HWBot Cheapaz Chips 2020 Design Thread

[Leeghoofd]

Folliwing some discussions on KeepH8n's Discord server it seems Cheapaz needs to make an urgent comeback. 

• Running from 1st of March till end of May
• One compo with Discrete GPU and one compo with onboard graphics like AMD AM4 3000G CPU

 

Till now we had some proposals on the Discord, but it's easier for me to follow up here. Current standings as they are:
 

• AMD 3000G Cheapaz combo (Mix of 2 and 3D stages)

 

• AMD HD5770 1GB Cheapaz combo (3D stages only)

 

....

Stages I'll leave that to you

Edited February 7, 2020 by Leeghoofd

[ObscureParadox]

Hmm what about the type of CPUs that you can literally buy in the bucket loads but nobody ever benches like 775 P4s? 

[Leeghoofd]

maybe an Intel and AMD Cheapaz ?

[Mythical tech]

I would love to see NVIDIA 6100 integrated graphics with limitations of no ddr2 and only socket 754. The boards are less than 20$ and most of the time come with a cpu and ram. It could be interesting to see a board with integrated graphics in a comp.

[Mythical tech]

14 minutes ago, ObscureParadox said:

Hmm what about the type of CPUs that you can literally buy in the bucket loads but nobody ever benches like 775 P4s? 

As much as I love 775 and I truly do. I think it is used quite a lot in comps. It might be nice to see something new. 

Edited January 22, 2020 by Mythical tech

[mickulty]

I think 5 stages would be good - two 2D, two 3D and a tie break of some sort with the tie break worth less points.  Don't want to make it too long.

The 3000G will probably be a pain to run on anything other than 10 so benches need to be OK for windows 10, I guess mostly this just means mandatory benchmate.

I think;

1. 2D 1 - light/singlethreaded - cpu-z max frequency or superpi
2. 2D 2 - heavy/multithreaded - CB15 or HWBOT x265 4K
3. 3D 1 - light/CPU bound - ice storm unlimited or a legacy 3DMark if they work with benchmate
4. 3D 2 - heavier/GPU bound - night raid, or maybe sky diver?
5. Tiebreaker - cpu-z max memory frequency, maybe?

I'm not sure about the tiebreaker, as it might bias a bit towards boards that have a clockgen and I'd like if B450 boards could be competitive.

A separate legacy cheapaz would be cool, cheapaz has always celebrated cheap new hardware as it's easier to get in places that don't have a good used market (think india, turkey, south america).  But legacy would be good too.

@Mythical tech maybe the 6100 iGPU suggestion could go in the team cup thread as it's very specific.  Socket 754 MCP61 boards also don't seem very easy to find to me.  Some iGPU stages in team cup would be fun though.

[yosarianilives]

16 minutes ago, Mythical tech said:

I would love to see NVIDIA 6100 integrated graphics with limitations of no ddr2 and only socket 754. The boards are less than 20$ and most of the time come with a cpu and ram. It could be interesting to see a board with integrated graphics in a comp.

I think a mobo igp based comp could be interesting wether it be nvidia igp or intel GMA or even integrated ATI. Would be limited to dx9 benches at the max but that still offers some like ice storm, and everything older than vantage.

[Mythical tech]

3 minutes ago, mickulty said:

I think 5 stages would be good - two 2D, two 3D and a tie break of some sort with the tie break worth less points.  Don't want to make it too long.

The 3000G will probably be a pain to run on anything other than 10 so benches need to be OK for windows 10, I guess mostly this just means mandatory benchmate.

I think;

1. 2D 1 - light/singlethreaded - cpu-z max frequency or superpi
2. 2D 2 - heavy/multithreaded - CB15 or HWBOT x265 4K
3. 3D 1 - light/CPU bound - ice storm unlimited or a legacy 3DMark if they work with benchmate
4. 3D 2 - heavier/GPU bound - night raid, or maybe sky diver?
5. Tiebreaker - cpu-z max memory frequency, maybe?

I'm not sure about the tiebreaker, as it might bias a bit towards boards that have a clockgen and I'd like if B450 boards could be competitive.

A separate legacy cheapaz would be cool, cheapaz has always celebrated cheap new hardware as it's easier to get in places that don't have a good used market (think india, turkey, south america).  But legacy would be good too.

