HWBOT Team Cup 2017 Discussion

[wilmkes]

I have read future task competition and saw that in some tests its need to get 2 and 3 results from the Team. Is it possible to change the rules so that only one better result is enough? For small Teams 5-10 persons, finding 2-3 identical HW is very turbulent and problematic, enother words impossible.

 

 

 

https://d1964r093mwb8w.cloudfront.net/Competitions/1971-1974_TeamCup2017/TeamCup17-banner-1920x1080.png

 

 

 

Background

 

 

The number of teams is less likely to have this

 

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

[Bones]

Bones, I do like your idea but I think it would hurt a lot of the busier benchers. For example I didn't get my Superpi 32m score in until 10 minutes before the end of the comp because I didn't get to running it until 15 minutes before the end of the comp. I think that something I've heard before that might not be impossible is something like releasing a new cpuz version every week and requiring that your submission date matches the cpuz version or something similar to that. It would require minimal change to the current competition style while also making sandbagging like the kind we've seen, ie. gaining over 500 points the last 24 hours, significantly harder. At that point if a team managed such a sandbag it would be an accomplishment more than anything. Just my $.02 as someone who was legitimately benching to the wire.

 

Thing is, first off we all know there is no such thing as the perfect format or solution if you will, all we can do is to try and come up with something that works for the most possible yet still achieves the desired objective.

 

I have to assume you coudn't get Super PI running due to being busy with other things, the majority of us do have jobs and lives in general with some just being busier than others - I get that.

I know for some that may prove difficult but again, there is no perfect solution. All we can do is try to come up with the best possible format or way of doing it that's of the most benefit to the max number of competitors/teams as possible.

Related to your CPU-Z suggestion, an alternative idea is a different wallpaper for each round making sandbagging more difficult, said wallpaper also not being known until the round/stage itself begins.

You won't eliminate all sandbagging, that will never truly go away but something that makes it almost mandatory to post your best within a short time frame will help reduce it.

 

If we don't make the effort to solve this, it will never be solved period.

 

Thank you for your ideas.

[Guest]

ie. gaining over 500 points the last 24 hours, significantly harder. At that point if a team managed such a sandbag it would be an accomplishment more than anything.

 

The humorous side to this. You must admit it was almighty surprise to us all. Kudos for stealthy launch of this magnitude.

 

Blitzkrieg auslöschen manövriert

[mickulty]

This year we had what I would call 4 stages, namely SC1 through SC4 with an assortment of benchies within each.

I'd say the top 20 goes on from the first stage, then the top 10 for the third and the top 3 teams for the final round. Most would think top 2 but having a third team there would spice things up a bit.

The benchies in each stage isn't announced until it opens, this way (Hopefully) no one gets the jump on others.... Keeping stages unknown until it's time has been an issue in the past I know, that would need addressing if it hasn't been already.

Each stage could only be for about a week so there woudn't be too much sandbagging, you'd still have it of course but not as bad as before.

 

Something along these lines would cut down on the excessive sandbagging since you really can't hold them for long anyway AND you'd have a limited amount of time to make them count, not to mention it would probrably be easier on the server too, esp after the first stage is done.

 

That could be really good for a serious competition but I worry it could hurt participation a bit a bit for more (theoretically) casual comps, whereas both this year and last years formats were really good for participation (though I dread to think what another dogpile stage would do to the servers these days... between server load and moderation load I can see why that was dropped).

 

The thing with sandbagging is you can't really *ban* it because then you end up with us last-minute benchers being accused of it. What you can do is mess with it. Alza's prize for the mid-comp leader was a really good way of making it less worthwhile, and while the idea of requiring the latest CPU-Z and GPU-Z at time of submission (which yos stole off me lol) wouldn't totally prevent sandbagging it would add a lot of risk to it.

 

I'd be very interested to hear from some of the madshrimps guys, who I'm sure would rather not sit on scores but felt they had to in order to be competitive - what would have helped?

