Introduction

So it has come to this, twenty teams consisting of forty overclockers are being transferred to Beijing, capitol city of China, to spend a couple of days at an Olympic site at which they'll compete in an overclocking final. From experience I know that the part where you fly in is actually the most difficult part as many of the competitors spend 10+ hours sitting and waiting in the airplane. When I went to Taipei to attend the GOOC 2009 finals, my total flight was around 14h. This time, thanks to a direct connection from Brussels to Beijing, I only had to wait 9 hours, which was actually a very short trip compared to for instance the team from Brazil, who had to fly 24h for a trip that lasted more than 30 hours. Talk about dedication to overclocking!

As the actual competition was held the 29th of August, most of the competitors and media arrived the 28th of august at the Olympic Sports Center Hotel, which fitted perfectly in the "IT Olympics"-theme of the MSI OC-Arena competition. Checking the prices of the hotel and comparing them to those of the hotel we stayed at later that week (for sight-seeing), we know that for the same amount of money you could find a much more luxurious place to spend the night, which is probably preferred by most of the competitors. But then you'd lose the IT-Olympics theme. The first day was pretty much reserved only for arrivals and meeting up with each other, which is what a lot of people join these events for: finally being able to have a chat with people you only know from online forum boards and/or other overclocking related websites. As most of the people are still die-hard overclockers, I can guarantee you that a lot of the time available for small talk was used to discuss previous overclocking events, hardware, overclocking in general, cheats, tweaks and so much more overclocking-related topics, much of which the normal people find either nerdy, geeky or just completely mental.

By the way, the finest example of this group being totally into hardware must be the insane number of E6500K processors sold to non-chinese oc enthusiasts in three/four days. For those who don't know: the Intel Pentium E6500K processor is the first, and only, Wolfdale-core based processor that has an unlocked multiplier and is, sadly enough, only available in China. So, for overclocking purposes, you're now no longer limited by the FSB walls that terrorise so many people, which increase the chances of finally hitting the 7GHz barrier on other Intel products than the legendary Celeron D series. I'm pretty sure that 85%, or more, bought at least one of the E6500K's available, some people even 3 or 7! And yes, I'm guilty of the same crime as you can see on the Madshrimps forum boards: "6500K in Europe!!".


The Olympic Sport Center Hotel everyone was staying at

The main topic of this report is of course the overclocking competition itself, which was held in the Shangri-La hotel ... the fancy, luxurious, almost royal hotel in the city center. More than once I heard someone mumble the words: "I wish this was the hotel we're staying at". You'll see what I mean in the pictures on the next pages. Now, following the line of thoughts in the MSI EU report we have to reflect about the three main topics in OC competitions: organisation, competitors and viewers. Or put differently: marketing, competition quality and ability for outsides to follow the competition.

Marketing-wise, this event surely was thé biggest I've ever seen. Not only did the location send out a vibe of magic, the pure overclocking action was surrounded by a lot of animation of which you'll see a couple of pictures as well. The IT Olympics theme was again present as the red line throughout the entire competition as you can see on the bottom of this page where Mr. Lu, senior vice-president (!) of MSI, lits the LN2 torch to give the starting signal of the competition. Next to that, there was the continuous animo on stage and the presence of quite a lot of press, be it less than at Gigabyte's GOOC final in Taipei as that was held during Computex and thus more accessible for press. However, in terms of marketing I'd say this has been just phenomenal and would like to state that this should most definitely be regarded as an example for every next overclocking competition. Well done!


An aspect that does need improvement is the communication to the outside world during the event, which actually is something we already hammered on in the previous report. Basically, the die-hard overclockers (and others) at home want to know exactly what's going on at the event; not only in terms of scores, but they want to feel like they are actually present at the competition. In Munich, where the European event was held, the communication to the outside world was limited to the slideshow on HWBot.org (hosted by OC-TV) and a couple of local websites keeping track of their own local team. This in big contrast to the EU and WW finals of GOOC, which was broadcasted LIVE throughout the entire event.

We know for a fact that a lot of people were actually watching the event (even people who should've been asleep, but decided to follow the EU final) and also commenting through the discussion forums. To give an example: when I returned from the GOOC EU final, I had to catch up with literally dozens of posts at different forums as people were constantly commenting on events during the competition. HWBot, OC-TV and other websites such as TechReport have been discussing this issue and are working on a media platform that should make these overclocking events also enjoyable for those who didn't make the finals. But, I do want to end with a positive note: the scoreboard issues I complained about in the EU report were absent.

