knopflerbruce

Np, lots of things to learn when you're a mod. Everyone makes mistakes:p

If the validation was currupt, canardpc would've rejected it while uploading. Score OK'ed, and by looking at the pifast and superpi runs there's no reason to think this is a bug. Hopefully it'll stay OK'ed this time.

I've never heard that regular ES chips are not allowed when there are retails available, perhaps we should turn the question around - where does it say that such chips are NOT allowed?

...and M3eh7:p

I think it's completely ridiculous that you can actually own an unbenchable piece of HW, if that's what you're saying. It should be possible to create a set of rules that doesn't exclude any piece of exotic hardware there is - after all, this is the biggest database of overclocking results.

DFI UT 790FXB-M3eH7 - this board is unreleased, but it's not under NDA (I think...), does that matter? IMO we need to find a set of rules that doesn't make certain boards unusable for boints forever (which is the case if a board is never released, and both HW and globals are removed)... hardware boints only for not officially available parts, that's what I call a fair solution.

I got an open box DFI Blood Iron P45, and I could reach 633mhz superpi 1m on air on nb and water on CPU. Pretty good bang for buck IMO, but I think efficiency isa little bit worse than on the DFI DK P45 Plus. Stay clear of the UT p45, btw... 600+ is not common. You could try to PM massman, maybe he knows a little bit about some of these DFI P45 boards.

If Intel chips were benched more, it will often be more difficult to grab the first spots there than for other ranks without the same competition. How can this be wrong? It's impossible for the engine to actually know how much skill it took to achieve some result, and IMO the popularity/rank method is pretty good. Sure there are submissions that don't get the boints they deserve, and vice versa, but to give AMD categories advantages just because there aren't several hundreds of users that bench those chips. We all know superpi (and possibly a few other tests) don't show the real performance difference between the different cores (not just manufacturers), but that itself is not enough to split like you suggests. If you can prove that FM and superpi are deliberately designed to be bad on AMD and good on Intel, then it's different.

Looks better now:) If more categories will reach more than 20 results in each benchmark I feel the database function of HWBot has improved alot.

I have a pc2-5300 kit that can do 600mhz CL4, it all depends on what chips are on the PCB.

Drivers optimized for a specific benchmark are not allowed, so that's taken care of already. The superpi discussion started when c2d was launched, but the application itself is much older. BEsides, the "optimization" is so huge no-one would ever believe that it represents the actual performacne difference:p

It should count, yes. You could always check and see if it does, if not it's a bug;)

If it was Intel optimized, it must've been optimized for some ancient core... If Pentium I optimized means Nehalem-optimized as well, then you're right. Perhaps I'm stupid, but can you link me to a reliable source that tells me that it actually IS pro-Intel? IMO if a benchmark is optimized intentionally towards one manufacturer it should have separate world record rankings, as it's not fair to compare. Proof is needed, though.

I started because I wanted to get more performance for less cash, by OC'ing the then top-of-the-line dual cores AMD had. I bought an X2 3800+ bulk CPU, aiming for 2.7GHz, but since what I got was a CCBIE 0608BPMW it got much higher:D Then I got two Opteron 180's for cheap on ebay, that I wanted to sell... but I felkt like testing those, too see if they were any good - and when those were gone, I got a sick Opteron 175... and the rest is history:p

I can't comment on 3dmark, but Superpi wasn't that much faster on Intel systems during the Athlon XP days - and the program has been unchanged since it was released (when was this? many years ago...). It's right that there are more popular categories in the Intel rankings - but how can people expect to get boints for the AMD CPUs when they don't bench them? If you have more than ~100 results you start to get a pretty decent amount of boints for the top HW spots... 100 is not that many, actually. AMD would've released a $1000 killerchip if they could. Since their parts are sloightly slower than Intels they have to focus on price/performance NOW to be able to sell. The HWBot 3.0 system is popularity optimized, and if AMD users are too lazy to bench, then they will never get a nice reward for 1st place.

