R5: UGP/GTPP fix for exotic categories

[Yamunsa]

apologies in advance as this is more of an airing my opinion than having any effect on this change... i'm working on the understanding that it's implementation is not under debate.

 

i see this change as somewhat of a disappointment for a number of reasons. sure, seeing a few guys, (very few), run benchmarks on work servers at stock and creaming 60 globals for 10 mins of mouse click in their lunch hour was pretty appalling. i got nothing to stick up for this sort of benching... well it's not really benching is it.

 

however, i recently noticed the lack of competition in the big core count categories to decided if i'm going to kiss it I might as well bunny it and bought a 4p rig to have a go.

 

exotic... no not really. es opteron (unlocked chips) are cheap & plentiful on ebay. expensive board and a real pain fiddling with server 8 to get things humming true. side note - win7 ult recognises 256 cores but only 2 chips.. painful to redo a pc05 os from scratch i can tell you, especially if you have to switch half of server back on to get the bench to run and cull the other hale of the services to make a start on efficiency.

 

having already gone through the unpleasant but 'popular' decision to permit ram drives in pcv and software cacheing raid in pc05 it's of no surprise that having chosen an unpopular benchmark to focus on as well as choosing uncommon gear to bench with i was bound to catch a kick in the nuts a few times.

 

but, by limiting points attributed to uncommon setups minimises the desire for anyone to bother in the future. doesn't that sort of defeat the core purpose of hwbot? arn't most of us here reading this thread doing uncommon stuff like using Ln, stripping OSs, pushing the boundaries of gear to their limits?

 

by penalising folks for taking an alternative route just seems counter productive. if the bot is going to play the popular game are we to expect users of Ln to start losing points? are we going to have a new category on watercooling setups and award randoms on who has the gayist flashing lights? are the big guns using 4 titans going to get pinged because their setup is better than mine? unlikely.. well not today anyway.

 

taking on the quotes i'd like to reply to a few

 

Great improvement!

 

@ Rasparthe: The HWBot points have to represent the effort or skill it takes to achieve a score. 60 points for a result which was achieved on stock clocks is too much.

 

as you may know retail opteron comes locked witrh turbo only. stock is something that has to be lived with to some degree. true, if you have a couple of specific supermicro boards you can flash the bios to a modded version but that only gives you a 12.5% boosts and takes no skill by the owner.. dl>flash>done. or 2 get a tyan board and if you know someone working near a opteron based supercomputer you might be lucky to get hold of an unlocked bios... breaking every eula / nda in the book. wprime is a great example of running lazy and catching boints for bunny all effort. Is it cooler and more acceptable to have a 1 click oc? hello sandybridge, remember annoying the bunnyextraction out of many?

 

same chips challanging eachother on spi or pc05 would not be the case.

 

Sadly, points are mostly rewarded by the number of "noobs" you beat, rather than the actual skill required to beat your score. Not only that, inactive rankings get devalued simply because there are few recent subs, not because the submission skill level has decreased.

 

very true. scored good points the other week making subs on air using a q66, e66 & e8400. all 3 top 10 pc05 hw. all from good storage and knowing your os.

 

Fine. We'll just implement that "rainbows and unicorns for all" algorithm we've secretly held back from you guys for the past five years.

 

this comment is beneath you and only fuels the argument of poor consultation with the community.

 

+1

 

Grab an 960T, unlock it, make scores, have fun. Same goes probably to this i3 setup. These are really affordable possibilities in entering OC and getting actually some points.

 

Of course getting 60 globals in superpi is a much harder job but we really take out diversity of the competition. Who will will fire up 4 Opterons for 10 points?

 

I just want to say dont make the bot too strict, too exact. Let mutliple ways to accomplish things.

 

I guess we cant change this now anyway as the patch seems to be about to be applied. So this was just my 2cents....

