Xtreme Addict

There was time and place for changing rules, after some complaints new rules (for qualifier) were added. Changing HW during competition is forbidden in my opinion, cause some guys simply did some results to pass for 2nd round in order to fight for the ticket. When someone sees rules, he can adapt, make strategy. In my personal opinion, rules can be changed only in one situation - when all participants want it and it would make competition better (for instant - adding additional prizes) or doing like Ronaldo says one big Semi-final with 9 places (more easy to qualify I think, no restrictions like one user per country). About Titan - all Titans are accepted, but must use MSI XOC bios (with MSI in GPU-Z), which will be available before 2nd round. There is no restriction to MSI Titan, cause MSI only sells Titans in APAC region. About dying Titans - those who Epowered (or used some other custom VRM like 2900XT) know that those cards are not easy to die. Much more tough than lightnings. Only one condition - separate VRM. The problem in Titans is too weak VRM and that's all. If you want to use 780 GTX - it has the same VRM. I am not sure if non refs will be available for 2nd round, so there is the same problem. BTW GTX 780 + 100 MHz GPU = GTX Titan (talking on LN2, the same mem frequency). Moreover GTX 780 has lower amount of memories, so I am sure those can clock a bit higher. GPU is consuming less V and is running not that hot. I am sure that GTX 780 if properly modded, can catch Titan. Let's be honest, only Vince, Ronaldo, GB HQ and Aristidis were able to squeeze 1700+ form Titans. Most Titans with epowers ended 1600-1650 GPU. I am 100% that GTX 780 can match it.

I understand your point, but still I claim it's not suitable for PRO CUP and should be banned. All server parts in Poland are for special order, are too expensive for normal users. No one in Poland is folding, so only sell to foreign country... it's not so easy as it should. And I am sure that in other countries it's also the same like this (not talking about USA or Taiwan) Yap 4x Titan is not also the cheapest and most easy setup (if you want to do it correctly), but as you saw in last PRO Cup 4x 7970 were close to Titans. You didn't have to spend money on 4x Titans, this time there is cheaper option - 780 GTX, and soon non refs should be available. It's still expensive but much more sensible than multi cpu, cause few guys before PRO CUP liked to push 4x gpu setups for WRs and so on... from few generations.

Yes, if you are buying from ebay all over the world, have friends to get them shipped and so on, you can buy those CPUs not so expensive + board. Of course you were looking for ES cpus cause those have unlocked multi. You know that I admired your work a lot and what you did is fantastic. But in my opinion it's not PRO CUP material. Xeons and Opterons (I am talking about those real, which can work in multi CPU configuration) are not desktop material, but servers - it's PRO market, which is very expensive. For us, overclockers and gamers we have our "K" series, "Extreme Edition" or "Black Edition". Moreover, board vendors don't produce server OC boards. It's not this market. Don't get me wrong but from what I remember PRO CUP was created to make OC community stronger, to get some new fresh blood, but now I think it's more and more getting old ocers away. Seriously, if there are some cinebench or wprime stages for multi CPU configurations - I am out, cause it's not my market and I can't fight with it and here is why: - I am mostly buying hw in Poland, from warehouses or shops, I checked and cheapest Opteron 16C cost 1000 euro here. Even if I had $ to buy platform for one stage (let's count about 6K euro with ECC mems, board, LN2), what would I do with it later? Try to sell, okay... who will buy it in Poland? I am not company, and only PRO companies buy such HW with an invoice, I am private user, I can't give invoices... so in the best case I could sell it after many weeks (or months) of waiting for 1/3 price? It's impossible to do for me. - I don't see connection of server parts in overclocking/gaming market, so I am not interested in it - Vendors which I am interested in (Asrock, Asus, MSI, GB, EVGA and so on) mostly don't make boards for multi cpu for LN2, with OC functions and so on and they don't care about it, cause it's a different market. - if there are so "crazy" and expensive setups, I don't see any new fresh blood joining in OC world, I see the opposite- old users will say "that's too much" I can accept multi CPU if I can mount normal CPUs, like 4770K, 3770K, 3930K and so on, normal cpus which are not so expensive (in fact most of us buys per few cpus for binning), not server expensive staff. But there is a reason why Intel and AMD doesn't support it. They want to make more $ from server/PRO market and that's their right. I don't see a point to go into this area where we are in desktop/gamers/enthusiast market... In fact it's the same as creating some Povray or something "PRO" a benchmark, were Quadro/FireGL are much stronger than normal gpus. Let's do PRO CUP on this... where Titan cost 1K USD and Quadro based on GK110 cost 2-3 times more. I don't see any sense or point of this. If we want to make OC community grow - we have to look into gaming society, which in fact is the group who mostly uses OC for 24/7 and are more close to us than some server companies/enthusiasts. 4x Titan is hard for wallet, but 4x 780 GTX is not that tragic and it's easy to sell such gpus after PRO Cup stage and it can make interest among gamers. Multi CPU for sure won't do that. I am totally for banning multi cpus stages. It's not our market. From one hand we are made to OC "mainstream" rig (3DMark06 stage - I don't mean that I am against it, hw isn't that expensive and easy to sell after OC) but on the other hand we will be made to bench rigs unavailable for us to buy in retail shops (price) and which have almost nothing in common with OC.