@Mythical tech maybe the 6100 iGPU suggestion could go in the team cup thread as it's very specific.  Socket 754 MCP61 boards also don't seem very easy to find to me.  Some iGPU stages in team cup would be fun though.

I think for cheapaz chips anything from the last 3 years is too expensive imo. If it is a 3000g that they choose for the comp I will be priced out of the comp before it even starts, I don't have any am4 stuff so I would have to pick up a chip, board and b die. Just my two cents on the subject. 

[mickulty]

For a possible legacy/Intel cheapaz it's true 775 is common, but I also agree with @ObscureParadox that P4 arch doesn't get much love - it's always 45nm core 2 duos.  This can also be cheaper hardware to make @Mythical tech happy.

Good possible limitations for a "legacy cheapaz" might be:

• Use only CPUs from the family Netburst (Pentium 4, 65nm), Netburst (Pentium 4, 90nm) - could also add the other netbursts maybe?  I figure there's no harm in it and I like the idea of a competition being open to extra unoptimal hardware.
• Use only 1 core (I want to avoid xeons and the 2c4t Pentium EE messing with it)
• Use only DDR2 or DDR1 memory

[mickulty]

7 minutes ago, Mythical tech said:

I think for cheapaz chips anything from the last 3 years is too expensive imo. If it is a 3000g that they choose for the comp I will be priced out of the comp before it even starts, I don't have any am4 stuff so I would have to pick up a chip, board and b die. Just my two cents on the subject. 

Unfortunately not every comp can be designed for you personally to be in a good position to win.  I'm making these suggestions but my one kit of b-die isn't very good, nor are any of my AM4 boards.  If I wanted a genuine chance of winning I'd have to spend as much as you would.  But the point of cheapaz chips is really to provide a way for newer people with an interest in OC - many of whom are already on AM4 - to play with hardware that they don't have to worry about killing.

If we pick arbitrary limitations that make sure the one board that you personally can get cheap on ebay is the most competitive then you can compete and win, good for you, but it would exclude a lot of people particularly the newbies that cheapaz is aimed at.

All the past cheapaz chips competitions have been based around 3D stages with a recent low-end GPU - GT710, GT1030 and HD 5450/rebrands.  The problem is we're running out of options, low-end discrete GPUs are going away in favour of integrated, which is why I propose a competition based around that.  The 3000G while it requires buying into a platform on some level is a much cheaper chip than a GT 1030, killing/damaging it with too much Vcore would be fairly painless.  I also think it's just cool for there to be an unlocked chip at such a low price point, and being new I think makes it more interesting/relevant to people outside OC.

[Mythical tech]

1 minute ago, mickulty said:

Unfortunately not every comp can be designed for you personally to be in a good position to win.  I'm making these suggestions but my one kit of b-die isn't very good, nor are any of my AM4 boards.  If I wanted a genuine chance of winning I'd have to spend as much as you would.  But the point of cheapaz chips is really to provide a way for newer people with an interest in OC - many of whom are already on AM4 - to play with hardware that they don't have to worry about killing.

If we pick arbitrary limitations that make sure the one board that you personally can get cheap on ebay is the most competitive then you can compete and win, good for you, but it would exclude a lot of people particularly the newbies that cheapaz is aimed at.

All the past cheapaz chips competitions have been based around 3D stages with a recent low-end GPU - GT710, GT1030 and HD 5450/rebrands.  The problem is we're running out of options, low-end discrete GPUs are going away in favour of integrated, which is why I propose a competition based around that.  The 3000G while it requires buying into a platform on some level is a much cheaper chip than a GT 1030, killing/damaging it with too much Vcore would be fairly painless.  I also think it's just cool for there to be an unlocked chip at such a low price point, and being new I think makes it more interesting/relevant to people outside OC.

I understand that comps can't be built around me and I don't expect them to be. I didn't really think of the fact that a lot of new people already have am 4 systems, that is a really good point that makes me vote for am4. I do like the idea of gpu comps with only gpu score taken into account so it can be run on lots of different systems but as you said there aren't many new ones. 

[mickulty]

7 minutes ago, Mythical tech said:

I understand that comps can't be built around me and I don't expect them to be. I didn't really think of the fact that a lot of new people already have am 4 systems, that is a really good point that makes me vote for am4. I do like the idea of gpu comps with only gpu score taken into account so it can be run on lots of different systems but as you said there aren't many new ones. 

