Massman

More BCLK goodness: and a barrier http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=1210245

Still on air cooling http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=1210222

I'm not doing a review (not for hwbot or madshrimps).

4000-2000-4000, no copy-waza Looks fairly normal

Not sure it can be called 'beta' since there's already the retail package/board being spread to media. Of course not fully retail, but I'm pretty sure the PCB won't have major design changes anymore. How do I rate it? As far as I can see, the performance clock per clock is right where it should be. The coldbug/coldbootbug are (according to my friend) similar to the Classified on retail, althought I had a different experience on the ES sample. In terms of raw clocks, we managed a bit higher on monday than before on the Classified ~ 6GHz 06 CPU test with 1.83V. Of course I haven't tested all X58's (and apparently I don't have the good R3E), so it's difficult to make some kind of ranking. We'll learn a lot more when the first boards appear in retail and see what people can do with them. As far as these kind of statements mean something, I'll just say it looks promising and I'm really waiting for others to test the board. Regarding efficiency - I suppose you mean SPI 32M efficiency? I'll give it a go tonight.

Coldboot: 220 MHz Softboot: 230 MHz Windows: 238 MHz (OC Dashboard) http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=1208704

Okay, just did the tests. No max BCLK just yet as I had to look for the bloomfield issue first. To begin with, it's not a Bloomfield-only problem but also occurs on the Gulftown I'm testing here. Here's the feedback I sent to MSI: It's pretty much the same I described before already though Now I'll try to get you that max bclk validation link, Hondacity.

For the record, the coldslow modification has been put under NDA by Nvidia rather than the manufacturers. Point your arrows on the correct target.

The fact is that I don't take it personally ... I'm just not fond of people who make a lot of noise and present facts as a very simple (yet very clear) picture making everything they say look valid. A lot of replies remind me of Belgian politics actually

Chuchnit, I hope you understand that the attempt of disproving the insight that competitions run at Kingpincooling, OCXtreme or any other global or local overclocking forum is not correct. To begin with, the OC Challenges are not just on ancient hardware because it's a characteristic of the series, it's because we want to keep the cost to join as low as possible. Not making it hugely expensive just to have something different that the hwboints each week. In addition, what Vince's doing with his competitions is, unlike manufacturers, not an attempt to create exposure for his own brand. He runs it on his forum, again, just to have a bit of fun. If I were Kingpin, I wouldn't like it if people considered me a manufacturer, to be honest ... All in all, those competitions are community based. Definitly different from what manufacturers are doing; very, very different. I can also see that you're using the same arguments as Benchzowner when it comes to not competing. Again, this is exactly as I pointed out on XtremeSystems, although there I was not lightly 'attacked' because of the analysis. But, okay, since you ask so friendly, let me point out this: the competition that was heavily under fire not so long ago (not mentioning the competition out of respect for MSI) was one where ES samples were explicitly forbidden. It's ironic that although the ES was forbidden that none of those who make loads of noise managed to submit one score. I heard a lot of excuses in the end ... yes. Having the ES or not makes virtually no difference in the outcome of the competition as those who are really into extreme overclocking (and willing to spend the hours necessary) are mostly on top. You can call that elitism, I call it reality. Just in case you also didn't notice. During the Xpower competition, there's a more mainstream competition running for those who don't want to spend loads of money and still want a shot at a nice prize: http://hwbot.org/competition/msi_fun_oc_festival. It's really simple: lga1156, bclk and no ES. Regarding the arrogance - I never try to be arrogant. I actually don't even consider myself arrogant. Sometimes I might use a bit of sarcasm to point out a flawed reasoning. But ... I'm really working on not using sarcasm again. Oh, and I don't know what this is all about => "I don't know about you, but I'd like this thing to grow". I could use sarcasm again and say reply "no, I don't want it to grow, I just work way too much for a small paycheck because I like it". But I won't. I will just say "I want to make it grow too".

You're using a flawed analogy. What you are describing are community-based competitions. The ones organised by Vince are the same concept as the monthly OC challenges we have here at HWBOT: the point is not to win, but just to have a bit of fun pushing each other to post better scores. For some unknown reason, things change when manufacturers are involved. Suddenly, things have to be as fair as possible (note: nothing has to be fair in community competitions) and any disadvantage will be called in to explain a loss. The irony here is that on the one hand, people state that they will not part-take in a competition organized by a manufacturer because the financial input outweighs the gain when winning, whereas they are willing to spend the same amount of money on a community competition. Strangely enough, the outcome is mostly the same in both competitions: you will probably not win any money. So what is different? For your information, and this is probably the most ironic of all, I've heard tons of people say that "they would compete if the prize money was much bigger" as that would make the input smaller than the possible output. Turns out - this is just another excuse for not competing. I can think of a few reasons why people refuse to compete in manufacturer competitions, but I should keep those for myself as it will (again) upset a few people. I do think, however, that some people have to start putting things in the right perspective. It's my point exactly ... Limit the clock frequency? Let's not waste LN2 then and just say stock VGA clocks. That should be fun, yeah! Also, it will perfectly display the act of 'overclocking', yeah yeah! Ah, yes, and this will not make people cheat and run at higher clocks, yeah yeah yeah! Excellent plan.

