The official Pro OC Cup Q3'13 thread.

[Massman]

Kicked off!

[Massman]

Just as a reminder, if you are planning on competing you need to upload one score per team to register for the competition before July 1st. Also, you have to join a Pro OC team if you have not done that yet.

 

I'll post a news item up later this week once the Pro OC Ranking page is fully finished (and not just at 0pts)

[rbuass]

Massman...

First Pro Cup has very few people with chances in "Full Out" stage...

Only 2 teams could compete (there are no cards to compete against 4 Titans)...

Why don't change to 1 card... so... greatly increase the competitiveness...

Regardless I don't mind IGP and mainstream, I believe its not a problem, but Full Out will kill the chances of the most of the Teams...

Further... I believe the competition reason is more to measure the quality of the overclockers and also the teams... than to see who can use 4 cards...

I hope you understand...

Good lucky to all competitors... looking forward your scores.

[Patriot]

Massman...

First Pro Cup has very few people with chances in "Full Out" stage...

Only 2 teams could compete (there are no cards to compete against 4 Titans)...

Why don't change to 1 card... so... greatly increase the competitiveness...

Regardless I don't mind IGP and mainstream, I believe its not a problem, but Full Out will kill the chances of the most of the Teams...

Further... I believe the competition reason is more to measure the quality of the overclockers and also the teams... than to see who can use 4 cards...

I hope you understand...

Good lucky to all competitors... looking forward your scores.

 

I agree, it was also overly heavily weighted on the gpu side by having single and all out.

[Gunslinger]

It's the "Pro" cup, so go big or go home. :celebration:

 

1 stage out of 5 with an insane rig should be no problem when you have 4-5 guys on a team.

 

As far as weighting, GPU and CPU were equal in the last round. 2x GPU benches, 2x CPU benches, 1st place in both was worth 50 points.

[Xtreme Addict]

4x gpu is okay... Cinebench with multi cpu - OUT!!!! Multi cpu doesn't bring new "blood" from gamers to extreme overclockings, 4x gpu yes because it's technology for gamers... And good Xeons or AMD chips in retail distribution cost 2-3K USD per one...

[rbuass]

It's the "Pro" cup, so go big or go home. :celebration:

 

 

For you... to be "big" is to run 4 Titans at 1000 Mhz? ("so go big or go home")

I don't think the same...

When 4 x HD 7970 was more affordable, more people and core competitiveness in Full Out...

Also... regardless have 4 or 5 guys in each team, only Kingpin you could ran Titan in 4 way... in amount all teams... so... do you think is competitive?

Don't let the competition to be easier just because you have the weapons... competition must measure quality of the overclocker and not his hardware.

[Splave]

Too bad that you are only as good as your hardware allows in most cases

[Gunslinger]

For you... to be "big" is to run 4 Titans at 1000 Mhz? ("so go big or go home")

I don't think the same...

When 4 x HD 7970 was more affordable, more people and core competitiveness in Full Out...

Also... regardless have 4 or 5 guys in each team, only Kingpin you could ran Titan in 4 way... in amount all teams... so... do you think is competitive?

Don't let the competition to be easier just because you have the weapons... competition must measure quality of the overclocker and not his hardware.

 

I don't have the Titans anymore, and running the 4 Titans I did have at 1000 was enough for 2nd place in that stage, which was our target.

[icebob]

For you... to be "big" is to run 4 Titans at 1000 Mhz? ("so go big or go home")

I don't think the same...

When 4 x HD 7970 was more affordable, more people and core competitiveness in Full Out...

Also... regardless have 4 or 5 guys in each team, only Kingpin you could ran Titan in 4 way... in amount all teams... so... do you think is competitive?

Don't let the competition to be easier just because you have the weapons... competition must measure quality of the overclocker and not his hardware.

 

Is there a day on the calendar that you don't whine about something? Geez! that's getting old...

[rbuass]

Is there a day on the calendar that you don't whine about something? Geez! that's getting old...