The fun thing about an APU is the iGPU is tied to a CPU anyway, so there's no way to gain an advantage from many-core monsters

[Bilko]

I like the idea of the 3000G, It's a cheap unlocked part with an iGPU so you can have both 2D and 3D stages for it, it'll also run on a cheap B350 board.
Also removes the possibility of using a higher end CPU to gain a couple extra points overall with a low end dGPU.
 

46 minutes ago, mickulty said:

I think 5 stages would be good - two 2D, two 3D and a tie break of some sort with the tie break worth less points.  Don't want to make it too long.

The 3000G will probably be a pain to run on anything other than 10 so benches need to be OK for windows 10, I guess mostly this just means mandatory benchmate.

I think;

1. 2D 1 - light/singlethreaded - cpu-z max frequency or superpi
2. 2D 2 - heavy/multithreaded - CB15 or HWBOT x265 4K
3. 3D 1 - light/CPU bound - ice storm unlimited or a legacy 3DMark if they work with benchmate
4. 3D 2 - heavier/GPU bound - night raid, or maybe sky diver?
5. Tiebreaker - cpu-z max memory frequency, maybe?

SuperPI (32M of course), X265 4k, 3DMark06 and Sky Diver/GPUPI 1B would be my votes.

For a tiebreaker stage Mem freq would be fun to see or 3DMark11 Physics is something else that could work.

[mickulty]

Possible design for a "legacy cheapaz":

Limits: DDR2 or DDR1, Netburst only, 1-core only

1. light singlethread - pifast?
2. heavy singlethread - superpi 32m?
3. light multithread - wprime 32m?
4. heavy multithread - x265 1080p, perhaps?  4K would just be sadistic...
5. tiebreak - CPU-Z max valid (can has 8GHz?)

3D is a weird one, some kind of CPU bound 3D is tempting but really it would still add to cost.  iGPU would be interesting but I feel it would result in being quite prescriptive about motherboard, again it'd be great for team cup where you can get away with requiring more specific hardware.

[mickulty]

4 minutes ago, Bilko said:

I like the idea of the 3000G, It's a cheap unlocked part with an iGPU so you can have both 2D and 3D stages for it, it'll also run on a cheap B350 board.
Also removes the possibility of using a higher end CPU to gain a couple extra points overall with a low end dGPU.
 

SuperPI (32M of course), X265 4k, 3DMark06 and Sky Diver/GPUPI 1B would be my votes.

For a tiebreaker stage Mem freq would be fun to see or 3DMark11 Physics is something else that could work.

Does GPUPI run on the Vega 3?  That would be cool.  Good balance with 3DMark06 needing memory performance and GPUPI probably being all GPU core.

[Bilko]

Just now, mickulty said:

Does GPUPI run on the Vega 3?  That would be cool.  Good balance with 3DMark06 needing memory performance and GPUPI probably being all GPU core.

GPUPI runs on all GCN based iGPUs starting from Spectre onwards
 

[yosarianilives]

IMHO the spirit of cheapaz is hard mods. AFAIK it started out as a comp centered around encouraging people to take out the iron and IMHO it should stay that way. If we don't want to do a graphics card then I think mobo igp is good cause most mobos with igps suck and require hard mods. Also specific mobo igps may be tough to acquire but in general low end mobos with igp shouldn't be. So perhaps don't say do <this> mobo igp and just say comp is limited to mobo igp?

[mickulty]

1 minute ago, yosarianilives said:

IMHO the spirit of cheapaz is hard mods. AFAIK it started out as a comp centered around encouraging people to take out the iron and IMHO it should stay that way. If we don't want to do a graphics card then I think mobo igp is good cause most mobos with igps suck and require hard mods. Also specific mobo igps may be tough to acquire but in general low end mobos with igp shouldn't be. So perhaps don't say do <this> mobo igp and just say comp is limited to mobo igp?

Even good 775 boards probably benefit from a recap by now, and B350/B450 can be highly competitive for 3000G if you voltmod the memory VRM.  There's your hardmods

But yeah it's true this would be more about "hey guys you can OC cheap!" and getting people into OC, rather than getting OCers into hardmods the way past cheapaz tried to.  Personally I think that's a good thing.