Sadly for you, more than the '3 friends' are in the know. I also notice that you're already certain you can't win and won't compete. Why you are trying to make a lot of noise here, I don't know. Also, I appreciate that you confirm what I mentioned in another thread over at XtremeSystems (and was heavily argumented against): From what I see it, only those who will not want to put an effort in the competition will have an issue here. Let's say worst case scenario: the board lands on your desk 5 days before the end of the competition. If I were you, I'd make sure both CPU, memory and VGA are pretested on a different mainboard in the three (well five actually) weeks before the end of the competition. This way, you can mount everything up and use similar settings to max the board when it arrives. Again, the only thing I read from your posts is the next-in-line overclocker who wants to win big by doing little effort. I've been around the OC community for years now and I can see a growing trend of overclockers making pitiful excuses not to join a competition. Either the competition wasn't good, or the hardware was 'the worst ever', or engineering samples did the trick or any other reason that just doesn't matter. I find it funny that in times where some people are shouting as loud as possible that overclocking is just to have fun, they are also making the excuses as if they were professional athletes. You can be angry, annoyed or hurt by what I'm writing here, but at least I'm giving a honest reply here.

First of all, more than one person has the necessary modifications for the competition. Maybe you don't have ... but then you'll just need to find a way to get them. Unless you consider overclocking as something where everything has to be available at your disposal at the very moment you think of it? Secondly, there are more than one stages in the competition. If you can't win in the 3D one, go for 32M. I always hear people being happy when this benchmark is included in a competition. It's tweakable, right? Thirdly, I also noticed that most of those who complain haven't been competing in ANY competition in the recent past. A lot of noise and a lot of complaining for sure ... but never actually trying. Maybe it's easier to blame the competition in the beginning than not being the winner at the end? Fourth, if you read the rules carefuly, MSI is the first manufacturer to not limit the VGA card brand for the 3D part of the competition. This was a HUGE problem in previous competitions and made a lot of overclockers go mad. Sadly enough, when a manufacturer does an effort to solve the problem, the noise-makers fail to see this. I'm learning a lot from these few replies already ... " "

Okay, so there really is a problem. Thanks for the info, I will have a look at it!

How is it unfair to know more than others? That's how overclocking goes ... someone has more knowledge than someone else.

Hi Gyrock, The opening post you're refering to was to show the proposal and see how the community responds to it. The final version of the 3D-WR points has been adjusted a little bit (an even steeper curve) and can be found in this news post: http://hwbot.org/article/news/hwboints_algorithm_wr_3d_points_introduced_end_of_this_month Concerning the inaccurate world record page: there's indeed a bug in the rankings that needs to be fixed. The ranks attributed to the 'incorrect' scores are correct however. This means that the score that is 17th on the world record page is actually ranked 20th by the engine, but for some unknown reason it's listed as 17th on the world record page.

I'll take some tonight/tomorrow. It's a very simple mod. - Bios: can't remember - Changing the voltages in Windows goes quite fluent, no problems. Maybe a few milliseconds delay. - Max BCLK: haven't tested it. Do note that there were some issues with the Bloomfield: 220MHz was bootable, but above that it's very hard to get boot-to-windows stable. Leeghoofd's testing the completely retail PCB with fully retail Bloomfield, but there's still a new bios left to test. More on that soon, I think. It's very possible that the sample is to blame for the bad results (under cold) - my ES had this problem as well (although same overclocking results). I guess it's maybe a good idea not to send these kind of non-retail media samples to reviewing websites (madshrimps) that actually test boards what they are made and marketed for. I ALWAYS post my personal findings and experience in threads. And that experience tells me that both with the ES and the retail 980X, the R3E does indeed give me lower overall clocks. Whether that is due to the sample or even the overclocker is a topic I'm not touching. I think that recent overclocking results with R3E from various sources have proven that the R3E is a very decent board as well. People who read my posts as truth and only available truth are ignorant and shouldn't be reading it to begin with .

It means that your score has been verified

Xpower > R3E. It was quite amusing to see how I had to force both Gamer and Leeghoofd to try out the Xpower and in the end they were both like "okay ... this was good", hehe. The genuine amazed overclocker look. The R3E was bugging at -90°C, whereas the Xpower went to -145°C load (which is like Classified apparently). Together with the lower temps, the chip was also producing higher MHz on the CPU and thus higher scores. VTT was 1.53V - in contrary to my ES, this retail was capable of booting with 1.5V+ VTT. Yes, VTT is adjustable in the OC Dashboard By the way, the only modification I did was increasign the OCP on the board.

Last update. Yesterday, Madshrimps OC Team had a small bench session / barbecue with 180L LN2. We mainly focussed on two VGA cards (GTX280 and R5870) of Gamer to see if we can push the team total a bit further. Some notes: - The coldbug/coldbootbug/overclockability was better than on R3E: with Xpower we managed -145°C coldbug, -127°C coldbootbug and 107°C imc coldbootbug - This retail was pretested at 5.8GHz 3DMark06, but yesterday we managed 6GHz flat at 1.83V through 3DMark06 CPU test. With a bit of extra finetuning, I think it's possible to get 6GHz for Vantage - The SuperPI 1M problem with Gulftown looks to be cache related - 6GHz CPU test, no 6Ghz 1M Results: - http://hwbot.org/community/submission/1008065_gamer_superpi_core_i7_980x_6sec_781ms - http://hwbot.org/community/submission/1008056_gamer_3dmark_2005_radeon_hd_5870_44475_marks - http://hwbot.org/community/submission/1008061_gamer_pifast_core_i7_980x_13.5_sec - http://hwbot.org/community/submission/1008058_gamer_aquamark_radeon_hd_5870_438484_marks - http://hwbot.org/community/submission/1008057_gamer_3dmark_2006_radeon_hd_5870_34120_marks - http://hwbot.org/community/submission/1008067_gamer_wprime_32m_core_i7_980x_2sec_656ms

I've heard that before haha

Okay, let me be clear There is NO restriction with regard to the ES.

There's no selectable range available (at least not in this bios)

Woot!