Cinebench killed the field more. Moreover - GTX 780 can be very competitive, cause it's 4-Way, mostly CPU limited. And those are about 2500 USD, something like that. We have to remember that it';s PRO Cup - the idea was to make it sponsored, so vendors would deliver GPUs for it...

Awesome result

4x gpu is okay... Cinebench with multi cpu - OUT!!!! Multi cpu doesn't bring new "blood" from gamers to extreme overclockings, 4x gpu yes because it's technology for gamers... And good Xeons or AMD chips in retail distribution cost 2-3K USD per one...

Show me 70K please

5970 shows claws with Haswell Waiting for single gpu runs from you!

Awesome my friend

Monster CPU!

2s to Asrock

Ronaldo my friend I always admire your results, your effort you put into results and I understand your situation in your country. In Poland it's better, but not much better in fact. It's very unfair that in some countries there is no support at all and in others some ocers are sponsored totally, achieving in fact not good results lol Personally, I think you are the best private, nonsponsored OCer ever Keep pushing. I am so glad we will meet again in Taipei

Congrats to you Oleg, this time you were unbeatable, considering low amount of time you spent on results - AWESOME I also want to thanks all my friends who helped me (with repairing my Xpower II, system tweaks, motivation), it's wonderful to have such great support I am glad we both got our chances to grab tickets and have calm july I wish best luck to all participants for Semi final, for sure it will be hard battle!

Awesome finding, congrats for ticket

Congrats Ronaldo. Your results are awesome. America this year was extreme!

Crazy result Oleg. You have AWESOME G.skills PI @ Ronaldo Those are PSC

Good job

I am also done benching... MSI: 3, XA: 0 ...

I would say last minute benching

Awesome idea

Nope. Only R4E/R4F and new EVGA DARK have "hardware tweak" to clock cpus higher

Interesting findings So it seems they have better bios (gaming series) About volts - from what I see each MSI board (the same model) but different samples, each board is different about voltages lol

... People you really want to do OC Contests totally unfriendly by crazy rules and stop ocers to participate? RULES MUST BE CLEAR, UNDERSTANDABLE AND AS FAIR AS THEY CAN You have to realize that OCers (most of us) work or study, we have private lives, we don't have possibility to spend all time for contests. Most of us plan taking part in big contests like MOA or AOOC or LOC, some of working guys specially for this occasion take free days at work and so on. Other matter is hw availability. Sometimes we have to import some hw from abroad to take part cause in many countries some parts are not available, or even buying handpicked hw, it's impossible to buy golden samples from the same overclocker, or few in the same country Shipping takes time, the same - customs. Moreover, not everyone has 24/7 LN2, some of us only can refill dewars in certain days or simply sometimes wait until there is fresh delivery, because ln2 is over and sometimes it takes few weeks... And LN2 also cost and most contests aren't on the hw which ocers want to overclock (I mean combination - most of OCers use MSI Lightnings + Asus board), especially some stages of older HW. Results are mostly made only for contest. Now imagine - someone buys hw, buys LN2, has just got great scores and want to publish them but the concept of OC contest was "after 3 weeks it will be shut down randomly" and it appears it was shut down 5 minutes before... The concept which proposed Franscisco is interesting though, if developed properly, it could be fun to take part in such contest. BTW, why OCers don't like sandbagging? In fact it makes the game harder, and I think we are serious players. During contests sometimes we are going to do big sacrifices, crazy mods, things to score a bit better, tweak OS as hell and so on, cause "someone can have high backup" . Moreover, last hours and minutes of big events are interesting a lot If HWBOT or Vendors don't want to have sandbagging, simply prepare weekly prizes for highest scores or something which will want us to show best scores In some contests elimination time (like MOA 2012) also shows who can and will participate, but it has to be in reasonable time frames. I am getting back to benching right now, I hope I won't zorch any MSI Today I got my X79A-GD65 finally. If I hadn't repaired Xpower II (with help of friends) earlier, today, would be the first they to do scores for some stages for me

The main problem is that many guys get hw in the last days of competition.

Yap, I also like to know participants