mickulty

My whole point was that is literally exactly what you're doing. You have a lower end processor that lacks a feature that would otherwise let the cores do more work.

CPU-Z specs: Motherboard Model PEGATRON CORPORATION IMISR-VM Socket Socket P (478) North Bridge Intel GM965 rev C0 South Bridge Intel 82801HBM (ICH8-ME) rev B2 (overclocked) CPU-Z Validation: CPU-Z VALIDATOR Image: http://hwbot.org/image/1680989.jpg Cooler pictured is effectively a stock cooler, supplied with the motherboard for it's unique mounting clip arrangement. I can grab a picture without the cooler at some point if necessary. Seems to be an OEM motherboard from an RM ecoquiet 965 mini PC, from what I can find on google and judging by the bios's "ecoquiet" splash screen. Off-topic: Absolutely no OC options in the bios but the PLL can be reasoned with using rweverything so once it's added I'll happily put a post in its hardware discussion with my experiences.

So, OP, what's your take on people like me? I could probably just barely afford an i5 4690k with the entirety of my disposable income for this month, if I also sell my laptop - I already have a Z87 motherboard that I was extremely lucky to get for next to nothing. Should your skylake scores be cut down so I can compete on haswell? Because there's no way I could afford to buy into skylake unless I go i3 and pushing skylake i3s above a 3% OC disables AVX and cripples XTU scores so hyperthreading or not that wouldn't even be close per-core. Oh, except your scores are entires into an MSI-only competition. The only MSI motherboard I have is AM3+ and the best AM3+ chip I have is a Phenom X4 965. Guess I should go campaign for XTU to be banned because I can't run it? And of course a sizeable handicap so my Phenom X4 can compete with skylake i5s. So, what do you think, should I do that? Or should I recognise that yes, sometimes different hardware has an advantage. And that's the way it is, there is literally nothing that can be done to change that without handicaps that would create more problems than they solved. And whining about something I can't easily win being "messed up" because I can't easily win it is not productive and frankly poisons the water a bit in a community that's supposed to be about pushing hardware, not throwing a strop if you can't win. And then should I go back to putting my effort into tuning hardware, even when it's an ancient motherboard that cost £10 and has no OC options in the bios so I had to manually change bits in the PLL chip to OC on it, rather than complaining with absolutely no self-awareness? Yeah, I think I'll go with the latter. Maybe you should do something similar. And maybe when you feel the need to complain that it's tough for you because you don't have the most expensive hardware, you should consider the fact that there are plenty of people who would love to have the kit you're taking for granted. By the way, your score seems low for the frequency you're at. Try and improve ram speeds or tighten latencies if you can, might add some headroom if you go down to 2x4GB sticks, but also you'll get better scores if your OS is totally stripped down with nothing running in the background and no extraneous services running - the people who get the best scores generally have a separate installation for benchmarking.

Download and install Java (just under 60MB) from the downloads page of the java website. For 64-bit windows you want 'Windows Offline (64-bit)', for 32-bit you want 'Windows Offline'. Download and extract the benchmark's .zip file from the competition page. With java installed, the .jar file should run when double-clicked. If not you may need to right-click and tell it to open with java. Click 'quick benchmark' to run. Set the javaw.exe process priority to high and run it again for a slightly better score (high priority and running twice both help in my experience). Open your CPU-Z CPU and Memory tabs Click the 'Save' button. You'll be prompted to save a data file - AFTER you name the file and press save again a screenshot is taken as part of the data file so keep those CPU-Z windows open until it tells you it's successfully saved the data file Open the competition page, click the 'submit score' button and upload that data file!

For anyone else having this issue there is a workaround; if you submit then immediately click the link to edit the submission you can edit it to the correct CPU.

This is the sort of thing that sounds like AMD-bashing. If the way tiers are decided has led to an AMD card slower and (in terms of MSRP) cheaper than the fastest Nvidia card allowed being disqualified then I hope it's not controversial to say that's clear evidence that there's a problem with the way tiers are decided, but this thread clearly isn't the right place for that discussion. As far as the current competition goes at least there's no need to be indecisive about what graphics card to use, other than which model of 1060

The competition has been announced now, and it is what it is, there's no point quibbling about it as it wouldn't be fair on people who may have already bought hardware to change the rules retroactively· I don't think the AMD-bashing is really necessary though.

Hyperthreading 'only' gives about a 40% improvement as a rule of thumb so basing it on physical cores is fairer than basing it on number of threads (which would totally destroy i7s and i3s). It is frustrating but at least it means you don't have to buy a 6950X to be competitive and there isn't really a better way of doing it.

Looks like resident evil 6 has a free standalone benchmark which is cool, but all the other games cost £20-40 each! Can definitely count me out... I'd be interested if it didn't cost nearly £140 to compete in all stages - for example, if the selection was other games with a free standalone benchmark.