 

a valid 2 cents and I agree. limit the desire of benching different and people wont. Of course duel core ivy @ stock running cine or xtu won't get cut from the fold but for many it's still somewhat of a joke. i made a sub on my htpc and had to wash my hands soon after lol.

 

You know, there is a category of people who bench ridicilous setups just to get 2 hardware points for a gold cup. People who run 4x Opteron setups usually fall in such category anyway, so the bot will not lose much in terms of participants' numbers.

 

the same can be said for those kids who save all their pocket money and instead of a first car they go buy 4 titans to be king of the epeeners. sure, who gives a rats about them too.

 

Well, I can think of another solution, but it probably wouldn't be feasible... Instead of only awarding points based on number of participants, the algorithm could also account for the quality of participants you beat. For example, if you beat 9 other participants, that would be worth 10 points. If 2 of those participants were ranked highly within their league, you get additional bonuses because you beat other skilled Overclockers. Probably too complicated to implement, however it would address both the amount and quality of competition.

 

Ultimately though, I am the opposite of rasparthe on this issue. I don't believe awarding the same points for beating 2000 people or for running hardware no one else bothers to run is any good, especially when it rewards stock clock submissions that rank people higher than others legitimately trying to overclock.

 

ok, 2 things to reply to:

 

1 the easiest way has been discussed previously on numerous occasions. reward folks on the percentage of oc achieved. much like a cpuz val apply the principle to other benches. one of my proudest moments was getting my old e66 past 100%oc. anyways, it's a nice idea that's never going to happen.

 

2 many of the "stock clock submissions that rank people higher than others legitimately trying to overclock" are in the mix because of the way core categories are currently structured. there is no option to have a mixed cpu setup and little energy behind hwbot to change things. eg: i have 2 x 6380 and 4 x 6220. when i wanted to make a 48 sub using 2 of each i couldn't. i opened a thread to ask what to do and was told to enter the sub under the highest chip. so, my 48 core sub had to be a 64 core entrant.. now with a very easy 60 points, i mean who the bunny has a 64 core setup at hand to challenge i thought blow it and subbed to everything i could. woop woop free boints everywhere but all junk on top of lies. at the time I thought, why did I bother getting 2 x 16 cores when I could of got 1 and a few $30 quads and still toe the line.

 

fix the multi cpu option, ask multi core subs to be corrected and watch the lower core count categories to be competitive and many of the high core count subs dissabear… oh, and i know you'll see less piss taking.

 

The real annoying part of ALL the complaints and drama about the points is that this patch has not even been applied in production! None of the effects of this patch can be seen on the production. None.

 

All we did was give a heads-up. It would be nice if, for a change, people would read the posts before starting all the drama.

 

i think the complaints are coming from the minimal consultation, minimal effort to find an alternative route and another example of popularist politics and single-mindedness rearing it's head on the bot.

 

pc05 caught a beating with all the bs from a select few last year and before the rules were set in stone the benchmark was ruined for many. warehouse benching is about to ruin things for the even fewer that have chosen to give enterprise gear a go. when this change goes ahead it'll be the last time you see pics like this for a lousy 10 points.

 

Edited July 4, 2013 by Yamunsa

[Massman]

i think the complaints are coming from the minimal consultation, minimal effort to find an alternative route and another example of popularist politics and single-mindedness rearing it's head on the bot.

 

- 24 Jan 2012: created task in backlog based on community feedback.

- 29 Nov 2012: thread created in the forums requesting for community feedback.

- 01 Apr 2013: 81-post discussion from the community on this issue because it's not been addressed yet.

- 04 Jul 2013: heads-up to announce the patch will be done

Edited July 4, 2013 by Massman
sigh

[Yamunsa]

and i thank you for ignoring the remainder of my post

[K404]

@Yamunsa

 

Enough members of the community asked for this that HWB considered it worthwhile. Blame everyone who asked for it. That includes me.

