Massman

Remarkable: MSI is limiting the CPU ratio to 50x for the SuperPI-32M round. Not as far as what I hoped for, but as long as the chips are pre-binned to all do ~100MHz within each other, this should be just fine. Would suck to see one team do 5500MHz and the other 4800MHz Also hoping the growth baseline is more appropriate than last year. Baseline should not be non-overclocked score, but should be expected overclock. If baseline is not chosen correctly, there's an imbalance between stages. Last year, for instance, an excellent SPI-32M result meant pretty much nothing in comparison to the 3D Vantage score.

And Czech Republic has seeded participants as well: OBR and WLK

Looks like Spain does have representatives: Draco and Vak92

There are still 3 weeks to go, so ... why don't you guys get together and go over the tricks of the X58 platform and liquid nitrogen? You could make a video, post some pics, have a bench-weekend etc etc. Seeing that more people care about the OC might give the UK office some incentive to make more work of the qualifiers next year.

Wow, you back in business?

Djeez. So you know your response will be considered inappropriate but still decide to post it? Why didn't the awareness make you re-word your response? I can understand that you're annoyed or perhaps even disgusted by the situation, but why just not used other words?

Impressive clocks!

- P67A-GD65 bios (1.10b3): http://91.121.148.119/downloads/BIOS/E7681IMS.1A3'>http://91.121.148.119/downloads/BIOS/E7681IMS.1A3'>http://91.121.148.119/downloads/BIOS/E7681IMS.1A3 - P67A-GD55 bios (1.10b3): http://91.121.148.119/downloads/BIOS/E7681IMS.1A3 - P67A-GD53 bios (1.10b3): http://91.121.148.119/downloads/BIOS/E7681IMS.1A3

Just had a conversation with MSI about this particular topic. As I mentioned earlier in this thread, the local pre-selections is the responsibility of the local offices. Basically, HQ sends out a notice to the local offices that, if they want to, they can participate in the MOA competition. How they arrange for a participant to join the competition is their problem. This means, all costs concerning the local qualifier have to be carried by the local office. If a local office has no budget, manpower or interest to organize this, they can also decline or just select someone to go. I don't really know what is exactly the reason for the situation in Poland, but as far as I'm allowed to make an estimated guess I would assume that the local office decided to only make a live one-on-one between the two most known (?) Polish overclockers because of the limited time-frame. Organizing an online qualifier now seems almost impossible due to the time between now and the EMEA final in Istanbul. That there are only two teams might very well be because of hardware or budget limitations. How they end up in this situation, I don't know (iirc, there was some change of people in the office), but the fact that this is the situation is understandible. That there is no qualifier in Spain is, most likely, because the Spanish representative declined on the event. Again, this is a choice made by the local office, not HQ. The main issue I see here is that all local offices can decide themselves to join this (marketing) event. If there's no incentive for them to do so, for instance sales or exposure, they will most likely not put any effort in joining. Now, one could argue that HQ should just take over. Yes, but there's quite a big problem with that: HQ does not have the authority to hold local events. Every office is responsible of what happens in the local market and the policy is that HQ will not intervene. As far as I know, the HQ did give the advice to contact HWBOT for online pre-selections, but I'm sure that if the local office is not familiar with HWBOT they just won't consider this. Ideally, HQ would be in charge of everything and would ask us to set up a series of online competitions covering all the regions and countries. Reality says, however, that this is a decision the CM (country managers) make together with the local offices. In the Americas, we worked something out (http://hwbot.org/competition/moa2011_americas), for EMEA we didn't. For future evens, I'll draw up a proposal for online pre-selections at HWBOT. It would be easy/great if the benchmark stages and limitations would be the same in every region. This proposal would be just a solution in case the local office does not want to do any effort themselves. Of course some offices do great (eg: France, Ukraine, Benelux) and don't really need any help. @ |ron: Looks good!

You have a valid argument, there . If you would've been in charge of the pre-selection in Italy, how would you have set up the rules? Taking into account that people who have skill, but not (enough) money would be capable of qualifying.

One important sidenote here is that this competition is not just about overclockers, but about 'extreme overclockers'. Basically, you want people representing your country that understand the system that is being benched on and that understand how liquid nitrogen works. There needs to be a balance between opening the qualifications for as much people as possible and not setting them up in a way basically everyone, regardless of experience/skill, can win. An example. In last year's MOA EU 2010, the hardware was 980X + GTX480. If you have no experience with liquid nitrogen, you simply can't do well in the competition due to the necessity of understanding coldbug/coldbootbug behavior. Also, someone with no X58 experience is doomed to fail: there's a delicate balance between the various voltages (vcore, vtt), frequencies (unc affect dram) and of course performance (low uncore means low performance). There needs to be a basic understanding of all this to be able to defend your country's honor in an international competition. Software tweaks and optimisations are nice, but the essence of 'overclocking' is not tuning the software, but increasing the operating frequencies. That being said, I think it's not a bad idea to have mainstream hardware in the qualifications, as long as the competition is set up in a way that the skill to increase performance through overclocking is a significant part of the process. I do think open qualifiers are a must, but not in a way that any average-joe can win and represent the country in an international renowned competition.

Updated first post! - 96 FPO/steppings - 296 entries

Lol. Nah, Switzerland usually is together with Germany (DACH) and Germany is already represented.

Probably because MSI Russia selected them for the competition. Is there an MSI Switzerland? If yes -> send email.

Ehr. You didn't 'win' MOA Switzerland if MSI didn't tell you you won

If find the most significant part of it, that MSI actually listened to us (= 'the overclocking community') ! Perhaps it's not always the best (as if there is a 'best', lol) who are in the competition, but certainly everyone has a chance now. Not only MSI-owners.

Hm. I don't think HQ is dictating the Polish office on what to do with the local qualifier. The procedure is different in every country and largely depends on what the local office wants to do. The keyword in this issue is: budget. As far as I know, the local office gets the opportunity to do something for MOA, but they can decline (eg: Spain) if they don't have the time/money. In your particular case, I reckon HQ is indeed asking for the live finals to be held with specific hardware (they supply that hardware, maybe?) and only a limited quantity is available. The limited amount of teams is not the goal, but a consequence of the policy. I don't know why there wasn't an online pre-qualifier, though. We've been doing this for quite some time now and it doesn't take that much effort to create a 3-stage online qualifier. Just need an email ...

Nah. Don't let the sticker 'overclock power' fool you

In Benelux we were allowed to use other brands as well. Pretty cool, I think

Damn! Now I have to edit the first page with the same info it was before. Good benching!

We could 'limit' it using very lax limitations. Something like 'must have been in top-100' or something.

Okay, here are the scores on LN2 (between 0°C and +7°C). Only AM3 seems impressive. 01: 110489 marks with AMD Radeon HD 6950 at 1080/1500MHz on Mar 20, 2011 03: 116572 marks with AMD Radeon HD 6950 at 1080/1500MHz on Mar 20, 2011 05: 47915 marks with AMD Radeon HD 6950 at 1050/1500MHz on Mar 20, 2011 06: 36547 marks with AMD Radeon HD 6950 at 1050/1500MHz on Mar 20, 2011 AM3: 435732 marks with AMD Radeon HD 6950 at 1080/1500MHz on Mar 20, 2011 Have some vids on my phone, I'll upload those later.

First Sapphire BIOS with pll override re-hosted - Pure Black P67 bios (058): http://91.121.148.119/downloads/BIOS/1APHE058.ROM