There's no reason to split AMD and Intel, as it's the different CORES that make the difference. If AMD vs Intel needs a split, then Nehalem and WOlfdale needs it, too... and San Diego and Deneb and so on. I doubt they will get completely separated, but in some future update there may be additional tanks based on those kind of things, so you will get rewarded for stuff like the best Athlon 64 submission, Nehalem core submission etc as well as the overall and for the specific hardware model.

Could be some of the bugs, too... at least some of it.

Looks like a bug, no need to rebench.

Open the window and get -10c in your room, that should help as well:p With properly tweaked and maxed out systems I can't imagine that you're way off receiving boints on air, even without opening the windows. But if you can't tweak or use good cooling, of course that's disadvantage. A cheap water block and a pump isn't that expensive, either, btw... you don't even need a radiator for that ghetto chiller I suggested.

True, as long as the "no performance difference requirement" is followed strictly. There's no reason to join categories just to make them look more popular, either;) I'd say if the difference is less than 1-2% (when overclocked) then it's OK to merge ranks.

Checksum is enough. You can easily see if 3 or 4 cores were used, the time difference is HUGE, way beyond any tweaks:p If two submissions get the same score, one cooled by LN2 and "push Ok and run"- style, and the other is tweaked to the limit on air, and get the same there is no way we can reward them differently. Skill may not be correctly rewarded in all cases. But by setting the limit to 50%, and making the rewards relatively small for the first boint giving submissions we reward those who can tweak their air cooled systems as well. However, I don't see why it's not possible to just put some ice cubes in a bucket with water, and make a water loop with no radiator, and then get an advantage that way instead of using a stock cooler:confused: Cooling skills should be rewarded, too. Sure people have benched after rev. 2 before, but it's not THAT different for grinders: buy cheap HW and max it out, getting as much boints as possible. The onyl big difference i can think of is that before you get automatically rewarded if less than 20 users benched (rewarding low skill, as it takes no effort to get boints), and now you have to beat a few guys to make it.

The problem with rare HW is that it's hard to make an algorithm that takes care of the cases where most people run on their daily rigs and at stock speeds more or less, and where the top bencher(s) have really maxed their chips and reached great scores. Lippokratis had a couple of sli/cf scores (not THAT many, but probably quite valuable in rev. 2 because of the bug that HAD to be fixed, as it was rewarding 3d-benchers with WAY too much boints than they really should have had). Example of why rev. 3 is better than rev, 2: http://www.hwbot.org/result.do?resultId=777212 CPUZ validation: 6/13, now 0.1 boints - before... maybe 2.0 or so? 5.3% OC... IMO 0.1 is way closer to the truth than ~2.0. "lots of time" is also hard to define. If you spent 6-7 hours straight trying to get that validation and perhaps a quick superpi run, and risk killing it several times in the process by trying different means to really max it out, then I agree - it's worth a fair share of boints. Is that what you meant by "alot of time"? Or do you refer to the overall time needed to get the complete collection of results Lippokratis has? The term "easy boints" is also quite weird... why should there be such a thing at all? Just run the bench, tweak nothing, do nothing, and get boints... not something to reward in a competition. You may get some achievements, though (if you have enough submissions). That's enough if you don't manage to sneak into the top 50%. Getting boints means you've done something that's not so bad - not that you've pressed the start button and ran the benchmark. About the slow boint degradation discussion I'd like to add that if you beat the second place by a mile, you certainly deserve a bit more boints than 10% of the 2nd place, and the same if you've spent some time tweaking to be able to beat whoever is first. Normally, the top spots are pretty good - and beating them should be rewarded properly. The best thing you "rare HW complainers" should do is to bench more - the more competition, the more boints for the best scores, and more available slots for boints.

There's no doubt this is a valid result. Rejections don't really mean alot, only if the score itself is weird in some way...

In some cases they are OK.

As long as the cards are actually comparable in terms of performance (both stock and overclocked), it's a good idea. But if the 512mb memory overclocks alot worse than 128mb, resulting in worse scores for the 512mb cards, there should be separate categories.