 

To bring my opinion also to try to have a more competitive Pro Cup, can not be considered "whine"... so... let your opinion that I will respect, but please don't flame.

[Bobnova]

Dude does have a point, though.

Bare minimum $4000 of GPUs to compete. That'll cut the field down a bit.

[Xtreme Addict]

Cinebench killed the field more.

 

Moreover - GTX 780 can be very competitive, cause it's 4-Way, mostly CPU limited. And those are about 2500 USD, something like that.

 

We have to remember that it';s PRO Cup - the idea was to make it sponsored, so vendors would deliver GPUs for it...

[Gunslinger]

Cinebench killed the field more.

 

Moreover - GTX 780 can be very competitive, cause it's 4-Way, mostly CPU limited. And those are about 2500 USD, something like that.

 

We have to remember that it';s PRO Cup - the idea was to make it sponsored, so vendors would deliver GPUs for it...

 

Yeah, let me know when that happens.

[knopflerbruce]

Cinebench killed the field more.

 

Moreover - GTX 780 can be very competitive, cause it's 4-Way, mostly CPU limited. And those are about 2500 USD, something like that.

 

We have to remember that it';s PRO Cup - the idea was to make it sponsored, so vendors would deliver GPUs for it...

 

Nope. 4x titans cost more than a 4 server chips + mobo. I think the latter can be had for about $2k, so half the price. That includes a brand new motherboard, too - so in terms of cost, cinebench didn't kill the field. It's just that most people prefer to buy 4 GPUs rather than 4 CPUs regardless of cost.

[Xtreme Addict]

Nope. 4x titans cost more than a 4 server chips + mobo. I think the latter can be had for about $2k, so half the price. That includes a brand new motherboard, too - so in terms of cost, cinebench didn't kill the field. It's just that most people prefer to buy 4 GPUs rather than 4 CPUs regardless of cost.

 

Yes, if you are buying from ebay all over the world, have friends to get them shipped and so on, you can buy those CPUs not so expensive + board. Of course you were looking for ES cpus cause those have unlocked multi. You know that I admired your work a lot and what you did is fantastic. But in my opinion it's not PRO CUP material. Xeons and Opterons (I am talking about those real, which can work in multi CPU configuration) are not desktop material, but servers - it's PRO market, which is very expensive. For us, overclockers and gamers we have our "K" series, "Extreme Edition" or "Black Edition". Moreover, board vendors don't produce server OC boards. It's not this market.

 

Don't get me wrong but from what I remember PRO CUP was created to make OC community stronger, to get some new fresh blood, but now I think it's more and more getting old ocers away. Seriously, if there are some cinebench or wprime stages for multi CPU configurations - I am out, cause it's not my market and I can't fight with it and here is why:

 

- I am mostly buying hw in Poland, from warehouses or shops, I checked and cheapest Opteron 16C cost 1000 euro here. Even if I had $ to buy platform for one stage (let's count about 6K euro with ECC mems, board, LN2), what would I do with it later? Try to sell, okay... who will buy it in Poland? I am not company, and only PRO companies buy such HW with an invoice, I am private user, I can't give invoices... so in the best case I could sell it after many weeks (or months) of waiting for 1/3 price? It's impossible to do for me.

 

- I don't see connection of server parts in overclocking/gaming market, so I am not interested in it

 

- Vendors which I am interested in (Asrock, Asus, MSI, GB, EVGA and so on) mostly don't make boards for multi cpu for LN2, with OC functions and so on and they don't care about it, cause it's a different market.

 

- if there are so "crazy" and expensive setups, I don't see any new fresh blood joining in OC world, I see the opposite- old users will say "that's too much"

 

I can accept multi CPU if I can mount normal CPUs, like 4770K, 3770K, 3930K and so on, normal cpus which are not so expensive (in fact most of us buys per few cpus for binning), not server expensive staff. But there is a reason why Intel and AMD doesn't support it. They want to make more $ from server/PRO market and that's their right. I don't see a point to go into this area where we are in desktop/gamers/enthusiast market...

