Second spot got a nice Antec 620 H20 cooling kit :

Third spot one of the Kingston Triple channel HyperX kits

Big thanks to Gigabyte, Kingston, Antec and Tones PC shop for another well organised event !

Madshrimps applauds any event where we can share knowledge,wisdom and jokes with other users. Being it gamers or overclockers. Just talking about PCs and hardware is what makes us tick.

Sadly when some have fun, others still have to work :(

Maybe we see some of you at the next big event in the Netherlands, the Benelux Extreme OC party. Though nothing is 100% confirmed yet, it for certain is going into the right direction.

Interested ? Have a look at the (dutch ) thread of that upcoming event at the Tweakers website : Benelux Extreme OC Party