 

Why should people be given a load of points just for running a bench at stock MHz, with almost no competition? Who cares how long it takes to set up or tweak. I spent 6 hours yesterday trying to enable SLI. I saw so many BSODs, I thoughtI needed to have my eyes checked. Have I made a thread asking for more points as a reward for all my effort?

 

but, by limiting points attributed to uncommon setups minimises the desire for anyone to bother in the future. doesn't that sort of defeat the core purpose of hwbot? arn't most of us here reading this thread doing uncommon stuff like using Ln, stripping OSs, pushing the boundaries of gear to their limits?

 

So....what would you suggest? Flip the points around? 2-pointers are now worth 50? SOMETHING has to be at the bottom. The least-used hardware seems like a sensible choice to me.

Edited July 4, 2013 by K404

[jjjc]

This has been coming for a while now, it's something that has been brought up a few times and was supported by many.

 

More contestants in a category make it more competitive. The more competitive it is, the harder it is to top. The harder the result, the higher the reward. Makes complete sense to me. HW points have followed that same formula for as long as I have been around.

 

I'm also surprised at the value some people hold in points. If you enjoy benching how ever many core setups and like to take world records that way then go for it. Just as there are people who enjoy playing with legacy hardware or other exotic setups and don't complain about the lack of points they receive for it. I think it would be disappointing if people just stopped trying and left behind what they really enjoy doing just because it no longer rewarded them the same amount of points.

 

That or it's not a case of enjoying that over other hardware at all and instead just an 'exploitation' of current point engine rewards. Ala easy points.

[Yamunsa]

@Yamunsa

 

Enough members of the community asked for this that HWB considered it worthwhile. Blame everyone who asked for it. That includes me.

 

i'm not attributing blame. i didn't think i had. if i gave that impression from the line quoted by massman i was simply addressing pieters earlier comment, later underlined by himself, that as a paid advocate of the hobby we love brushing off another member with some snide comment about rainbows & unicorns was plain bs. he asked for a button to be pressed and i did.

 

Why should people be given a load of points just for running a bench at stock MHz, with almost no competition? Who cares how long it takes to set up or tweak. I spent 6 hours yesterday trying to enable SLI. I saw so many BSODs, I thought I needed to have my eyes checked. Have I made a thread asking for more points as a reward for all my effort?

 

i agree with you. stock runs are bs. my hand is firmly in the air to pull all those subs made through the years @ stock. lets reflect on 8800gtx, sandy and 06 subs for a start. and btw i feel for your sli/bsod. been there and know the feeling. got a new one last week with pwm adjustment crashing 3d.

 

please don't think i believe the current situation is any good. i also don't think this change will be good for oc in the future. i also don't know of a perfect middle road to lay out. i did/do understand that irrespective of any comments made, in all likelihood this change will go ahead.

 

So....what would you suggest? Flip the points around? 2-pointers are now worth 50? SOMETHING has to be at the bottom. The least-used hardware seems like a sensible choice to me.

 

i've made a suggestion above based specifically on oc. i am 100% on the side of rubbishing lazy subs made @ stock especially if they earn globals.

 

i hope that down the track that benching out of the norm would be rewarded. watching a number of rulings made previously with the reluctance to ever visit them again i had hoped to post my opinion before it makes the archives.

[Yamunsa]

I'm also surprised at the value some people hold in points.

 

if you were addressing my post i think you misunderstand what i was saying. a points system was put in place to achieve a competition. we know that points do mean something to some people. those that wished to be judged by others use it as a marker in their community standing. all this is marketing 101.

 

by minimising the incentive for these people competition will flounder. i simply don't think that squashing something before it has a chance to grow is the right thing. it's a pretty simple idea.

 

what is in place isn’t perfect by a longshot. is this the right way to move forward... i don't think so.

[Poorya_lion]

Great improvement!

 

@ Rasparthe: The HWBot points have to represent the effort or skill it takes to achieve a score. 60 points for a result which was achieved on stock clocks is too much.

 

Like those guys who get 100 chips per day from their sponsors !!! Yes ???