 

In fact it's the same as creating some Povray or something "PRO" a benchmark, were Quadro/FireGL are much stronger than normal gpus. Let's do PRO CUP on this... where Titan cost 1K USD and Quadro based on GK110 cost 2-3 times more. I don't see any sense or point of this.

 

If we want to make OC community grow - we have to look into gaming society, which in fact is the group who mostly uses OC for 24/7 and are more close to us than some server companies/enthusiasts. 4x Titan is hard for wallet, but 4x 780 GTX is not that tragic and it's easy to sell such gpus after PRO Cup stage and it can make interest among gamers. Multi CPU for sure won't do that.

I am totally for banning multi cpus stages. It's not our market. From one hand we are made to OC "mainstream" rig (3DMark06 stage - I don't mean that I am against it, hw isn't that expensive and easy to sell after OC) but on the other hand we will be made to bench rigs unavailable for us to buy in retail shops (price) and which have almost nothing in common with OC.

Edited June 3, 2013 by Xtreme Addict

[Bobnova]

I am totally for banning multi cpus stages. It's not our market. From one hand we are made to OC "mainstream" rig (3DMark06 stage - I don't mean that I am against it, hw isn't that expensive and easy to sell after OC) but on the other hand we will be made to bench rigs unavailable for us to buy in retail shops (price) and which have almost nothing in common with OC.

 

I agree, completely.

 

Multiple titans at least is a reasonable thing to expect a top5 person to have for binning purposes. A quad 16 core server setup? Less so.

It turns "PRO OC CUP" into "Bribe the boss so I can run WPrime on the server at stock so I can get at least a few point in that stage", doesn't seem like the goal to me.

[knopflerbruce]

Yes, if you are buying from ebay all over the world, have friends to get them shipped and so on, you can buy those CPUs not so expensive + board. Of course you were looking for ES cpus cause those have unlocked multi. You know that I admired your work a lot and what you did is fantastic. But in my opinion it's not PRO CUP material. Xeons and Opterons (I am talking about those real, which can work in multi CPU configuration) are not desktop material, but servers - it's PRO market, which is very expensive. For us, overclockers and gamers we have our "K" series, "Extreme Edition" or "Black Edition". Moreover, board vendors don't produce server OC boards. It's not this market.

 

Don't get me wrong but from what I remember PRO CUP was created to make OC community stronger, to get some new fresh blood, but now I think it's more and more getting old ocers away. Seriously, if there are some cinebench or wprime stages for multi CPU configurations - I am out, cause it's not my market and I can't fight with it and here is why:

 

- I am mostly buying hw in Poland, from warehouses or shops, I checked and cheapest Opteron 16C cost 1000 euro here. Even if I had $ to buy platform for one stage (let's count about 6K euro with ECC mems, board, LN2), what would I do with it later? Try to sell, okay... who will buy it in Poland? I am not company, and only PRO companies buy such HW with an invoice, I am private user, I can't give invoices... so in the best case I could sell it after many weeks (or months) of waiting for 1/3 price? It's impossible to do for me.

 

- I don't see connection of server parts in overclocking/gaming market, so I am not interested in it

 

- Vendors which I am interested in (Asrock, Asus, MSI, GB, EVGA and so on) mostly don't make boards for multi cpu for LN2, with OC functions and so on and they don't care about it, cause it's a different market.

 

- if there are so "crazy" and expensive setups, I don't see any new fresh blood joining in OC world, I see the opposite- old users will say "that's too much"

 

I can accept multi CPU if I can mount normal CPUs, like 4770K, 3770K, 3930K and so on, normal cpus which are not so expensive (in fact most of us buys per few cpus for binning), not server expensive staff. But there is a reason why Intel and AMD doesn't support it. They want to make more $ from server/PRO market and that's their right. I don't see a point to go into this area where we are in desktop/gamers/enthusiast market...

