CHALLENGER 2017 DIV VII ROUND 3

[scannick]

I think to know the answer, but: are Xeon processor allowed ?

@websmile

[skulstation]

I think thad we ar alowed to use xeon parts, as in Pro OC 2017 Round 1 i used my xeon's.

but let we wait on the crew , befor we make ower setups ready

 

edit :

 

Challenger Division VII

Challenger Division VII brings us to retro hardware, which in Round 3 involves benching on processors from the classic Intel Socket 1336 era. This means returning to your favorite X58 chipset motherboard and perhaps cranking out a Core i7 Extreme Edition 980X CPU or two, if you have them lying around. Retro GPUs are also part of the picture with only Nvidia 500 series cards allowed which means we can expect a return of some nicely modded GTX 580 cards. Here are the retro-style benchmarks involved.

 

hmm, x58 chipset whit a pair of 980x wear is thad board

Edited August 1, 2017 by skulstation

[websmile]

Sorry for the delay, Xeons are not allowed. Only server cpus allowed are 939 Opterons bc we made an exception at team cup, if not explicitly allowed server cpus are always forbidden at hwbot comps

[havli]

Banning Xeon is the best way to kill this competition for many people. i7 970 = $120, Xeon X5650 = $25... I guess plenty of people (me included) simply won't pay 5x as much for exactly the same CPU only because it is called i7.

[websmile]

We have no good experience with server hardware. Apart from this they are usually low pointers and useless therefore. Some people simply buy a 980 and bench and resell it... I think your way to see it is OK, risk of losing money if you kill CPU is higher, but server stuff is cr.. apart from option to save for 24/7. You can also particpate with 920 and grab tons of hwboints if you do all 2Ds

Edited August 3, 2017 by websmile

[havli]

What bad experience you have then? Because I had no issues at all - it is the same silicon, same board, same RAM, same everything except writing on the IHS and name in CPU-Z.

 

"low pointers and useless therefore" is a matter of perspective. I can get more points from obscure Xeon then I ever will using i7 920... because quite simply Xeon is (almost) guaranteed 1-2 points + cup / score. On the other hand benching i7 on ambient cooling (I'm not a fan of subzero) results in rank 400 of 650 and 0.1 points / score most of the time. Also I don't resell CPUs, everything I buy remains mine for my collection and available for future rebench when needed. So I think you understand 5 xeons instead of one i7 is much better option....

 

Anyway here we are discussing competitions, so points are not important, only the score is. I understand dual-socket boards and/or huge multicore Xeons kill the fun for i7 users, as they can't reach score that high no matter how hard they try. But... I really see no reason why single socket MB + Xeon based on following logic couldn't be used:

 

1366 = 6C/12T fastest i7 / 6C/12T fastest Xeon -> allowed all i7 + all Xeons up to 6 cores

2011 = 6C/12T fastest i7 / 8C/16T fastest Xeon -> -> allowed all i7 + all Xeons up to 6 cores

2011V3 = 10C/20T fastest i7 / 22C/44T fastest Xeon -> -> allowed all i7 + all Xeons up to 10 cores

etc...

[websmile]

So we rule out only a couple of server cpus? And you are willing to compete with people working at server farms with free hardwareaccess on hundreds of models which we ruled out after years of problems? And the big guns are discriminated which is even worse than ruling them out completely because this is a clear guideline. What about AMD in your ideas? Do your job, but not at competitions, sorry, the idea is appreciated but we will not change the guidelines

Edited August 3, 2017 by websmile

[havli]

Personally for me competing with server farms or LN2 cooled Core i7 Extreme makes no difference... as I can beat neither of them. There are people who have free access to servers and also people with free access to good amount of binned i7 and LN2... difference is not that big.

 

I'm sure there are much more people feeling discriminated by banning all Xeons instead of banning only the big ones. Btw - there are no "big guns" Xeons on 1366 socket. Obviously you want desktop-only competitions. So I propose to use both desktop CPUs and Xeons similar to them. "Small" Xeons are very easy to get, affordable and perfectly balanced performance-wise with their desktop counterparts. So, what is the problem? It seems to me this rule is purely based on marketing basis - person X won competition Y using Xeon Z doesn't sound cool enough.