[zeropluszero]

I'm not going to claim that I know everything about cheapaschips competitions but clearly I do.

step1 - hardware that is AVAILABLE GLOBALLY - useless for this kind of comp if people in europe cant buy what we in australia can, etc.
step2 - its gotta be dirt cheap. we're talking less than $50 for a cpu or video card, we want people killing them and going out to buy more. This is why we kept using HD5450 and GT610s. G3258 was another good one. 

step3 - Hardmods & efficiency. when I ran these competitions locally, they were about teaching, learning, sharing 2 specific things that are important to benching effectively - that is OPERATING SYSTEM EFFICIENCY and VIDEO CARD MODDING. I wanted people who had never picked up a soldering iron to go out, buy a cheap iron and learn what it is to put some resistors on a card, and see what it gets you. 
I wanted people to run superpi on windows7 and wonder WHY was that person running XP absolutely smashing their scores, and then WANTING to go out and learn how they do it better. 

step4 - I dont think these things can be done with modern benchmarks, they're just not tweakable enough. Cinebench, X265, GPUPI - look, they're great benchmarks and I do actually like them, but you cant see the massive difference in them when you enable LargeSystemCache or run order for legacy benchmarks and I really think it needs to be legacy.

 

I always relate this back to one of my first locally run competitions - 32M Superpi, and 3dmark01. It was sandy bridge era, and I had a 56X multi CPU, and my other competition was uncle fester with a 53X CPU, and I was running both benchmarks in win7, and he was using XP and he absolutely destroyed my scores with 300mhz less clock. 
I was initially mad, I accused him of cheating, but what it did make me do, was WANT to know how he out did me. And so I started doing some research and learned how to make efficient OS, and how to tweak the system for better scores, learning about how memory oc was so important.

This should be at the heart and soul of Cheapaschips - Getting in newbies to have some fun, get toweled up a bit, but then learning and teaching how the scores are made afterwards. 

 

 

Lastly, for tiebreaker, it has to be 3dmark03 lowest possible score. Its just the best. 

[Mythical tech]

7 minutes ago, zeropluszero said:

I'm not going to claim that I know everything about cheapaschips competitions but clearly I do.

step1 - hardware that is AVAILABLE GLOBALLY - useless for this kind of comp if people in europe cant buy what we in australia can, etc.
step2 - its gotta be dirt cheap. we're talking less than $50 for a cpu or video card, we want people killing them and going out to buy more. This is why we kept using HD5450 and GT610s. G3258 was another good one. 

 

Maybe we can do a stage of g3258+hd 5450 they are both very cheap and should be available globally. 

[mickulty]

@zeropluszero I appreciate the input but is there a conclusion to all this?  Superpi was already suggested for both, and global availability is a bit limiting for GPUs unless we either go expensive or repeat a past comp.  We could do a Caicos competition but I think showing people the joys of dirt cheap s775 is a noble cause.  775+Caicos is an option, but I'm a bit hesitant about prescribing both platform and GPU.

Tweakable benchmarks are good but I think relevant benchmarks are important too, even if they have the "downside" of being insufficiently tweakable.

[zeropluszero]

why not repeat the last comps? 

[yosarianilives]

1 hour ago, zeropluszero said:

why not repeat the last comps? 

If we do that we should do 1030, I got one  modded Galax ready to go

[superpatodonaldo]

Cheapaz chips season 1

GT710: catzilla 576p + 3dm01 + gpupi 1b

Cheapaz chips season 2

GT1030 and cpu freq max 5003MHz: 3dm03 + gpupi 1b + UHX

Cheapaz chips season 3

Cedar core and quad-core freq max 5003MHz: SD (GPU) + UHB + 3dm06 + 3dm11e (GPU)

 

Personally like this style to for cheapaz cup, cheap vga and 3d / gpu-based benchs

 

About 3000G maybe an idea could be ADD another cup Vega integrated gpus & Ryzen cpus; 2d result per core (so can use athlon 2/4c and ryzen 5 4/8c) and 3d result per Vega 3 / 8 / 11

 

 

Edited January 24, 2020 by superpatodonaldo

[mickulty]

9 hours ago, zeropluszero said:

why not repeat the last comps? 

 

7 hours ago, yosarianilives said:

If we do that we should do 1030, I got one  modded Galax ready to go

There's your answer...