I think it's a pretty fair assessment that we were running too hot in the past - too much impatience and an assumption that our improvised furnace couldn't get that hot. The steel crucibles were also thinner that would have been ideal as they were made from the bottoms of old (thoroughly flushed, ofc) gas cylinders, and resting on irregularly shaped coals so I'm guessing that won't have helped. Didn't think of the aluminium messing with the steel though, makes sense I guess. Our mk1 crucible was a really silly one, a tiny argon gas cylinder cut in half and we tried to use both halves as crucibles. One of the crucibles had a brass valve in the end of it. D'oh! Besides, they were annoyingly small. Also, hope it's ok for me to ask a couple of questions here - I tend to prefer asking publicly for the benefit of any lurkers/googlers who may come across it. How would you preheat the mould - blowtorch? We were thinking of using a mixture of around 80% sharp sand and 20% fireclay for the moulds - where does that sit on a scale from 'about right' to 'terrible idea'? How would you apply pressure - flat clay-lined lid or sheet of steel with a couple of bricks on top or something? My plan for the contact surface was to make the pattern a bit too big in that direction then sand it down to get a perfectly flat surface, sound good? I really appreciate the pointers you've already given me, we had been putting the crucible in when the furnace was already hot which is probably a bad idea and hadn't even thought of preheating the mould. Wow. Yep, that would have been worse. TBH we were lucky no molten metal was involved. I appreciate the correction, I'll stick with 'melting down'.

So, some background. I did two years of electrical engineering at university before switching to computer science. As a result, I know a lot of engineers. One of them built himself a furnace for melting down aluminium cans, which we've used a few times with steel crucibles - unfortunately, steel crucibles don't last very long as they get pretty hot and deform easily. Yesterday we went out wombling (collecting bits of litter that could be useful, for non-brits) and got a boxful of crushed aluminium cans which we'd hoped to melt down using a fancy new graphite crucible. Unfortunately the fancy new graphite crucible had been left outside in england, so it was soaked through. (if you're wondering, I'm holding the camera). Ah well, you live and learn. Fair warning, there's some swearing in the video. I'm still hoping to do my first casting soon, though a new crucible will take a couple of days. The ultimate goal is to make my own VRM/VRAM heatsinks, and hopefully my own (admittedly fairly rubbish if they're aluminium) DICE/LN2 pots as all the commercial ones are really expensive by my standards but I want to move up to apprentice asap after I graduate from rookie league. If anyone's interested I'll happily write up the full process from furnace making to casting once I have something to show for it worth writing about

Time zones and the human need for sleep kept me from watching the trial live, but I've watched the archive now and definitely found it entertaining and engaging, but then people find crazy golf entertaining and engaging - doesn't mean the US open course would be improved by the addition of a miniature windmill. Having been at this for a little under 3 months I obviously have hugely less experience or in-depth knowledge than anyone else in this thread so far, but maybe my perspective as someone who can't be accused of being stuck in their ways is still worthwhile - and my perspective is that I agree with all the above. Firstly, the main thing I noticed watching the event is just how much random chance was involved. The competitors frequently resorted to re-running the benchmark without changing anything, and who can blame them when the output of the benchmark varies by 10x the amount they have to refine their score by? Because of this it feels completely unsuitable for competition - at least anything that points are given out for. I don't think someone who hit a random target by blind luck should end up ahead of someone whose achievements are better but who didn't hit a random target by blind luck. Secondly, in the time I've been at it the main thing I've learnt about overclocking is that it's about hard work and dedication. Many of my best scores (like getting a whole 3.9 hardware points in 3dmark03 with a 210, lol) have been achieved between midnight and 3am after a full day of methodical experimentation and tweaking. Cooling mods, pedestrian though they are, take time to do everything right. Voltmods take time to find, read and understand datasheets and a steady hand for the actual modification. It's not a quick process and not one that can be distilled into 5 minute chunks - or even 1 hour chunks. So, after that criticism, some constructive suggestions - going forward while this format definitely shouldn't be used for 'serious' competitions (in particular anything that gives competition points on hwbot), it could totally work as light entertainment for the OCTV twitch channel. The same element of luck that makes it unsuitable for serious competition makes it more engaging to the casual viewer. Obviously some thought needs to go into what benchmarks are short enough - hwbot prime and ycruncher 25m spring to mind as nice short benchmarks that weren't mentioned in the test run, maybe aquamark as well with good hardware, and short GPUPI runs especially when you consider that there's no need to stick to the standard hwbot presets - but other than that the only real change I'd suggest to the format as a casual competition is using cheaper hardware that is maybe more relevant to the average viewer (IE not LGA2011). It did cross my mind that the same could be said of LN2, but then I think LN2 adds some extra jeopardy that improves the show. As far as broadcasting proper competitive overclocking goes, I don't think cramming the entire process into a twitch-friendly length of time will ever really work. However, maybe a happy balance could be found with an approach a bit like drag racing where all the setup happens off-camera and the only part broadcast is final benching after several hours of setup and test runs? I get the impression - and I'm sure I'll swiftly be told if this is an accurate impression - that all the pros are much much happier having plenty of time to get everything running right and I think the viewing experience watching just the final benching would be just as good if not better than watching someone try to get everything running perfectly within half an hour. If there's a need to add drama to proper competitive overclocking, maybe say once the system is set up, overclocked and has been through test runs and the final benchmarking has started each competitor only gets 5 tries to post the best possible score? But I think the competitive format has to be something the pros are happy won't get in the way of posting the best possible scores - after all, when it comes to proper competitions the possibility of a record being set is much more exciting than onscreen hearts could ever be