 

What about AMD? Same treatment as Xeons - "desktop comparable" Opterons allowed, bigger ones not. Btw - why exactly are 939 opterons for TC17 allowed and everything else "server grade" banned? Looks like double standard to me. Since this is s1366 competition topic - let's hold onto that - what is difference is between 1366 4/6-core Xeons vs 4/6-core i7? And what difference is between 1/2-core s939 A64 and 1/2-core s939 Opteron 1xx? Early Opterons were famous overclokers and broke many records back in the day... while 1366 xeons werent famous at all... so most likely this is the reason. I believe the rules should be based on logic, not feelings and name of the CPU in question.

[websmile]

I propose you simply do not compete if you cannot accept hwbot is a consumer hardware platform. System had to be changed 6 or 7 years ago completely ( points were same for all cups no matter which number of amounts, globals as well), now all is different^^ - discussions about non consumer professional hardware happen regularly like on Engineering samples and always someone feels butthurt. On the 939 opterons, it was a personal favour to the community bc there were same models for 940 and in fact 939 Opterons were used more on desktop consumer hardware at their time than for professional use. It will not happen again, mainly due to people like you. We will miss you at the division 7. Case closed

[havli]

Of course I won't compete here... it is kinda difficult when I don't have the HW for it

 

Engineering samples are different issue (not available to buy officially) and I completely agree with current rules.

 

HWBOT may be consumer HW platform... and yet most WRs are held by server class CPUs.

[websmile]

Which is in fact the only inconsistency - personally I would not even allow normal subs with server cpus, but interest of some guys in the past and too much kindness of staff made a big mistake happen^^. Some day you will get your 970 if prices ever fall

[Samsarulz]

In my modest opionion, i7s only for 1366 is a bit more fair considering Xeon resellers/farms etc. Regards

[havli]

@websmile

I still don't understand why so much hate for "server" CPUs. Isn't the whole point of HWBOT to attract as many people to our overclocking and benchmarking hobby as possible? Just let people decide what to bech, for regular submission at least. Removing all server HW would shake up all rankings a lot, even HW masters - which in my opinion is the most valuable ranking because it requirest most dedication to benchmarking. not just some cheap 20 HW + 15 GL best scores + some comp points.

 

Prices of i7 will never fall lower than Xeons - which is exactly the reason not to buy it. My budget is limited and naturally I will choose what is best price/perf/general usefulness. I don't like to throw money out of the window for no reason.

[websmile]

There is no hate, but hwbot had to change ranking system long ago as said. Reason is people without any oc on cpu grabbed tons of points and cups, some even benched remote only. Server cpus give an extreme and unfair advantage to people in the industry against the normal user, and logic should tell you that this still is a problem - you see the wrs, on 99% of results people oc 100K systems noone can buy normally and which they also didn´t buy. As said, they partially did not even use this physical but remote. If you want hwbot to be dead in 1 year because all normal guys leave, keep on pushing server hardware. You think competing against guys now with prebinned samples is a nightmare? Imagine 5 guys with unlimited access remote and physical to server hoster (I know a guy who worked there, he has access from 604 to 2011 iirc).

In fact, you can attract maybe 10 guys and you lose 1000+ because noone wants to compete against guys like these who win all ranking with running crap stock

[havli]

Yes, I remember the old global points system. It is much more fair today.

 

I can imagine those 5 people with unlimited server power. They would own all multicore WR, sure. But how different is that from lets say top 50 people in the Elite League? Some of them also have more or less unlimited resources.... which implies they would hold the WRs. Not with server HW, no... but with super binned $1700 10-core 6950X in the past and soon $2000 18-core 7980XE.

 

Is it really so much different? I don't think so - for mere mortal overclocker top spots are always out of reach and it doesn't matter which HW in on the first place at the moment. There are so many ranking you can compete in that everyone finds the one which fits his needs the most. But out of those 110000 people very few can hit the first place in their league, global ranking or WR.