 

In fact it's the same as creating some Povray or something "PRO" a benchmark, were Quadro/FireGL are much stronger than normal gpus. Let's do PRO CUP on this... where Titan cost 1K USD and Quadro based on GK110 cost 2-3 times more. I don't see any sense or point of this.

 

If we want to make OC community grow - we have to look into gaming society, which in fact is the group who mostly uses OC for 24/7 and are more close to us than some server companies/enthusiasts. 4x Titan is hard for wallet, but 4x 780 GTX is not that tragic and it's easy to sell such gpus after PRO Cup stage and it can make interest among gamers. Multi CPU for sure won't do that.

I am totally for banning multi cpus stages. It's not our market. From one hand we are made to OC "mainstream" rig (3DMark06 stage - I don't mean that I am against it, hw isn't that expensive and easy to sell after OC) but on the other hand we will be made to bench rigs unavailable for us to buy in retail shops (price) and which have almost nothing in common with OC.

 

I buy the mobos in regular stores (wiredzone and superbiiz). CPUs... yes, ebay - and usually from sellers who ship worldwide. Memory isn't hard either, I use 16 random 2gb sticks (no ECC, we're talking PSC sticks that I've bought on ebay). Cheap and easy to find everywhere. 1gb sticks are fine, too, got 16 1gb 1333mhz samsungs running in a different setup as we speak. The fact that the server boards don't really support overclocking is only partially true, there is a modded BIOS for one of the supermicro boards allowing HTT adjustments. For mp you've got software. They're fragile, though... so prepping it for benching is time consuming (I must've spent 10+ hours with the dremel to cut all those brackets and sinks). The only real difference between these boards and a dual socket workstation (w/server chips) one (SR-2, SR-X, Z7S WS and so on) is that they're designed to handle overclocking - but when did that ever become a limitation in this game? I'd say that the Titans are equally designed for overclocking as the SM 4P boards... it doesn't take much to kill a Titan either. But: SR2 and SkullTrail were accepted earlier, and if the E5-2xxx series had at least one model with an unlocked MP we'd see people running Ln2 on those like crazy - just like we did with SR2 earlier. Whether the mobo maker is Supermicro/Tyan or EVGA/ASUS doesn't really matter.

 

You could probably sell the server to some folder/WCG user or whatever - they're worth the money if you're into those things. 1/3 of the price? No way. You'd probably get close to the same percentage loss as with Titans. I don't see 4P setups go for close to nothing in folding forums. A bit cheaper because they're sold between folders, but that's reasonable - like if I'd get a nice deal on a decent 4770k from a teammate.

 

To sum it up: servers are a tad more difficult to sell, but there is a market for such things. Overclockability through BIOS and software exists. The platform is cheaper than the high end GPU ones, but harder to find locally. All in all, I do not see any reason to exclude these from the Pro cup. Plus, it's just one out of 5 stages. It's enough that one teammate can do the benching. If the total costs are too high, maybe we should not do both multi-GPU and multi CPU in the same cup... or none at all (no multi-CPU = no multi-GPU for me, either you accept the cost and risk of running these "insane" setups, or you don't).

[knopflerbruce]

I agree, completely.

 

Multiple titans at least is a reasonable thing to expect a top5 person to have for binning purposes. A quad 16 core server setup? Less so.

It turns "PRO OC CUP" into "Bribe the boss so I can run WPrime on the server at stock so I can get at least a few point in that stage", doesn't seem like the goal to me.