Wprime V2.00



As a HWBot staff member, I couldn't help but smile when the Wprime benchmark was announced as one of the stages in this overclocking competition as HWBot was the website who introduced Wprime to the big public by making it an official HWBot suite benchmark application. However, as an overclocker (or: benchmarker) I wasn't that enthusiastic as Wprime is known to be very difficult to tweak. Apart from switching to either Vista or Windows 7, the number of tweaks are extremely limited or, as a fellow overclocker has put it, completely tweaking your operating system gains you less than increasing the BCLK frequency by 1. The main issue with this characteristic is that the factor "luck" plays a more significant role than in benchmarks that are véry tweakable; and that's one factor most competitors want to see eliminated from competitions. Everyone expected the Wprime results to be determining the overall ranking.

As the competition went on, it seemed that most of the configurations were producing scores within a 5 second range, which is actually quite close and thus quite good. Looking at the results on the last page, you'll also notice that the top of the overall ranking is not dominated by the best scores in Wprime, so all our fears and assumptions turned out to be incorrect. Also noteworthy: the top of the scores produced in the competition are pretty close to the top Core i7 scores over at HWBot, so the level of the competition was quite high. However, by mentioning the subject of HWBot rankings, we also touch one of the less positive sides of the Wprime story.

Even before the event started, I, and many others, requested to change the Wprime benchmark to version 1.55, which is the official version on Hwbot. Not only would that be easier to compare the scores and make official statements regarding the quality of the scores, but it also allows the competitors to submit the scores to HWBot and see their ranking increased in case of a good performance at the event. Sadly enough the version was not changed. A missed opportunity, but hardly outweighs the positive effect of the Wprime scoring. Too be honest, a lot of people had feared.

3DMark Vantage



It seems that every grand final of an overclocking competition in which Nvidia-branded video cards are used, the 3DMark Vantage benchmark forms the stage of the 3D overclocking task. Probably because it's the newest benchmark in the 3DMark series, but even more because Nvidia kicks ATI's ass in it (at least for now as rumours state that this might chance in the near future). Next to that, the 3DMark Vantage CPU tests benefit from the PhysX technology integrated on the Nvidia video cards, so it's also good for Nvidia's marketing scheme although ... well, in each competition the PhysX had to be turned off by request of the competitors. Neither Futuremark or HWBot allows scores using PhysX to be submitted to the official rankings since it affects a CPU test. And a CPU test must remain a CPU test.

As for the 3D card, MSI decided it was the perfect moment to launch the newest offspring of the Lightning series: the GTX275 Lightning. As we haven't received the card for testing yet, we won't elaborate on the standard clocks or added features, but go straight to the magic. This card is announced by MSI as being the fastest GTX275 on this planet, but after this competition it's safe to say it's also the fastest single core GPU in the world. Not only did almost every single team smash, trash, humiliate the previous GTX275 record holder (15359 was beaten by 16 of the 20 teams), 8 of the 20 teams also smashed, trashed and humiliated the previous single core GPU 3DMark Vantage world record (17665, now 18763). Agreed, the single core GPU Vantage ranking isn't that popular, but still: those are some impressive achievements.

And that's not all, actually. The clock frequencies to break those records are already impressive on their own: 1200MHz core frequency, 2400MHz shader frequency and a stunning 1400MHz memory frequency!! Although the memory frequency may not seem that impressive as we already broke 1584MHz benchmark stable here at Madshrimps in an earlier article, but it is quite impressive given the combination with such high core frequencies. In addition, it seemed that none of the cards had any form of coldbug, which is of course a golden key in overclocking. So, is there any negative aspect to the 3D story? Yes.