 

In short - I believe noone of the "lower 100000 people" care what HW is currently dominating the rankings because they realize it is out of their reach anyway. They overclock and benchmark things because they like it, not because they wish to be the OC king. If you say server HW is killing all the fun and pushing regular people away because they can't compete.... I say let's ban LN2/DICE for the very same reason. Even sub-average LN2 score is far better than anyone can reach with air or water... and for this reason people are leaving. See how absurd this sounds? In fact people are not leaving even if they know they have no chance to get points/cups/etc - for example x265 i5 6600k ranking HWBOT x265 Benchmark - 1080p overclocking records @ HWBOT There are 30 scores of 0.1 points (not so long ago there were no points at all) with no chance of scoring any HW/global/WR points (it is i5) and yet people still bench it.

[websmile]

Hwbot is about oc, skills and fun - you don´t see the point, if ranks and comps are dominated by stock cooler even the 50 top ocer will go. You have no idea obviously how much skills are in LN2 oc and maxing out benchmarks.This will damage oc even more than it is damaged now. Industry would leave, no one wants to see servers running on stock, ocers would leave because what fun is in skilless stock running, I have to say that your point of view makes no sense. We live of competition and not of remote oced dell 100k server that runs on stock. We need winners determined by skills and not by the remote access to a server network determined by their jobs. And banning subzero would mean to control each result in top league with video? Cooling confirmation is even hard now - don´t be angry, but I am very happy Massman is in charge and not you, because you would send hwbot to the ripping.org graveyard faster than anyone else I ever discussed about it before..

 

P.S. what annoys me most is your lack of respect for top ocers. You obviously think they got all gifted - most of them started with nothing but a retail cpu like a conroe and worked hard, learned and moved to subzero and learned more. Lots of passion, financial limit actions and you complain you cannot take part in challenger bc of 120 dollar cpu and complain about an obviously non deserved advantage of people who worked hard - this is sad, but we have 7 challengers on top and you can use any i7 /i5/ i3 for example

Edited August 3, 2017 by websmile

[havli]

Of course it is about OC, skill and fun... but who decides what is fun to bench and what is not? People who bench their stuff of course, and whether it is server HW or not depends on their taste. WRs are dominated by servers and always has been (obviously, it is the best available x86 HW). Maybe in the past it wasn't that obviout because IIRC HWBOT only had one benchmark suitable for such machines - wPrime 1024M. Now there are cinebenches and other MT benchmarks where servers occupy WRs.... because simply they are the best. Industry is still here because they care the most about the shiny OC events and newsflashes - where only desktop HW is used (and it is perfectly ok)... but server HW still has the place on top, noone talks about that in media but it is there and always were. Since 2010 (when I joined) amount of members here increased from maybe 30000 to > 110000 now, and all the time servers were here. Like I said I think what is pushing people away from overclocking are not servers or the HW occupying top scores... it very well may be Intel's restrictive policy concerning overclocking lowend and mainstream CPUs. If all of them were unlocked, many people would appreciate that and started using them here.

 

Banning subzero was only hypothetical of course - no way it could be enforced. If something sends hwbot to the graveyard, it will be technical issues, coding errors and such (there are bugs that hasn't been fixed for years)... not people and their preference of HW to bench on.

 

Obviously (some) top OCers have everything gifted - how else they could post scores of ES CPUs at launch or even before? Noone except them has access to this kind of stuff. How about Gigabyte SOC LN2 boards, sometimes ES DDR4 sticks, etc? They do it as a job, of course they get all the equipment needed. I don't care how they started - they get stuff for free now.

Banning 1366 Xeon is non-deserved advantage for people refusing to see the wider picture. It is like banning Mercedes engines in F1 races, because other teams fear they could lose to them.

[websmile]

To end this, you still do not understand that top ocers get cpus or boards today because they worked their way up in the past, they bought cpus, boards and gpus and trained hard - you could do the same but you do not have the determination or talent, and what you say about server hardware is wrong as well.

Like in all competetive sports or hobby, people start because it is fun plus they have the chance to win or go to a higher league or the top. This is why it is called competetive and this is why we have competitions and points. If you kill this by enabling an unfair advantage like server hardware which is only accessible in top segment to people who work in the industry, you kill the dream of competition for 100000 because only 5 or 10 have this access. Maybe you think again about your opinion, people like you are why we do not allow 1366 now, they will always ask for next server stuff next time but will never be able to see the consequences long term. Case closed

Edited August 4, 2017 by websmile