KONAKONA

This is a good idea. Someone go code it for massman.

You could pick a certain score level in some of the tests, wherever the threshold between someone benching 05 with not much in the way of storage hardware like just a physical disk or single low end SSD and someone benching with raid or fancy SSDs. Again, I don't have enough experience with the bench to know where that is, but I don't think it'd be that hard to find. If a sub gets reported, it doesn't take very long at all for a mod to do an image search on the verification picture and see if it brings something up. Google has a "reverse image search" feature now, so it'd be rather difficult to find a picture of a system running the same MB/possibly ram with a storage setup that is going to be in the ballpark of their score without it being easily findable. Honestly though, I don't think anyone would go to that much trouble to forge a score though. Well, maybe a staff member... Fair enough. I haven't seen how 05 has become an "unmoderateable" benchmark yet. All I've seen is a staff member go test the limits of where the rules stand, and the entire time it was very obvious that he had a score that used some form of software ramdisk, regardless of it's name or technicalities. The only issue that has arisen is pertaining to the current exact context of the rules, not difficulties pertaining to the known rules being enforced. The only time scores aren't moderateable is when people don't report suspicious scores. I keep coming back to this, but I really don't see how PC05 would be hard to moderate if you just had to include a photo if your storage based scores are over a certain point. I mean, if you have the money to get a few hard drives in raid0 or a high end SSD, or even a more expensive setup, you should be able to hunt down a picture to take of your rig, right? Even if you found a picture of a rig that looked exactly like yours with a big fancy storage setup, you would still have to limit your scores to something realistic on that setup if you were using a SW ramdrive. Even now, the only way you could go about using a SW ramdrive with any hope of going undetected is to limit it to within the range of a hardware based storage setup. And you could still get reported and have your post looked over. It seems simple to me.

Why does no one seem to listen when I suggest that photo verification should be used? I mean, you can still give PC05 the smack down with storage speed if you are willing to spend the money on some serious raid cards and SSDs or ramdrives or whatever. Everyone in this thread seems to be butt blistered because people are supposedly using software ram drives and such, if you have to show a picture of it then it should be very obvious if your score is in the ballpark or not. Here are the rest of my opinions on this mess: *) Regardless of what PC05 is supposed to show performance of, the rules have always been more or less that if you are using hardware to do better, then it's allowed and if it's software then it's not. Even if a software ram cache is something you might use in a daily situation, it doesn't fall within those rules. hwbot has never been about using the benchmarks for what they were originally intended for, or we wouldn't have benches like 01 and 03 where it's more of a CPU benchmark than a GPU at the end of the day. hwbot is about taking a benchmark and seeing how good of a score you can get without "cheating". *) I'd still like someone to explain to me what the XP startup limit is doing anymore. I mean, PC05 is still very much a storage benchmark. It limits people that have 20 SSDs in raid just as much as it does someone with a software ramdrive, and again picture verification would be able to solve the whole software issue. Unless it's there to try and "even out" the bench, so to speak. I don't have enough experience with PC05 to know if it is or not. *) PC05 has a lot of tweaks. All of the sudden, people hate tweaks and want a benchmark to be all about how much hardware speed they can throw at it. Why don't you go do heaven or 3d11 or something like that then? Benchmarking is just as much about tweaking the bench as it is tweaking your hardware. Again, if it wasn't, then we wouldn't have 3d01 on the site. Personally, I love 3d01 because of it's tweaking, and I don't think many people would disagree on that point. The only reason to complain about tweaking is because you don't know how to do the tweaks. I don't get my panties in a jumble when I'm doing 3d01 and don't know all of kingpin's tweaks. That's my wall of text for the day. I'm hungry.

Why don't you guys remove that silly XP startup rule and just require a picture of the storage devices used? Picture evidence is acceptable for cooling, it seems like a better way to police pcmark then the antiquated XP startup, which everyone can circumvent anyway. This ramcache stuff is pretty silly too.

I don't quite like sandbagging but I don't think being staff really has anything to do with it. Good job nonetheless. Hopefully we'll have an intel comp up in a day or two.

Voted for Alternative 6: Remove points

So what's an unfair and fair advantage then? The best hardware gets the best scores and people are going to seek out the best hardware. The same thing goes for tweaks, the best ones get the best scores. Why do you think PURE is around? Are we going to ban tweak sharing next because that's an "unfair" advantage to the people who know the best ones? Also, it might be one of the so called 'commandments', but as others have noted hwbot probably isn't going to be the only game in town much longer the way rev4 is looking.