I don't know the genius who make these kind of decisions !!! WE DON'T HAVE ANY EXOTIC POINTS IN OUR TEAM !!!

But => @ Massman: there is too many changes. Each month you are making new changes, I don't say that they are right or wrong , BUT FOR GOD SAKE PLEASE LET US BREATH FOR 1 WEEK !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Each day we have to read community for rules, tests, points, kicking ASUS's A*S*S and ...

Please stop it.

[der8auer]

These guys are in the Pro-OC-League and not affected by this new improvement anyway.

 

Also this is a community decision and the topic has been active for a while now.

 

I just checked your profile and your results should not be affected by this anyway? Don't understand why you are complaining.

[Mr.Scott]

This has been coming for a while now, it's something that has been brought up a few times and was supported by many.

 

More contestants in a category make it more competitive. The more competitive it is, the harder it is to top. The harder the result, the higher the reward. Makes complete sense to me. HW points have followed that same formula for as long as I have been around.

 

I'm also surprised at the value some people hold in points. If you enjoy benching how ever many core setups and like to take world records that way then go for it. Just as there are people who enjoy playing with legacy hardware or other exotic setups and don't complain about the lack of points they receive for it. I think it would be disappointing if people just stopped trying and left behind what they really enjoy doing just because it no longer rewarded them the same amount of points.

 

That or it's not a case of enjoying that over other hardware at all and instead just an 'exploitation' of current point engine rewards. Ala easy points.

 

+1 :celebration:

[IanCutress]

That or it's not a case of enjoying that over other hardware at all and instead just an 'exploitation' of current point engine rewards. Ala easy points.

 

^^ This

 

There is always opportunity to get 'easy points' up to a certain extent - a pair of 4870x2s on air with a strong CPU for example can rack up a nice number of hardware points, just because those cards are mostly benched on air.

 

Multi-CPU categories were another place, but the poignant issue here is global points. People have no qualms on 2 HW points on a multicore setup, but the 60 globals is the issue when you have zero competition (let alone the overclockability).

 

As I noted, Dead Things drops out of the top 20 with this change, I lose some points too. If you spend money to 'exploit' easy points, then you do it for the moment. The minute you drive around the Nurburgring without insurance is the time you side-swipe into a tree The only guaranteed way to get points and move up the rankings is to prove your worth in difficult categories, where scores have longevity.

[Rasparthe]

Reading through the arguments back and forth on this, it appears, that major opposition to the exotic chips is the fact that "its easier to get points" and should be changed to better reflect the degree of difficulty involved. For a great many of the people demanding this they have no points in exotic chips and don't even know whats involved. Yamunsa explains what is involved and how much tweaking and setups is required and gets this:

 

@Yamunsa

 

Why should people be given a load of points just for running a bench at stock MHz, with almost no competition? Who cares how long it takes to set up or tweak.

.

 

His point being that the points awarded should be reflected in how much time or effort was imposed. So I don't understand the argument against the exotics. HWBOT wants to lower the points because supposedly they take no effort, everything is at stock, and the setup is a breeze and its instant allstar. Unless there is work involved and its 75% overclocks and lots of setup and hardware that was never intended for overclocking then it doesn't matter how much time is involved the points should be lowered as K404 says above.

 

Its a confusing and very fluid argument, trying to have it both ways.

 

I spent 6 hours yesterday trying to enable SLI. I saw so many BSODs, I thoughtI needed to have my eyes checked. Have I made a thread asking for more points as a reward for all my effort?

 

But I would bet, you would make a thread if they suddenly decided to lower the value of SLI setups.

 

I don't really know if awarding 60 point globals to exotics is beneficial to HWBOT as a whole. I do believe that making it a two tier system based on subjective criteria like "I feel it doesn't take enough effort for the points" isn't good for it. It just caters to one of HWBOT greatest problems, well top 3 in my opinion, the "I don't have it/own it/interested in it therefore it must be banned/reduced/eliminated from HWBOT". The same attitude raises its head in many other areas as many of you are well aware, its no different here.

