Massman

Hm, maybe it's a bit unclear how user rankings and team rankings work exactly. In the user rankings, everyone will still get a ranking. No matter how much team members have submitted in the league, your best score will still receive a ranking/points. The team rankings will be a lot like this month's september challenge, both in terms of concept as visualisation. So, if you put up a new team's high, your entry will not be seen as 'user for team' but really 'team score'. The idea is to have two separate rankings for user and teams, and both having their own weight count (the more teams participate, the more weight). First of all, it's not always easier to bench with free gear. Yes, it is if you go to public live events, but when you receive something at home manufacturers (marketing people who send you stuff) expect it to be alive after the session. Kill too much free gear and you'll not get any in the future. Secondly, in no way we attempt to regulate hardware flow from manufacturers to the community. This means that we're not going to check up closely on what's sent and what's not; or, in other words, MFCs can still send some board to an XOL guy. The UFL was made to force the corporate overclockers into a different league as well as give those people who have great access to join in there as well. A single-person team will not be effective. Unless you're benching in all imaginable categories yourself ... As many points as possible = 300, in the current design. High-end new hardware = less people; mainstream older hardware = more people. We want more people to be able to compete at the top of the ranking (or sub-top), not less. Is it wrong to make two changes to support the same concept? Is it only allowed to make one change? Obviously that's something we don't support ... no idea why you'd hold that against us. Try to understand how rankings work currently and you'll see that loopholing rules is too beneficial. There's a reason why this hardware sharing topic is being brought up so many times. Incorrect. The small teams with good scores all across the board will be able to compete with huge teams that have average scores across the board. Okay ... 1) No. If you're UFL, you cannot be XOL/EL. People who are not UFL have an XOL and EL ranking. 2) Yes, you're always part of a leaderboard 3) Yes. I cannot give a fixed number as of now. We're also considering to change the current 'you have to compete in all benchmarks' to 'your X best submissions count to personal total', which probably affects the balance as well. 4) No. Not in the new design. What does help is, however, to have multiple people pushing in different hw rankings with the same card. Eg: one does 01, another one pushes for Vantage etc. It also helps if more than one person has a 7900GTX, so people can share findings how to increase the score or try to beat each other to improve the team score. The issue is that MEMBERS don't trust MEMBERS and expect us to clean up everything they consider cheating. Pretty obvious has never been a valid criteria for removing results due to hardware sharing. That is the whole issue ... if people accuse others of sharing, everything must be removed ASAP, but if they get accused themselves it's as if the whole world is against them . This is a valid point. One thing we were playing with (concept) was to have a similar split up for teams as we had for users where one team has both an Xtreme part and an ambient part. This situation is a bit more complex coding-wise, but not completely undoable. Another idea would be to have subteams and larger 'mother' teams. This would be the opposite of the current strategy of having one huge team and trying to enlist as many people as possible. Something like: - OC Forums -- OC Forums LN2 Boys -- OC Forums "we don't need no liquid nitrogen" -- OC Forums "I like them old and cheap" But that makes things more complicated as well.

In the picture it must be clear that you're using an MSI vga.

Reference clocks.

The fact that it is entirely open is already a huge problem, as far as my PM/mail tells me. Personally, I don't have a problem with it, but a lot of other people really mind that people with corporate access are leading the rankings at the moment. If that's in fact not an issue, I think we wasted time splitting up. I reckon, however, that there are some big threads out there that have proven more than one overclocker is annoyed by it . FYI, regarding the XOL. I've explained to MFCs that there's no problem with sending out a free card once in a while to support overclockers or get feedback. However, if there are for instance 20 cards available, they should be send to 20 different people, not 1. XOL will still allow MFC to send out hardware, but it's not supposed to be the crazy pre-binned stuff. MFCs do notice interesting assets and, although some teams seem to think we don't, I've suggested several 'new' overclockers to be contacted for receiving some samples for feedback stuff. I'm also trying to push manufacturers towards the direction of more local events as well (since competition points equals more exposure for them), just to get local overclockers to meet more often. Like small overclocking sessions with some free gear (not always high-end, but also mainstream stuff - just to have fun), free LN2 and heaps of fun. Pushing towards doesn't equal immediate change, sadly enough ...

