Massman

There's going to be a leaderboard up from day 1, on the frontpage in the sidebar. Where Pro OC League is located for now (well, a couple more hours). //edit: putting the finishing touches on a news post explaining the whole damn thing, including how to get started etc. Will be up later today ... I need the production version to make the screenshots .

Money in online competitions is always tricky. €10,000 as prize requires watertight benchmark validation, something which not many applications have, to prevent people from cheating. Also notice the interesting relation between "it is for fun" and "need to get paid". As for the old scores; yeah, I know, I know. Eventually old scores will be phased out because they will be no longer relevant. It's to give people who did great scores just a couple of months ago a chance to not have those wasted because of the cup. Nick did a lot wrong, but not everything about that competition was wrong. That he got shit for it, doesn't mean it's a bad idea. CPU-Z CPU frequency was swapped out for Memory Frequency, by the way.

By the way, I suppose this thread could also be in the public forums? I think it would be interesting to hear more than just staff opinions about this.

Added to the buglist.

We can't do efficiency, people will clock down for screenshot purposes and lie about the used frequency. We can't enforce, so we shouldn't make a rule that encourages lying. I like both ideas, but I'm also not really against the current "whoever submits first is ranked higher"-principle (although I guess that's more relevant to competitions rather than a continuous ranking). Whichever is the least amount of effort to code, I'd opt for. Dennis, what do you think?

I'm not sure what people are most angry about: removing a league which no one cares about or not having a suggestion put into the code. Because that's what the change essentially is: removing the Pro OC League, something pretty much 99% of the participants have said not to care about, pretty much no one follows and no one even communicates about. Over the past months, I've heard tons of Pro OC members complain that it's either impossible to compete, not their main focus ("just for fun") or completely set up the wrong way and therefore dominated by money. I hear nothing but complaints and nothing but people saying they don't care. Just as an example: how many people talked about Team.AU going up to #4 in the Pro OC League after last weekend's insane bench marathon? I wrote about it in a news flash and two or three talked about it on Facebook/forum. The main communication about that weekend was "hey, we broke this record and set these other top scores". If you, top-5 in the league, don't communicate about it, how do you expect other people to talk about it? Mikecdm described it perfectly: "Right now I could really careless what goes on in the pro league. I see big scores come in all the time, but most are just slightly edging out the last score and it's always the same stuff with highly binned stuff". If you don't really care about the league and your followers don't really care and random visitors don't really care. Why have the league in the first place? Actually, from what I gather from this thread is that the "perfect" solution would be to have a "League + Competition"-type ranking. Well, we're doing the competition and forget about the league. That's implementing 1/2 of what the suggested solution is. Honestly, the "league + competition" combination is a good suggestion, but has the following drawbacks (short list): 1) Complicates the competition format even further: now you have to explain the point algoritm (including why only global scores count, why certain benchmarks gets more points and so on) + the competitions (why are they there, how to compete, what's the effect). 2) Complicates the benching process even further: you don't only need the hardware to do all those 15 benchmarks (we know how much people already complain about the $$ necessary to compete), you also need to gear up for seasonal competitions. 3) Complicates the backend code: we would have to maintain two sets of code - one for the League and one for the competitions(*). 4) People will complain about the balance between benchmarks and competitions; some will say there is too much emphesis on the benchmarks (like 3DMark01) others will argue that the competition is biased to one particular team or hardware. 5) We are still stuck with this "competition with no end"-format where no one really ever is declared a winner. In the end, having a combination of both makes things more complex on both the side of the host (our code), the participants ($$, time) and the spectators (explanation). The extra benefits such as the opportunity of "freestyle" benchmarking contributing to your personal league, given you consider this a valid argument(*2), do not outweigh the benefits of reducing the complexity and increasing the transparency of having just a cup. (*): This is particularly a problem if you want to keep track of who was active for which team, a problem which is related to the importance of a historical overview of competitive overclocking (something the community wants). The Pro OC Cup revolves around small competition teams whereas the League revolves around individual user accounts. (*2): the argument of "freestyle" benchmarking being an important argument to (at least) keep the league (partially) is, in my opinion, not really valid. For one, no one really cares about the league and mostly cares about just getting a better score in the rankings (see previous paragraph). This does not change. For two, the effect of these "freestyle" benchmark results would be reduced by introducing the competition points into the Pro OC League, possibly to a point where you can't just do "freestyle" and still be competitive. It's not like this league + competition idea has been rejected by default; it was genuinely taken into consideration and later dismissed because of some of the reasons I mentioned above. This Pro OC Cup wasn't an idea that came overnight; it's been discussed and debated over and over again with people that also truely care about the future of overclocking. That includes for example Elmor, Kingpin and Neo (from the overclocking), but also discussed with people from "the other side" / business in an attempt to ensure that whatever plan comes out is appealing to those who invest parts of their budgets in this hobby. Heck, it's even been discussed with people that have no genuine interest in becoming an extreme overclocker but follow it sort of, again in an attempt to check if they would be interested in following this new format. Hours and hours and hours. All with the best interest for overclocking, obviously. If you're only benching once a month or two/three times a quarter, the cup actually gives you more options to be competitive if that's what you like. If you just enjoy setting scores in benchmarks regardless of your personal ranking, that's still an option too. If you're benching for the team (eg: Pure or overclockers.com) only, that's an option too. The only thing that really changes is that the unappealing, boring and generally disliked Pro OC League transforms into a Cup where the focus on benchmark and competition is narrowed down to five benchmarks and three months. I understand change is difficult and I also understand that this new cup will have some people face new difficulties and problems. But a new challenge also opens new possibilities; possibilities I (and others with me) strongly believe will put pro oc on the right track. //off to write the news article about the cup.