 

What is so wrong with having the same equal treatment applied across all setups? I don't even care if the 60 points is lowered, I'm just saying it has to be the same across the board. Excluding certain segments of the membership just because other, more mainstream, members think they aren't real overclockers is never a good step forward. Tweak the globals all you want in my opinion, just do it fairly across the board.

 

Don't tell a member of HWBOT he isn't a real overclocker, or an overclocker not as valuable as the next guy, simply because he chooses to bench non-mainstream hardware.

 

Interesting that Dead Things disappears from the EL top 20 completely, no?

 

Damn shame too, the fellow has been trying to kick start an overclocking community over at HardwareCanucks.com (shockingly mainstream overclocking with real 3770K and everything) and was one of the guys to spearhead that websites impressive showing at Team Cup. If he hadn't gotten interested in HWBOT because of the exotic setups and lent his reputation as #1 EL to it, I can't think it would have done as well or spread the good message of HWBOT as far.

[I.nfraR.ed]

You seem to miss the fact that the change is not applied on the production server and the missing points issue for some users is not connected in any way with the new algorythm.

 

But on the topic, I agree with the things jjjc said.

There are a lot of people benching old stuff that awards them 2pts or close to that.

How running an obscure server setup is any different from this? If they are not doing it for the global points, then they will continue to run these setups. Otherwise it's just an exploit/backdoor in the point algorythm that these people are absuing.

 

This change is not made to reflect time spent on a certain score, it reflects the competition in a certain ranking. You can't ever measure the time spent. I might have spent 6 hours on a single s.939 score that awards me 2pts. Should I get 15pts for that, or 20pts? I do it for the passion and for fun.

 

Why should I have 60 global points in a category without any competition, while I'm getting 2 HW points in a non-popular hardware category. IMO it's the same, so the change is the right thing to do.

Edited July 4, 2013 by I.nfraR.ed

[K404]

 

But I would bet, you would make a thread if they suddenly decided to lower the value of SLI setups.

 

 

I bench 2-point golds under LN2, after already taking the gold medal sometimes by 20-30% on air or watercooling. You clearly do not understand what motivates me.

[K404]

His point being that the points awarded should be reflected in how much time or effort was imposed.

 

So.... if (e.g.) Andre benches some no-competition exotic category.... how many points should he get? He benches 7-pots by himself at crazy MHz. Some exotic 2P system, with limited OCability is, by his standards, pretty simple would you not agree?

 

Who decides the skill level...and by who's skill level is it based on?

 

IMO, your argument is full of holes. The only clear and easy to explain guage on here is number of submissions.

[I.nfraR.ed]

Yep.

How would you determine if I'm a skilled race-driver if I'm the only one in a race without any competition?

What is the base you measure my skills against?

I may even run with stock tires, without any suspension and aeordynamics tweaks, without even using 20% of the power I have in my hands, but will still be №1, because there's no competition.

Edited July 4, 2013 by I.nfraR.ed

[der8auer]

Nobody would care because you would have to compete in a race with other drivers to proof your skills.

 

You can't evaluate a measurement or score if you have no values to compare it to.

[Bobnova]

I fully support this change. I'm very happy to see it happen.

[Schmuckley]

But if a car's lap time around Nurnburgring is lower;It's lower.

[knopflerbruce]

I think some of you underestimate the skill needed to be 1st out of 10-15. It's just as hard as being ~10th in a very popular hardware ranking, even though the reward is much less. FOr no-competition stuff it's different, but you don't need much competition before it gets alot harder to be number 1.

[jjjc]

But if a car's lap time around Nurnburgring is lower;It's lower.

 

These submissions aren't taking overall world records, just a record for that respective core count. PC05 for example, all of the world records are taken with single CPU, 4 core setups, the scores from these big server setups are actually lower.