You can only play if you pay? I remember very well that in the first meeting about HWBOT, when Frederik said that he was not able to pay me more than legal minimum wage, I said to him: "I don't really care about how much I make - as long as the community will never have to pay for HWBOT I'm down with it". I still stand for that.

-ignore- The world is bigger than EU and USA. South-America has a very strong overclocking community, but hardware is extremely expensive ... I really don't understand why you should be having a higher rank just because you are able to buy high-end stuff. Regardless of the amount of money it costs to compete, with skill and effort you can always play. GTX480 or HD4670 ...

Sorry, I don't have an FAQ for this. But ... wait. At the moment people are bitching about having to fight against corporate/super-seeded overclockers ("common man cannot win") and now you're asking me how you can join the one league with corporate overclockers and super-seeded people? Not precise. Polls hardly ever reach over 200 votes here on the HWBOT forums. That's not nearly a precise estimation of the entire HWBOT community. Yeah sorry, I had it quoted, but looked over it when writing the reply. I'll do it later today as local clock is showing 4AM here (dedication or idiocy? )

Because it's part of the concept. XOL = normal guy's overclocking league. The idea is that it should be possible to compete at a high level because of skill and not because of financial possibilities. Eg: hardware points become more important. Also, we always try to make using loopholes as little beneficial as possible: if UFL is here, then XOL must not be interesting for the manufacturers. If XOL is the same concept as UFL, then why would they bother to push for UFL? So, change XOL a bit to make it less interesting for MFC, but more interesting for the common overclocker (reduce entry cost). But those changes also come with side-effects. Etc. Change comes in large shape, because it needs to fit the entire concept. Just splitting up is not enough As a US citizen, you are by law obliged to pay taxes even if you don't like the direction in which the government is moving. With users supporting hwbot, this is not a the case. The income is not secure. Also, and I've said this from the beginning, I don't see why end-users must pay both for the hardware and the marketing (MFC will use good OC results as marketing, no matter what). Let users buy hardware, MFCs can take care of the development ... that's a fair solution. Unfair is a difficult topic. It's also unfair that you can get hardware a lot cheaper than someone else. Or LN2 a lot cheaper. The idea here is that things move in a right direction (eg: we managed to get Slovenia in the GOOC online qualifiers), not in an even worse direction. That's also why it's more important to embrace manufacturers than to ignore them.

Corporate overclocking and manufacturers using overclocking as marketing tool is one of the biggest reasons we've split up USER rankings. Other things just come with new revisions. We prefer to make one big change than a million small ones. Eg: the competitions playing a role in the point thing was not for manufacturers but a logical change (why would it not be fair to be rewarded to be in a worldwide final?). The team league is not at all affected by sponsors.

The majority is? So all the threads about corporate overclockers are like ... 'for real' and 'just to have a bit of fun'? I did and you replied that I should come clean. You don't accept what I'm saying as the truth and only accept your insinuations as the truth. As long as I'm not repeating what you are saying, I'm not 'coming clean' according to you. Regardless of you being right or wrong.

Believe me, not all is as I want it to be. As mentioned before, this wasn't written and posted yesterday. As for the second part. I'm anticipating the situation where people would be 'supporting' HWBOT only when decisions are made in their favour. You say you'd support HWBOT if we'd only do what the majority asks, but it's very likely that you might not like what the majority thinks and then just stop supporting the bot. There's no way we can justify working for this site if we have no insurance that we will get the financial support to actually live. In that way, it's easier to work with manufacturers than with individuals ... it gives us the opportunity to not think about the money and focus fully on the development part, whereas unstable income would make it mandatory to focus on income and 'making it through the day' (which, ironically, is the situation we're currently in).