[Noxinite]

Going to be honest, not sure if speaking for all of OCN or not, but we were just happy to compete as we could individually and hit our goal to get 100% submission completion. Mad shrimps won as most of their subs were better than ours, simple as that. It does sting a bit with the sandbagging, but tbh we knew it was going to happen as it did last year.

[Leeghoofd]

I'd be very interested to hear from some of the madshrimps guys, who I'm sure would rather not sit on scores but felt they had to in order to be competitive - what would have helped?

 

I'm the team captain, it might sound bunnybirdy but I call the shots and determine the submission strategy. The sandbagging is my weapon of choice. However this implies that a constant monitoring of your team members is required and a lot of time goes into planning, preparation who can join team sessions, who buys what hardware,... I go full specialbunny for the duration of the competition and want my teammates to reach set targets. Everything is updated in online docs and evaluated day by day.

 

 

Though this year we had a long outage due to my broken ribs and medical condition (+/- 4 weeks lost) hence why some scores were last minute and not as good as anticipated. Me and Oldscarface were still benching thursday evening. Served on friday evening, though he couldn't improve.

 

In total over 750L of LN2 was used, sadly 2 dead 7700Ks, 2 x 4870, 1 x 8800GTX, 1 x GTX 285 Matrix, 1 x DFI Ultra D, 1 x X2 4800+ went up in smoke.

 

Imagine the toll on my beloved wife and kids is insane. At my place almost each nite sessions in the garage with 1 or 2 mates (food, beer no charge). No family time at all as sessions lasted till 2-3 o'clock in the morning

 

If anyone suggest we did it for the prizes, well we also approached it the same manner as last year (with no prizes!) Eternal fame on the internet for the win!

 

Glad to close this chapter with a win, though it doesn't feel like one with all the extra commotion. Hence my taken decision.

 

I'll go full specialbunny in moderation now and will try to be as good as Websmile. And future competitions will need a change, I like the idea of seperate time limited stages, other backgrounds and co.

 

I take any competition serious, maybe too competitive. bunny on me and the way I ran things within the team, I don't give a flying hoot. However accusations at the adress of Websmile or HWBOT I do not appreciate at all. We do it all for free and people tend to forget that it is a hobby, a passion and only for the happy few a bussiness.

 

I'll follow the thread for pointers to improve future competitions

 

Alby out

Edited October 2, 2017 by Leeghoofd

[GRIFF]

awesome how he thanked me by now exhumating this and putting my data online

Excuse me for this. I did not think before I put it out.

[websmile]

Accepted, let´s all go back to the topic and fun.

[superpatodonaldo]

just my point of view

 

1) Madshrimps Belgium Oc Team won the cup, better overclock than the others, not doubts on it

 

2) rig photo: is mandatory?

if yes, rig photo= vga? mobo? a pet?

if not (it is not a brand competition), better way, no need more discussions

hope next comp it will be not mandatory any more

 

3) sandbagging is a style, personally don't like it but it is not the main point;

instead of 3 months during cup, with all better subs just last few ours of the last day, maybe a different structure help a more interesting competition (read some good ideas until now)

 

@Leeghoofd I think many teams utilized lot of LN2, invested lot of time (neglecting family) and kill hardware

that's overclock and the bot competition

[GeorgeStorm]

I'm sorry to see you go Leeghoofd, wasn't my intention when I made my comments on the rig picture rule

 

My issue with sandbagging is I don't think it makes for an exciting competition for most. The only way to get the best performance out of people is to give them competition. If people think they've already won they might stop, and so only those doing the sandbagging are pushing as hard as they need to win, because the others have no idea. I liked what Alza tried to do, although it seemingly didn't help for quite a few people who still waited until the last day to sub.

[Guest]

I'm the team captain, it might sound bunnybirdy but I call the shots and determine the submission strategy. The sandbagging is my weapon of choice. However this implies that a constant monitoring of your team members is required and a lot of time goes into planning, preparation who can join team sessions, who buys what hardware,... I go full specialbunny for the duration of the competition and want my teammates to reach set targets. Everything is updated in online docs and evaluated day by day.