 

Overall world records are highly contested, there will be no issue with points there.

 

I understand that a lot of tweaking and work is needed for these setups to put out a good score, but what setup doesn't need that? I put hours and hours and hours into my setups for single benchmarks, sometimes that doesn't pay off with big points. For me the result itself is the rewarding aspect.

[El Gappo]

These submissions aren't taking overall world records, just a record for that respective core count. PC05 for example, all of the world records are taken with single CPU, 4 core setups, the scores from these big server setups are actually lower.

 

Overall world records are highly contested, there will be no issue with points there.

 

I understand that a lot of tweaking and work is needed for these setups to put out a good score, but what setup doesn't need that? I put hours and hours and hours into my setups for single benchmarks, sometimes that doesn't pay off with big points. For me the result itself is the rewarding aspect.

 

For cinebench and wprime they are getting world records though and we don't see the kind of point boost that 3d benches get for overall WR's, regardless of core/card count.

 

http://hwbot.org/submission/2361730_knopflerbruce_wprime___1024m_4x_opteron_6164_he_30sec_108ms

http://hwbot.org/submission/2384918_patriot_cinebench_r11.5_4x_opteron_6164_he_45.3_points

 

I want to see these results and want to see people going for them. Probably going to happen a lot less if they are getting Nul points. Going to look pretty funny with a sempron at about 700 seconds in wprime gets awarded ten times the points of the overall world record when it's 20 times slower.

 

Disappointed Rbuass isn't in this thread, right up his alley.

[Massman]

Wprime doesn't get WR points, perhaps we should consider that.

 

Wprime 1024M makes sense as it'll still scale. The Wprime 32M hasn't been beaten since December 2010, so I'm not sure whether WR points for that one actually makes sense.

[I.M.O.G.]

by penalising folks for taking an alternative route just seems counter productive.

 

1 the easiest way has been discussed previously on numerous occasions. reward folks on the percentage of oc achieved. much like a cpuz val apply the principle to other benches. one of my proudest moments was getting my old e66 past 100%oc. anyways, it's a nice idea that's never going to happen.

 

I don't think we are penalizing alternative routes, just rewarding oddball setups with fewer points - there are a ton of leagues, rankings, and rewards that can be sought after... If the only reason people are benching certain things is to get the 60 globals, then motivations are in the wrong place. This only seems like a penalty, because by unexpected side effects of the old algorithm, it provided ways to exploit massive points which weren't intended - edge/odd cases hadn't been taken into consideration previously. This makes sure there is a reward, but also that the reward isn't totally out to lunch.

 

Percentage overclock is no good. It would be great if benchmark security were at a higher level, and if monitoring/recording were integrated in the benches, but we don't have any of that. This isn't realistic due to the limitations of screenshots and cpuz being the fundamental method of verification... Easy to change frequency for screenshots. Also frequency doesn't account for efficiency, also an important element of skill.

[I.M.O.G.]

I think some of you underestimate the skill needed to be 1st out of 10-15. It's just as hard as being ~10th in a very popular hardware ranking, even though the reward is much less. FOr no-competition stuff it's different, but you don't need much competition before it gets alot harder to be number 1.

 

I agree sometimes, but probably not most times. I think if we could figure out how to also account for who you beat, this situation could be improved. If you are 1 out of 10, a lot of the time its a bunch of noobs who aren't sure what they are doing. But other times, there is contention for top ranks against one or two other skilled players in the same ranking. If you beat someone else with a lot of gold cups, maybe you should get some bonus points. (Goes back to my idea of not just how many you beat, but also who you beat)

 

Mainly, where I agree with you for example, is that what you do very often by taking golds in low competition categories is often more challenging than taking 40th on an 8800 GPU. Yet, 40th on an 8800 only takes some cold and a modern CPU, and it awards almost the same number of points as you get for 22nd. It isn't hard to do that on an 8800, probably less hard than taking some gold cups. But I don't see a better solution for that, which is straightforward.