Voting doesn't always work. Just think about the fact that a lot of our members don't really have a good understanding of english and might not be able to understand the question correctly. FYI, you guys do realize that this team-thing has been discussed within HWBOT as well, right? It's not as if this thing was just written and posted . It's actually the best way to solve hardware sharing, which is one of the biggest sources of discussion in the last couple of months. It's also one of the very few workable solutions that doesn't require pictures, videos and bank receipts as validation. I am open for all suggestions on this topic (apart from the "change back to rev2" ) ... I'd really like to have less cheat accusations.

You're not giving me an alternative here: you're simply stating that if I don't say what you insinuate, I'm not clean. And if I am clean, I'd say what you insinuate. I guess it's always easy to see the dark side of things and don't look at the bright side. People will always have something to complain about ... but if you would look closely at the Rev4, you might actually notice that we're doing A LOT to keep the small time overclockers happy. If you don't want to see it, you will not see it, however. No. There would be a paradox IF we'd start to reward people for not achieving the best result. What this concept is, however, is rewarding people for not choosing an 'easy' way (buy popular hardware) but support the team with different hardware. We reward the best result. FYI, the concept of overclocking is not getting a reward. The concept of overclocking is having fun. -sigh- You make it sound as if we never listen and just do whatever we want. We listen to feedback, then return to our design/concept and see how we can implent stuff. It requires COMPROMISES. Hence why not everything is always as you want it to be.

The key point is here, however, that all changes we make are like "by overclockers for overclockers" The overclocking world has become very complex and manufacturer overclocking will be part of it from now on. We can either sit in the corner and cry all night long, or can think of ways to embrace manufacturers and their wish to use overclocking as marketing. Ignoring MFCs would actually be the least intelligent thing to do, even from an overclocker for overclocker point of view. This revision is actually all about giving manufacturers a separate playground so that the normal people can return to a quiet playground again . As for the donating part. Thing is: there's still a huge hole to cover from the past 5 years of investment (when there was no income); if that continues, HWBOT will simply not continue ... it's not very smart to keep a costly website running if there's nothing that covers the costs. Also, if there's no software developper, no bugs will be solved (free time is needed and when you have a high pressure coding job + kids running around, time is limited). I really wish you could see all the bills and bank accounts and the actual time available for coding; it would probably make things a lot more clear.

-sigh- Why are you and your team mates always trying to make everything look so controversial? Every single opinion that does not line up with your thoughts are seen as "idiotic", "corporate machine" or "just to piss us off". I'm really not grasping the importance of you using the words "corporate puppet". It's as simple as: either we can do this full-time and give you something, or we can't and can give you nothing ... I'm not sure how it works in your neighbourhood, but I just can't buy bread with fictional air-money. The amount of request for the actual development on HWBOT has reached a stage where it's impossible for Frederik to do even 10% of it in his free time (or night time), so it's an absolute necessity to find resources to keep this site running. Are we bad guys for asking money from MFCs? The alternative is that we're charging the overclocking community for keeping this site running ... is that the best alternative then? You always make it look as if the ONLY alternative is that no one should be paid and all features must be added within a short time-frame. That's just not possible ...

Obviously this is a tricky point. Three things: 1) Online competitions will not have a huge effect on the ranking. live competitions (eg: moa/gooc) will have a slightly bigger effect, but obviously not so big that winning the worldwide final will give you a certain top-5 spot. 2) We've suggest a three-stage online competition concept for the next year for supporting manufacturers, that (hopefully) will improve the online competitions a lot more. - stage 1: marketing overclocking -> some guys (UFL) get pre-binned cards to show off the overclocking capabilities of X hardware (no prizes) - stage 2: extreme overclocking -> low-cost hardware will be needed to win a high-end product (eg: GTS450 for GTX480+XPower/UD9) - stage 3: ambient overclocking -> random hardware for mainstream product The idea is that people who will compete for the big(ger) prize in stage 2 will have to mod the crap out of a low-cost product to gain a component that was shown off in stage 1. This instead of the current "you need high-end to win high-end" concepts. 3) We obviously need an incentive for MFCs to support the development of HWBOT. I know you all think we're making shitloads of money here, but in fact it's as simple as just making break even at the end of each month. And that's without having a dedicated software coder to deal with all the bugs and feature requests. If we want to keep HWBOT running in the future and make sure features are added regularly, we need MFCs (like MSI, GIGABYTE and ADATA do now) to actually start to support us financially ... as we never want the community to pay for this site. If you can make other companies out there (which whom we've had contact already) to support our development without anything in return, please feel free to do so

