WhiteWulfe

... ..... .......Man I really need to find a way to make sure I'll be at Montreal then. Do we get to keep them too? It totally had to be asked, but even the idea of not having to ship a power supply over to Montreal (or bring one on the plane and get weird looks from security) makes it rather tempting. ... ...Especially since we won't comment on the condition of the power supplies I'm currently using when benching!

Great news... Will this also go with the later stops too?

Interesting that you mention such, because I'm someone who used to primarily run 3D benches (specifically Catzilla in the hopes of beating one of ftw's scores), but after a while (somewhere in between being tired of swapping cards out of my gaming rig and when I switched to Extreme league) I switched to 2D simply because from a hardware points perspective you're fighting against similar hardware. There's also the fact that every time I go subzero the amount of gear I'm risking is lower, and therefore a much lower cost to replace if something breaks or can't take it. 3D benching suffers from two serious problems: insane cost of entry, not to mention the fact that if you want to have a reasonable chance at competing you have absolutely NO CHOICE but to go with liquid nitrogen. Most of the benchmarks that you've mentioned in another post have a noticeable points bias towards higher end processors, which means if you want to actually fight for the top 10 or even top 20 there's no choice but to drop $1200+ USD on a good 5960X, which also means dropping $300 USD or more on a decent motherboard. This is before you also factor in a good set of RAM (easily another $2-400 USD, more if you factor in buying multiple kits to bin a good set), and then the insane costs of the graphics cards themselves ($700+ USD). So just going into things, you're risking easily $2500 USD in gear just to claw your way into the top ten for a single graphics card, and this is before learning the art of running the benches and the various tweaks that each particular benchmark can benefit from. Just because a gamer has a card doesn't mean they're willing to push it into "not 24/7 safe" benching territory where there's a real risk of damaging your card. Most of them want their gear to last 3-4 years, and while some of them will overclock their gear (or tweak their overall systems) to gain higher performance, I would argue that most of them aren't anywhere near willing to push their gear as far as we do. Even more so, I've seen a decent amount of gamers see various benchers posting scores and decide "sure, why not give it a shot", and their momentary pride at getting what they thought was a good score gets readily crushed by so many others on the 'Bot. Some push further and seek advice, but there are a surprisingly large number of accounts here that have only put up one or two submissions and then decided to move onto other pursuits. I'm not saying they're giving up, but most of them don't see why they should potentially sacrifice their rigs on the silicon altar with the hope it will all come back undamaged. Why did I switch to 2D? It's just too expensive to be competitive, having to buy high end cards ($830 CAD for the cheapest 980 Ti atm, $950 CAD if I happen to want a card that can be easily configured and controlled (EVGA Classified)) not to mention an X99/5960X setup because the additional cores (and threads) do wind up offering a few hundred extra points in comparison to a 4770k. Even if you stick with the mainstream platforms (which for some reason, Z170 is pretty much the same cost as X99), every time a new one comes out it's drop another bundle of cash (usually at least $800 CAD for a high end motherboard plus the matching k-series i7) in order to keep up. How is this not expensive again?

I will playfully say "Awwwwww, no G3258 by the sounds of it".... Then again, like you said... Skylake. Will be interesting to see the finalized rules when they come out

Good to know! Any word on if there will be any major hardware changes to some of the Challenger brackets, or will they be similar to last year?

Any word on when we'll be able to see this? One can only view 2014 or 2015 via http://oc-esports.io/#!/schedule It would be really nice to see what's coming up (especially in things such as Challenger divisions), especially if any rules and/or hardware has changed in some of the ones that would be coming up beginning of February.

I'm definitely interested, but I'll have to see if I can manage the costs. $600 plane ticket is something I'll have to contemplate. EDIT: Okay, that's hilarious, it's almost the same cost to fly as it is to take Greyhound. Two and a half days on a bus versus four hours on a plane for at most a $200 savings. No point in checking VIA because it takes even longer than Greyhound, and would only get me there halfway through the competition. Darn, flying is the only option, hmmm.

You aren't the only one. I'd love to go even if I could only bring some LGA 775 stuff with me! Which makes me wonder - has HWBot worked with any of the nearby hotels to get better room rates by chance? Or is there some sort of particular crash space available for those with a HWBot World Tour ticket?

Darn, no Canadians eh? This totally needs to be resolved.