And there's the score. Great to see you on the hwbot front page

The problem with submitting an unlocked card as the emulated model is, for example, the top scores with a 290X are worth substantially more hardware points than the top subs with a 290. 3DMark03 for example has 63 subs with a 290 and 148 subs with a 290X, and as a result #1 with a 290 is worth 12.2 hardware points whereas #1 with a 290X is worth 29.2. So even if someone 100% has only the best intentions, by putting 290 results down as what is technically the wrong hardware they actually could easily end up benefiting.

I guess the logic is that it's about seeing how far you can take hardware from what you buy at retail to the most tuned - with OS tuning, power limit mods, voltage mods and cooling mods - and unlocking shaders is just another part of that. You don't call a 6950 a 6970 because of unlocked cores any more than you call a 7970 a 280X because of a small overclock. Plus it solves the problem of what to do if someone unlocks one of the two disabled CUs on a Fury. BRB unlocking my athlon X3 and rerunning all the multicore benchmarks. Also, I actually ended up using google to find HWBOT General Rules and Guidelines - is there a link somewhere obvious that I'm missing? (yes, i went 2 and a half months without having read the global rules, bad rookie - having read them now I'm sure all my subs are fine, hooray for common sense and asking noob questions on /r/overclocking)

Interesting, thanks! I had no idea what my GA78LMT-USB3 calls 'CPU-NB' affected the memory controller.

Wow, thanks! I only just made #1, it really fills me with pride to see people talk about it I just realised I forgot to mention tessellation settings, so I've just edited the post to include a mention of them - I'm sure they helped.

As someone who has an unlockable but not yet unlocked 6950 I'd be interested to hear what the official answer on this is - and similarly for athlons unlocked into B-series Phenoms.

1.0.132 is the latest version as far as I know, certainly it's the latest in techpowerup's downloads section.

Hi, I've had a PM asking me: In the spirit of fairness I thought I thought I ought to share my answer publicly so anyone interested can benefit from it. DISCLAIMER: I've been at this less than three months, and most of what I know is from watching buildzoid's videos and streams. I'm probably not doing everything perfectly. I certainly don't claim to be anything special, nor that my advice is necessarily the best advice - it's just what I've done. With that out the way: Have a phenom chip (nb: this relates to the amd rookie rumble) - 3dmark physics seems to favour them, clock for clock and core for core. Probably because it's floating-point heavy and doesn't use new instructions so isn't really optimised for bulldozer? An 8-core fx could probably beat a phenom x6 though. Have a fast(er) GPU - ok, a lightly overclocked 5850 is nothing special these days, but the overclock did make a small difference to the physics score. Don't neglect the GPU! OS tuning. I always use a separate installation on a separate disk for benchmarking so that I can pare down background programs - including microsoft services - to the absolute bare minimum so the CPU has nothing else to do but the benchmark. I'm not in a position to make a comprehensive guide on what services to disable but print spooler, server and workstation are always the first to go. If you don't have the time/ability/inclination to set up a separate installation you can at least close background programs (browser, steam, skype, flux etc and switch to a non-aero theme for 7 but a separate installation is best because antivirus programs all eat a noticeable chunk of CPU time. Memory tuning. Make it as fast as possible (base clock tuning on am3+ can be useful to get a smaller step up if the next multiplier setting is unstable, or if you're at maximum memory multiplier), then tune it to low latencies especially CL and tRP. 1T command rate is slightly faster than 2T. Tessellation settings. The HD 5000 series especially benefits from having tessellation turned right down in the Crimson driver. My more recent 3dmark11 run on that card was with tessellation turned right down as well as better tuned ram, it gained me 382 points (9%!) for the overall benchmark despite slightly lower GPU clocks. Of course I'm still nowhere in the 3D rankings, but then I don't have an LGA2011 processor Hope that helps all concerned. Now if you'll excuse me, i have a bullet hole in my foot to go clean up...

Looks all good, thanks! Looking forward to entering soon

It says it's 3DMark11 Physics - but all the scores shown are memory clock and the submission link takes you to the memory clock page. But then Stage 3 is also memory clock? I think something is broken...

Awesome. That takes dedication!