Yes. I'm ignoring the opinions of people that need to change to using bad language when expressing their opinion. People who have to say something really worth reading will have no problem expressing themselves without using those bad words ... even if the grammar is broken. If you have been here long enough, you'll notice that I can take quite an amount of shit. I don't even fall over the usage of a couple of bad words (eg: "i think it sucks" is no problem), but an entire message only containing bad words and non-sensical jibber-jabber is just not helping anyone. I obviously don't mean you personally here, but in general. HWBOT has never ignored well-formed feedback. I never do either. As long as you refrain from comments like "you so dumb" and "you must get paid a lot of money", you're good.

You should see my bank account status . I don't think it benefits the big spenders for the simple reason that most of the current high-boint scores are with the most high-end hardware of each generation (i guess i7 920 is an exception, although it's still high-end for Nehalem platform). This concept actually leaves a lot less to gain from buying the expensive VGAs are more to gain from going to low(er)-end stuff like GF8500/GF8600 (instead of GF8800s).

I see a few decent replies in this thread (most of them consist of "baaaaad" or "you sux" - I don't bother to read those), mostly concerning the teams league. The best way to think of this change is that instead of all team members having to buy one sample of the popular hardware, this concept actually invites people to bench a variety of hardware. So, instead of all going for the 8800GTX, it's inviting people to go for the entire GF8 series: from low-end to high-end. That the LN2 guys might benefit from this is actually a valid point. We have considered creating the air/water team league as well, but that was quite a bit more complicated. Maybe when we do the actual coding, we'll see it's okay-doable, but not sure. The thing is ... it's already a huge advantage to run LN2; but on the other hand, in the really competitive rankings, it's often not that difficult to grab a bunch of points with just air/water cooled components.

I've just updated my business card with this sentence

They will give points to the user account, but not add anything to the team. The idea is that this way we want people to meet up more often and have a nice bench session together. Maybe someone has a good CPU and someone else a nice GPU, so they team up for good team scores. The normal overclocking league for the majority of the overclockers will have a changed ratio between global and hardware points. I'm not sure how we will do it practically, but we will add more value to hardware points. HW points limit will go up, in other words . The hardware sharing rule will still be present, I think. We have rendered hardware sharing for team points pointless, but it's still there for the user rankings. For 3D, having a shared CPU has never been a problem, by the way .

Hello all, Since we're getting good feedback on the plan, it's time to make it public for everyone. In the attached document, you will find the plans for the upcoming HWBOT Rev4. The major changes are: - Splitting up the manufacturer and end-user overclocking playground. - New style of teams league. - Live overclocking competitions affecting your point total. Later this week, HWBOT will have an interview with OC-TV (as were both staying in Taipei) and we'll discuss this new revision. If you have any questions or remarks, post it here and the answer should make the video. Also, please note that the titles of the leagues is still a working title. In addition, we're also still discussing with MFCs to what extend they can be involved. Eta: 2011.

Then be the first to do 1400MHz?

Of course Xtreme will be blocked ... you're running a different benchmark ...

That's the wrong way of calculating. Try to figure out how much more GPU score you need to beat a 5.5GHz 980X. Then figure out how much GPU power scales with GPU score. In your calculation, you assume the clocks you have are the same. What kind of overclocking is that?