 

 

Though this year we had a long outage due to my broken ribs and medical condition (+/- 4 weeks lost) hence why some scores were last minute and not as good as anticipated. Me and Oldscarface were still benching thursday evening. Served on friday evening, though he couldn't improve.

 

In total over 750L of LN2 was used, sadly 2 dead 7700Ks, 2 x 4870, 1 x 8800GTX, 1 x GTX 285 Matrix, 1 x DFI Ultra D, 1 x X2 4800+ went up in smoke.

 

Imagine the toll on my beloved wife and kids is insane. At my place almost each nite sessions in the garage with 1 or 2 mates (food, beer no charge). No family time at all as sessions lasted till 2-3 o'clock in the morning

 

If anyone suggest we did it for the prizes, well we also approached it the same manner as last year (with no prizes!) Eternal fame on the internet for the win!

 

Glad to close this chapter with a win, though it doesn't feel like one with all the extra commotion. Hence my taken decision.

 

I'll go full specialbunny in moderation now and will try to be as good as Websmile. And future competitions will need a change, I like the idea of seperate time limited stages, other backgrounds and co.

 

I take any competition serious, maybe too competitive. bunny on me and the way I ran things within the team, I don't give a flying hoot. However accusations at the adress of Websmile or HWBOT I do not appreciate at all. We do it all for free and people tend to forget that it is a hobby, a passion and only for the happy few a bussiness.

 

I'll follow the thread for pointers to improve future competitions

 

Alby out

 

Don't take it personal. Not the same if you pull out from competing.

It was just an almighty slam .... that amount of points hit on the end of competition.

 

Strategy worked, shock value certainly amazing good. Not matter the outcome.

I'm sure many of the scores are so big in fact .... subbing them earlier would not have reversed the fortunes here. Simply outgunned with the OC........

 

RIP on the GTX 285 Matrix man. A very nice one to collect.

 

Please don't fall on your sword. I don't wish it, neither do the bulk of the members.

Come back fighting again in the next comp .... hell yes

I do hope the other TEAM's can be a challenge for you next time. Damn you slammed the gate shut.

____________

 

Edit. Ha fixing my grammar + About your writing.

 

Such a nice reveal of yourself there. Insert " thumbs up "

Passion for the overclocking it shows. Just another dedicated madman like the rest of us in here.

Keep the enthusiasms going man. You are too valuable to sit on the sidelines & watch while others do the benchmarking. The sore butts will mend eventually from the whooping you dealt.

Edited October 2, 2017 by Guest

[mickulty]

I think maybe some people need to take some time to calm down and reflect rather than writing essays refuting personal attacks that haven't been made. No-one is trying to take the victory away from madshrimps and all the discussion of preventing sandbagging is in reference to future competitions, for this competition it was both clearly allowed and expected by anyone with any sense. The reason I asked for opinions from madshrimps is because I hope any discussion can be about how to make competitions better for *everyone*, not everyone except madshrimps.

 

Regarding all the time spent and rare hardware destroyed - I could talk about all the time, effort and money that /r/overclocking put in but it would be pointless because I know every team in the top ten and probably a good portion of those outside it has put a lot in. Some damn good scores have been posted by a lot of people.

 

The best team won and, now that a couple of things have been cleared up where it was needed, no-one can deny that they did so fair and square.

 

Are the rankings now finalised? After a few weeks of pinned posts about the competition on the subreddit it'd be good to have one telling people how we did.

[yosarianilives]

The humorous side to this. You must admit it was almighty surprise to us all. Kudos for stealthy launch of this magnitude.

 

Blitzkrieg auslöschen manövriert

 

It was indeed, to be honest, over at r/overclocking we didn't expect anyone to have the balls to hold that many points until the last 24 hours and risk the site being down. I think we're very happy with our place, especially since we expected at best to be in 5th. So overall I'm very happy with how r/overclocking did and feel like there were few stages that I could've significantly improved my score had I had a little more time to bench which is preferable, it's never fun to end a comp like this feeling like you left something on the table.