It's a place for the community, made possible by community members and build to support and grow the community. A dictatorship is something completely else and I really hope you realize that.

We might have game benchmarks in the future. That is a good suggestion! Hi Gyrock, A pity you will not join in the Pro OC Cup. But it will be possible to join the OC League, no problem! Freestyle benching will always possible at HWBOT, only the Pro OC will be different .

Years ago, maybe around 2003/2004, on a local forum in Belgian a guy by the name of JorT got in touch with a local PC store to lend him some gear to break a MHz record. He got the gear, got close to the record and had a local news paper write a story on it. In small, small Belgium, I know of at least three distributors/stores that would help out with hardware supply, small or large. But, yeah, I wouldn't be able to get a graphics card that I can modify to the fullest or could even run on LN2, but they might hook me up with a local marketing guy that can spare one. Also, if I'm not mistaken, Macci used to work for a PC store as well. And please don't pretend I don't know how "real life" works in terms of hardware sponsorship. I was around for a while before receiving any free gear for overclocking-only and much of that was as a member of Madshrimps, not because I was involved with HWBOT.

Well, I guess it will be interesting to see new folks stepping up . Most of the concerns outted here are understandible, but not practically of any concern. In fact, and I don't mean to be offensive but just pointing ou my observation, what I see in this thread is a whole lot of people with a lack of creativity to become competitive in this style of competition. Lack of time? That's no problem as you don't have to do everything yourself. You're a team of three to five, you can easily split the tasks and pick out the one you can manage. Distance too great between members? No problem, you don't even have to travel to compete together - everyone can submit the result and it will be linked to the Pro OC Team. Can't afford? Maybe find an etailer or distributor to help out possibly only running the cards on air cooling only. That's what some guys did in the F1OC back in the day too, by the way. To be honest, finding a team mate is not just about enlisting another "top overclocker" who is doing exactly the same like you have for the past couple of years. It's about figuring out what things you lack and have someone fill that void. If you only have time to bench once a quarter, then get together with someone that can do all the pre-testing in two months and arrange a weekend/saturday to do the final runs. Or have someone else cover 3/5 stages and you are involved with the other stages. You have lots of experience? Great! Team up with someone who has a lot of time, but not necessarily the knowledge yet and be some sort of a manager helping the team get forward. There are a dozen ways to approach the cup, it's just a matter of being creative. Ironically, the way Team.AU is formed is pretty solid for this type of competition. A pity you guys won't join, but for others it's a good example for how to form a team. Also, the Pro OC Cup is in fact seasonal and will eventually contribute to a Pro OC Ranking. Obviously, a ranking based on the results of multiple seasons can only work ... if there are multiple seasons. And for that to happen, you have to start with the first season.

Part of the problem; obviously not the problem ...

Currently, the stage list is configured as follows (95% certain it will be like this): CPU-Z CPU Frequency SuperPI 32M Wprime 1024M 3DMark Fire Strike Single GPU 3DMark11 Full Out Fyi, for the first season we'll allow older scores to be used for the stages. This allows Pro OC members to re-use some of the big scores they set in the past couple of months. After a couple of Pro OC Cups, we'll have a Pro OC Ranking based on the performance in the X last cups similar to how the ATP Tennis Rankings work. I don't really understand your complaints. I mean ... I do, but I don't think the complaints are significantly different from how it is now or are inherently insuperable. The inability to bin 100s of CPUs does not change, whether it's a League or Cup. Not having access to 4 graphics cards will not change whether you're in a League or a Cup. You can still bench whatever you want - it just won't reflect your personal ranking. Looking at the exposure from Team.AU last weekend, I see all the focus is on the benchmark results and none (except for my news post) is on the League position. If that is the freestyle both Dino and yourself are talking about, it doesn't change either. What changes is that you can now easily team up with some friends, put the available together and bench for a couple of specific targets. You can try to get in contact with possible hardware sponsors (vendors, shops, distributors, ...) and points them to a competition that has an end date; just like a competition should have. You will, after a couple of cups, be able to point to your Pro OC history (we will keep track of wins, stage wins, etc) and show how you did in past editions. You work for MSI, apparently. My advice? Set up a team featuring a couple of enthusiastic/promising overclockers from a forum, invite them to the office and see if you can do something with the gear you do have available. If you don't win, so what ... it's just for fun, right?

No, the OC League and Enthusiast League still exist. What focus is there on nowadays Pro OC League? Close to nothing. That was the problem to begin with.

3DMark06 ranking, Heaven ranking, 3DMark01 ranking. No, pro league is gone.

Bench for records in the benchmark rankings

- full year quarterly bench schedule - forcing benchmarks - forcing platforms Is actually - meet up once or twice a quarter is fine - same benchmarks like you are running now - same platforms you're running now How much "freestyle" do you honestly believe you are doing right now? Last weekend, you guys ran an Ivy Bridge with 7970 graphics cards through a series of benchmarks that have been around for five to twelve years. The only difference with that is that it'll now be: - limited in time => at some point, there is a winner - picking a couple of combos to focus on every quarter

What lack of flexibility?

Fyi, http://hwbot.org/newsflash/1933_revision_5_pro_oc_cup_to_kick_off_on_march_1

Haha, pretty sure I made that Vmod picture. I recognise my very poor style of adding description text on the picture .

Yeah, made a couple of fixes this morning. Also, you'll find three moderators now: Gamer, Gunslinger and xxbassplayerxx

Not sure if there was actually a BIOS that worked.

Added. Sorry for the delay .

We have that small room until the 14th - quite a lot of people have indicated staying a little later (until 10-11th, I think)

Nice! Highest Cinebench R11.5 ever?

What if you try to boot with a functional VGA card, set PCI-e gen to gen1, shut down and put in the 3870X ?