Do I look like I'm the kind of person who has ever gotten good hardware for free? All of the hardware I've ever gotten has been either bought at a reasonable price or traded for other hardware of equal value, except for a netbook I got for free once. That netbook wasn't a golden sample either. If I did participate in hardware sharing I'd at least have some global points by now. Regardless of the current rules, the basic idea of not allowing hardware sharing seems flawed. Overclocking is based just as much on what hardware you have as it is the skill you have to overclock it. Not just how well the CPU/GPU clocks, but the motherboard, ram, cooling, etc. You have to have the knowledge for what parts to get and where to get them as well as the cash to pay for them. If you have the knowledge to get them temporarily from someone without paying anything, then good for you. That's your advantage. Chances are though if you aren't paying for it then you don't have the hardware to back up a golden CPU/GPU then you aren't going to have the right hardware under or on top of it anyway. I've yet to hear any good reasons to prevent hardware sharing other than "What about people who don't get hardware" and "Go buy your own".

So? That's the reward of getting good hardware and being kind enough to share it. Too bad if you don't have it, deal with it.

What do you guys not like about hardware sharing anyway? Only reasons I can see against it are a) some whiny guy doesn't get to borrow it and complains or b) hwbot wants you to buy more hardware instead of making efficient use of a team's resources. Then again this update minus well remove teams altogether, or make the max team size 5 members. Goes along with what's already being done quite well.

Oh, looks like we have some retail chips outclocking the ESes now. Time to ban binning? Price cap? Maybe time to shut up instead.

QFT, it all boils down to this. That said, I do think the advantage of ES chips is being a bit overstated, like they are some kind of magical gem chip. Some of them are nice clocking chips, but there are nice batch retails as well. I think this has been brought up before though. Looks like there was a big squabble over how to prove it is/isn't an ES chip as well. I don't see what's wrong with just a validated CPUz. From what I've seen the only way to make things more competitive is to split things up in to small categories, but there has already been resistance from some of the more professional benchers (the whole global gold cup and world record argument). The only way to completely isolate skill would be to divide things down to the batch number of the chip and revision of the motherboard, ram, and cooling, which obviously is too far. I'm an advocate for furmark since a true 3D category would be a much welcome addition to the bot. Yes it has been known to kill cards, but that's already a given doing this kind of stuff, isn't it? That's about all I have to say, time to watch the rest of this play out.

They already have a submission system, not like it would be any harder to edit an AM3 or 3D01 screen. http://www.ozone3d.net/benchmarks/furmark_scores.php Only problem is all of the top scores there are with the old version (1.8.0), but I don't think that would be a problem when submitting to the bot.

By the time a setup gets cheap, the next one is already here. That's part of the reason they get affordable in the first place. If anyone wants I can gather some data on furmark and how it scores related to CPU and GPU speeds. I've done some limited testing on my rig at 1280x1024 16AA and I had maybe a 5 point difference max between CPU@ 3.4 and CPU@1.8. It also scales nicely with GPU speeds. I could probably get some data about how it scales with a variety of hardware, if need be. I'd love to see furmark on the bot.

I forgot furmark had a benching utility. That seems like it would work. They also seem to update it a lot, which helps with the below problem... Vantage always had CPU tests in it, though. I really like the idea of using furmark myself.

I've thought about this just a smidgen, minus well have it shot down in public. Most (er, um, all) of the 3D benchmarks on the bot are still quite CPU limited. Even vantage still needs a beefy CPU to get good scores. A lot of more casual benchers (Yes, I am biased because I am included) have good GPUs but lack the CPU (and or ram) to back it up in 3D tests. So why not add a bench to the bot that has a very low CPU limitation? I've been told (and I haven't looked this up myself so don't quote me) that the heaven benchmark has little CPU limitation. I haven't checked this myself though. The only other thing I can think of would be running one of the 3dmarks (Probably 03/05 to avoid the CPU tests, but then you are back to the CPU bottleneck) at a higher res and higher AA/AF, but that doesn't seem like it would work well for a number of reasons, mainly that it would force people to buy the full versions. Probably a bad idea, but if you change the points system to give more points to more popular but slower hardware, having some benchmark that properly isolates GPU performance doesn't seem that out of step. Another thought on the same tone would be points for combonations of CPU and GPU in 3D benchmarks. It doesn't seem like it would be that much work, as you can already search for 3D results with CPUs, but it would divide things up a bunch and getting the points to work right with all of that seems like it would be a nightmare. Just throwing stuff out there, please don't eat me. I don't taste very nice.