[mickulty]

It was indeed, to be honest, over at r/overclocking we didn't expect anyone to have the balls to hold that many points until the last 24 hours and risk the site being down.

 

I did, you just didn't listen

[bigblock990]

Congratulations to Madshrimps on the win! You guys put in serious effort on organization, and put up some excellent scores.

 

Also big Thanks to my fellow OCN teammates. We hit our goal of 100% completion, and managed to finish 2nd. Excellent job in my opinion.

[Guest]

It was indeed, to be honest, over at r/overclocking we didn't expect anyone to have the balls to hold that many points until the last 24 hours and risk the site being down. I think we're very happy with our place, especially since we expected at best to be in 5th. So overall I'm very happy with how r/overclocking did and feel like there were few stages that I could've significantly improved my score had I had a little more time to bench which is preferable, it's never fun to end a comp like this feeling like you left something on the table.

Amazing efforts all round & some good worthy scores put up. I guess we learn from this......

Lets not make it so easy for Madshrimps next time

[yosarianilives]

I'm just glad that we had the hw diversity to be able to get the optimal hw for basically every stage. I had a lot of fun benching the i7 5775c myself, that l4 cache is seriously stronk. Just kinda wish I'd had some PSC sooner than 2 weeks before the end of the comp. My MFR just wasn't keeping up. I thought it was funny that not many teams had a 6900k as it it little benching relevance outside of that one stage. I know the only reason we managed one was crowdsourcing through reddit which also helped some other stages.

[niobium615]

While I wholeheartedly agree that there are issues with sandbagging, you also have to be careful to not penalize people who are scrounging for points at the last minute. My most enjoyable benching session of the comp was probably the RX580 score that I posted about 5hrs before the end of the comp. That wasn't sandbagging, that was scrounging for a few points on a 580 that I expected to have coldslow...until it didn't. I got that score ~20min before I posted it, and if people want to be crazy enough to wait until the last minute to bench, so be it. As yos said, we were both benching up until the very end of the comp(though yos cut it closer than I did).

 

I don't think stages that are each a week long will be very effective, especially if the hardware isn't announced beforehand. A lot of people on /r/overclocking don't have a ton of hardware(myself included), and it took us a while to track down some of the more esoteric stuff for this comp. There are also a lot of weeks where people simply might not be able to find the time to bench.

 

I do however like the idea of a comp background/CPU-Z version that changes every week or two. That would prevent the majority of sandbagging, and should be much easier to implement from a software perspective. While some of the other ideas in this thread are interesting, I just don't see them happening due to the massive software changes they would require. If a team wants to adopt the strategy of benching everything during the last week, and they manage to win, I'll be damn impressed, as I expect most others would be.

[I.nfraR.ed]

@Leeghoofd Here's the threat from my side.

 

If Alby doesn't participate in the next comp, I won't participate either*

Always good to kick his old ass with some AMD scores

 

*Disclaimer: Alby's participation doesn't automatically mean I will too.

Edited October 2, 2017 by I.nfraR.ed

[Guest]

Do like that Broadwell for that iGpu.

Wanted a HD4850 myself for one of the benchmarks to do.

 

Planning of the x4 stages was clever for this comp as no x1 individual may have

all the varied parts to do x6 benchmarks in each.

____

 

Discussions with a mate here ..... the enthusiast gets over run with the LN2 scores.

We know this happens & grin & bear it .... he made an interesting point.

 

What if the individual x3 submitted scores for each benchmark were from x1 member of each division.

 

Paused for a moment " thought it's a nightmare & it cannot work "

 

x1 Enthusiast

x1 Apprentice

x1 Elite/ extreme

 

Each does his thing. What ever hardware he has. ie. 8800gt 8800gts512 8800gtx 3Dmarks

I know it's an insane mix up, least experienced perhaps guy on a better part, then

a expert experienced guy on a lesser scoring part.