 

You'll end up getting the same situation with 4x Titans... get the cards, run them at stock speed, and grab a bunch of points. Only two setups weith Ln2'd GPUs this time. My 4P setup was at least run at sub-ambient temps, and I only got 3rd in the Cinebench stage (not much below ambient, but still), and if I got the VID adjustments to work I probably would've posted an LN2 4P score, too. I ran it at minus 20 or so for an hour without success:p

[Bobnova]

You'll end up getting the same situation with 4x Titans... get the cards, run them at stock speed, and grab a bunch of points. Only two setups weith Ln2'd GPUs this time. My 4P setup was at least run at sub-ambient temps, and I only got 3rd in the Cinebench stage (not much below ambient, but still), and if I got the VID adjustments to work I probably would've posted an LN2 4P score, too. I ran it at minus 20 or so for an hour without success:p

 

Yeah I'm opposed to them, too

[Xtreme Addict]

I buy the mobos in regular stores (wiredzone and superbiiz). CPUs... yes, ebay - and usually from sellers who ship worldwide. Memory isn't hard either, I use 16 random 2gb sticks (no ECC, we're talking PSC sticks that I've bought on ebay). Cheap and easy to find everywhere. 1gb sticks are fine, too, got 16 1gb 1333mhz samsungs running in a different setup as we speak. The fact that the server boards don't really support overclocking is only partially true, there is a modded BIOS for one of the supermicro boards allowing HTT adjustments. For mp you've got software. They're fragile, though... so prepping it for benching is time consuming (I must've spent 10+ hours with the dremel to cut all those brackets and sinks). The only real difference between these boards and a dual socket workstation (w/server chips) one (SR-2, SR-X, Z7S WS and so on) is that they're designed to handle overclocking - but when did that ever become a limitation in this game? I'd say that the Titans are equally designed for overclocking as the SM 4P boards... it doesn't take much to kill a Titan either. But: SR2 and SkullTrail were accepted earlier, and if the E5-2xxx series had at least one model with an unlocked MP we'd see people running Ln2 on those like crazy - just like we did with SR2 earlier. Whether the mobo maker is Supermicro/Tyan or EVGA/ASUS doesn't really matter.

 

You could probably sell the server to some folder/WCG user or whatever - they're worth the money if you're into those things. 1/3 of the price? No way. You'd probably get close to the same percentage loss as with Titans. I don't see 4P setups go for close to nothing in folding forums. A bit cheaper because they're sold between folders, but that's reasonable - like if I'd get a nice deal on a decent 4770k from a teammate.

 

To sum it up: servers are a tad more difficult to sell, but there is a market for such things. Overclockability through BIOS and software exists. The platform is cheaper than the high end GPU ones, but harder to find locally. All in all, I do not see any reason to exclude these from the Pro cup. Plus, it's just one out of 5 stages. It's enough that one teammate can do the benching. If the total costs are too high, maybe we should not do both multi-GPU and multi CPU in the same cup... or none at all (no multi-CPU = no multi-GPU for me, either you accept the cost and risk of running these "insane" setups, or you don't).

 

I understand your point, but still I claim it's not suitable for PRO CUP and should be banned. All server parts in Poland are for special order, are too expensive for normal users. No one in Poland is folding, so only sell to foreign country... it's not so easy as it should. And I am sure that in other countries it's also the same like this (not talking about USA or Taiwan)

 

Yap 4x Titan is not also the cheapest and most easy setup (if you want to do it correctly), but as you saw in last PRO Cup 4x 7970 were close to Titans. You didn't have to spend money on 4x Titans, this time there is cheaper option - 780 GTX, and soon non refs should be available. It's still expensive but much more sensible than multi cpu, cause few guys before PRO CUP liked to push 4x gpu setups for WRs and so on... from few generations.

[rbuass]

Sorry... but I can not understand there are no single GPU stage... single GPU is to all... and hardest way ever, cause you need to extract the max of the card...

[Xtreme Addict]

Finally, ES Haswells are allowed?

[K404]

I thought ES was always allowed? This is the Pro League, after all?

[Xtreme Addict]

No... it's PRO Cup which is supposed to have some prices and we have to buy dedicated hw for stages, it is a show "which should bring new blood in OC Community". ES Haswells are much much better (QE6H) than retails and can't be bought, so I vote to ban them, I don't see those ES Haswells to bring more blood in OC Community, I see the opposite.