Look at my team http://hwbot.org/community/team/xtremelabs.org
We've got 13th place with 18 members, but only ten members are active, and TiN "does not participate in the hwbot rankings" Only hwpoints without global(including 1st place for CPU-Z) And we will reach higher place, so i think rev. 3 is working (In sense that small team can't fight against big team).
EDIT: We are living in Ukraine where 1k USD (980x) is big money and we don't have more 980x(1 of all team, and 2 pcs gave us other people).