Although MSI had announced that none of the competitors would recieve the card in advance, some of the local PR offices did in fact send out cards to the local overclockers, which gave them the change of pre-testing the cards on overclockability and, very important, figure out that these cards like to go very cold and scale with voltage. Also, they noticed that memory MHz was quite important in the Vantage benchmark, which gave hem a lead start in the competition. Hand in hand with the pre-testing comes figuring out the voltage modifications: whoever got the card knew how to modify. Some teams, in other words, had the modifications and some didn't. Foul play? On of the USA teams did think so, although I'm not so sure they should be blaming MSI for them not having the modifications. This is what I, Massman, a non-competitor wrote on the XtremeSystems forum boards on the 19th of August 2009, ten (10!) days before the competition:

"Guys, as far as I can see, the VGPU controller on the GTX275 you'll be using is the same uP6208 as in the EU finals. Technically, the modifications for this card are the same as for the GTX260 Lightning used the the EU finals, although it's possible that the PCB design is a bit different. So you need to re-measure everything, but Hipro5's modifications are a good guide. The Vmem IC is the uP6205B: FB is pin 8 and there's a soldering point very near, almost next to the pin. As for the Vgpu: the hardmod will indeed work, but you'll have OVP no doubt. I hope MSI lets you use the utility Snot_aap coded for the GTX260 as it should work on the GTX275 as well. Then you have no OVP and are able to set the Vgpu upto 1.6 through the VID table."

As you can see, it was indeed possible to prepare for the competition even without the card. If I recall correctly, the Swedes even wrote their own software program (probably based on Snot_aap's utility) to increase the voltage through the VID tables, which works around the OVP modification. For more information, you can actuall refer to the Asus Matrix GTX285 article (overclocking section) as the Vgpu IC is the same!

Okay, enough chitchat, let's see some pictures ->

Results

MSI is using a different method to rank the competitors.

The scores where calculated based on the gain in percentage over the base score. So, the higher you score the more points you gather, which is a different approach than Gigabyte has used since the results of the other competitors don't affect your points. So, it's just pushing your system as hard as possible and hoping your scores are good enough to win. On the one hand, it's good because it requires the overclockers to really push their system in each benchmark, but on the other hand, it's more competitive if all teams can have an effect on the ranking, even though their not the best in all benchmarks. For instance, teams who don't have a good VGA can still be important when pushing for the first place in the 32M ranking as their result might affect the points awarded to another team's result

I already mentioned this on the first page, but in the contrary to the EU event, MSI had a continuous updated live scoreboard running so every competitor could see where he's ranking and how hard he has to push to gain a couple more places. Actually, the lay-out (as seen in the pictures on the previous pages) was one of the more good-looking ones I've seen as it did include headshots of the current leading team. Nice work!

Let's have a look at the results:



Okay, many of you were probably wondering when I was going to explain the title, but I believe this picture says more than a thousand words: in the top5, Europe has 4 (four!!) teams, which makes it the best overclocking continent by quite a margin. Actually, I suggest that in next year's event even more European teams should be present. And no, I'm not biased by the fact that I'm European and didn't make it to the Grand Final *wink*.

A look at the Top3.



Final thoughts

Okay, time to separate the boys from the men as we need to render our verdict about this overclocking event. To make it easier for everyone, let's make a simple pro and contra list.

+ Obtained results are absolutely excellent
+ European teams performed at a really high level
+ GTX275 Lightning's overclockability
+ Live scoreboard
+ How Wprime turned out to be quite okay
+ The organisation in general, also location

- The hotel was, although Olympic, not that great
- Some teams received hardware, some didn't
- Using Wprime V2.00 instead of V1.55

As you can see, I'm a lot happier with this event than the EU finals, but please regard this as "it was even better" rather than "first one was bad". As an overclocker, I see these overclocking events definitely moving in the right direction, although some things still can improve. Together with different other overclocking-related instances I (well: HWBot) am working on a bigger, better overclocking platform and hope that manufacturers such as Gigabyte and MSI are willing to sit down with us to listen to what we think could be better. I have no time left to elaborate on the specific ideals or details of the plans, but if you are interested (end-user or manufacturer) please let me know either through mail or the forums. Also, if you have ideas of your own, which I'm sure you have, don't hesitate to report!

Before I go, I'd like to thank (unfortunate) Issaïe - Trouffman who helped me get in contact with the people who flew me over. Next to that I'd very much, much like to thank Fiona of MSI for approving my request; and of course the entire MSI crew for the excellent trip. Count me in for next year!!

To end with, I'd like to show you a epic picture of the Senior Vice-President of MSI at the event. Thank you for reading all through the article and 'till the next time!


Hendry Lu, Senior Vice President in an epic shot

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Just before I go I want to give a small tip to anyone who wants to win at a live overclocking championship. Not everyone is aware of this but underneath is a picture of why the Swedes won: they had their own mascot cheering them on during the competition.