Tim's = Tim Hortons, a coffee chain that is found in pretty much every Canadian city over 25,000 people or so. Their coffee isn't that bad (if you use a ton of coffee and cream that is - a common term around here is either "Double double" or Four by four. This refers to how many "shots" of cream and sugar you want added in). Their doughnuts/donuts are "okay". I just wish they put as much money as they do for marketing.... Into the actual coffee! Expect to see a LOT of Tim Horton's cups sticking out of LN2 pots in Montreal, even though there are at least two gourmet coffee companies practically across the street from the Montreal World Tour venue!!! Moose are an animal within the country that are notorious jaywalkers along highways in federal parks, especially at night. Darn things weigh as much as a Corolla but don't obey street signs! No idea who the coach is because I don't pay any attention whatsoever to sports. Here's how much I follow sports: I just found out (because I googled it) that my local CFL team won the Grey Cup. Insert golf clap here

Actually, there's been a lot of plotting in the various Team Canada chats ~_^

When will tickets for the North American stop in Montreal go on sale? There is no HWBot ticket option available on the LanETS website. Wait, finally found the eventbrite link.

Wound up missing last year's due to a few reasons, so this year I'm definitely working on ways to be there! EDIT: Any chance at two events for North America next time? I'm sure people on the west coast (especially in the US) would appreciate having a stop somewhere on the west coast!

Once I resurrect (or replace) this board, I really want to do another run with this Xeon but with it frozen. Because... For fun, that's why

So basically, instead of trying to push for HWBot to actually enforce their own rules (and re-write them to be a lot clearer about things), you're just outright saying since at least a few teams are doing it here and there, everyone else should. Yup, instead of going the honourable route you're instead implying everyone should just cheat because a few people you know are being called out for bending the rules a great deal....

I personally feel that there is value in having multiples of the same benchmark receiving points because each of them not only requires different tuning but a completely different approach to how you're doing things. Additionally, it gives extra value to those who've supported the company that made the benchmark in the first place (since Firestrike Extreme and Ultra are only available legally if you pay) something else to do, or a new challenge to try out. Not everyone can afford to pay for a license (hey, a number of people have families, or other priorities) but they still want to bench... So in that case, if you were to remove points from the base version one could lose quite a few people from that benchmark, and then eventually... They might very well just say screw this overclocking hobby. Besides, it's only your top 15 globals and top 20 hardware scores, so why does it matter if someone does it with four versions of everything versus someone doing it with just one or two pieces of software? Variety is the spice of life as they say I personally think some sort of event that targets them directly would be great for engagement, like how the Rookie Rumble and Novice Nimbles are..... But keep the random prize draws. Ignoring all the various people on my team bugging me to actually sign up, the random prize draw for Rookie Rumble was the biggest draw for signing up in the first place. Might be hard to come up with something PG for the allliteration though

I think it isn't really a concern on how they're distributed (although I will admit I really don't like how things drop dramatically between first and even fifth place), but more along the lines of how lowering the thresholds for the points to start going up would actually help increase the amount of participation with various gear. It would also help validate the effort people have put into older (or rarer) hardware. Sometimes it's somewhat disheartening to put several hours (or even days) into trying to get a really good score on a particular benchmark, place in the top third of submissions and then get.... Oooh, congratulations, you're 36/75, you get a whopping 0.3 hardware points! Also, with a broader scaling for hardware points those who are competing on air and/or water would get a much greater feeling about their rankings since they'd have a higher chance at obtaining points. Sure, they won't reach the same levels as those using single stage, dry ice, or liquid nitrogen, but still. With how things currently are with the abrupt slope (assuming hardware point slopes are similar to those of global points, although looking at the more popular benchmarks with popular cards it seems to be similar) there seems to be a feeling that there isn't as much of a point in pushing whatever you have (or can afford) if you can't get up into the top 20% or so of scores. Am I saying that hardware points in general need to be given out more freely? I suppose it could be taken that way, but what I think I'm trying to get at is can we have a more gradual slope with the points with a lower threshold for maximum points, and that I feel by doing such it could help improve the amount of people participating (because it would be lovely if they didn't just go "ugh, only five hundred other people have submitted benches on this hardware, is there really a point in even benching this?" and instead went "oh neat, five hundred other people have run this I wonder how well I can do against them, because there's a decent amount of points to be had"). Or something to that effect.

Will similar changes be occurring to hardware points as well, especially in regards to thresholds?

@xxbassplayerxx did the whole signature bet thing. Of course we had to give them a good wallop! And next year, I suspect we're going to have at least a few more Canucks with dewars!

Niiiiiiiiiice. Also, that poor Tim Horton's cup didn't see it coming this morning did it?

Oh, did somebody say video and how this thread needs more popcorn?

Or the ever infamous "So sorry to have beaten you guys, we didn't even have a proper winter to make use of" ...I'm still wearing shorts at work, and it's almost the middle of November!

So, uhm, yeah... You guys aren't doing so well after the first week

Can we get the background linked to in the OP as well as in the competition description? I had to google it to find it and then wade through a variety of results. Editing thread instead of double posting (edited Nov 7 16:13 -07:00 GMT): I'm getting this weird error when trying to submit an improved score on the OC E-Sports website. I'm logged in, and when you hover over the "open for submissions" section it changes to saying "Invite Only"

Canada is totally going to win. Not that I'm willing to sign up for this bet just yet