_________

 

Haha crazy good concept. Evens the playing field OR not

[yosarianilives]

Would definitely be an interesting idea. Although it might discourage people from moving up to more extreme cooling. I know when I went up to apprentice I didn't want to leave enthusiast because of the ambient only comps as well wanting to wait until I got 1st in enthusiast. At least until I realized that one does not simply beat Kimandsally. But it also is nice to give those people that want to stay in enthusiast league or rookie/novice league for whatever reason a chance to compete. And I definitely agree that it would add a certain element of strategy. Do I have my ambient score from the "fastest" part and try to boost our lowest score with ln2, or do I have my worst score be ambient and try to drag it up with a really good ln2 score. Depending on the arch it may even be a moot point, because for example on steamroller frequency validation I was running into a CBB on my phase change and the CB is within dice range so ln2 wouldn't even help too much for that stage.

[mr.paco]

@Leeghoofd, you obviously are here at Bot because of your passion for OCin & Benchmarking. You joined the bot staff cause of that passion and wanted to help make this thing of ours that much better in what ever way you can. Dont let the comments of a few change that.

As a team Capt. you try to lead by example and there was absolutely nothing wrong in the way you arranged n executed your teams participation in the comp.

DAM GOOD JOB!!! well done.

At the end of almost every comp, there has always been sour grapes with some for one reason or another and that wont change because you can never and will never please every one %100 of the time. You never know it might be me bunnyin next year .

Point is; where the crown for this year PROUDLY...

 

Heres a possible twist for future comp.

An example; 24 sub-stages in 12 weeks (3months).

Announce that at the end of every week 2 undisclosed stage(s) will end .

Prizes: Undisclosed till the end

 

 

Anyway just my 2cents...

Be well :celebration:

[yosarianilives]

Heres a possible twist for future comp.

An example; 24 sub-stages in 12 weeks (3months).

Announce that at the end of every week 2 undisclosed stage(s) will end .

Prizes: Undisclosed till the end

 

 

Anyway just my 2cents...

Be well :celebration:

 

I like that twist, it doesn't harm people who can't bench until later in the comp too much, and it also helps reduce how hectic the end of the comp is as the last 2 weeks there's only 2 stages you have to worry about and if you missed subs earlier you can't worry about them now. The only disadvantage with this is that after a certain point there will be some teams that just quit as they've already lost too many stages to have a chance at competing to the end.

[Guest]

Discourage no, I don't think so. Members always going move on for better points & better cooling can do that.

Still the enthusiast league for me is the best part. Many of these guys hit plenty of goals.

Infact plenty do get the efficiency just right & post great scores. Where it all fits cannot be compartmentalised, overlaps on bigger efforts.

 

Yes do see the example with Kimandsally. But that's an example of an individuals effort to ascend ranks.

Strive to do better & that's what to look forward too. Better scores are the reward.

 

Much time, much benchmarking to find every last point. An almighty effort to reach a high standing. Not forgetting $$ on the parts.

Costly hobby.....

Look @ plenty of scores with exotic cooling SS. Processors up on 6Ghz. Scores mostly just out of my reach.

So tempting sometimes ...... to go a bit faster & skull drag those score in. Haha I do hope for alot sometimes

[mr.paco]

I like that twist, it doesn't harm people who can't bench until later in the comp too much, and it also helps reduce how hectic the end of the comp is as the last 2 weeks there's only 2 stages you have to worry about and if you missed subs earlier you can't worry about them now. The only disadvantage with this is that after a certain point there will be some teams that just quit as they've already lost too many stages to have a chance at competing to the end.

 

Lets say team A missed the first 2 weeks, you never know what other team(s) may miss any of the future weeks. So it would be a huge mistake to step out after the first missed 2 weeks. A team leading the whole comp can miss the final 2 weeks then BOOM a change of the guard takes place

;)Thats where the undisclosed prize(s) comes into play (if any). No one knows if its $1000 worth of hw or $10 tube of thermal paste. Just like lotto gotta be init to win it... Till the end

But again, its just an idea...