Hardware Asylum podcast on evolution of OC & new 3DMARK11 WR!

Yay, Hardware Asylum podcast is out. In case you guys have not heard of these guys before, make sure you visit their website. I would describe them as a down to earth tech website/podcast geared towards a novice to pro level overclocker and a hardware enthusiast alike. The podcast is easy to follow and dissects fairly complex topics and talks about interesting hardware, developments and competitions in this particular episode.

The guys at HA try to tackle Gigabyte’s motherboard overclocking series evolution as well as the world of competitive overclocking and the need to change the format to make it easier and more fun to follow.

Check out the podcast at the following link http://www.hardwareasylum.com/podcast/nli_podcast_47

Show Notes

Gigabyte Motherboard Evolution
Reviewing motherboards isn’t always the easiest and every reviewer tends to look at different aspects.  Some are super critical of fan controls while others may only look at feature differences between an entire group.  The reviews at Hardware Asylum often focus on features and what makes the board special.  Some are designed for overclocking while others may cater to the gamer.  One thing Dennis has noticed over the years is that motherboard designs change based on what users are doing in the marketplace. 

A perfect example of this evolution is the Gigabyte OC products dedicated to overclocking.  Of course overclocking isn’t the only thing you can use these motherboards for but, the marketing has been designed such that overclocking is first.

The rouges gallery contains every “mainstream” OC motherboard that Gigabyte has produced staring with the X58A-OC and ending with the X99 SOC Force.  In the podcast Dennis mentions a few unicorns with even more to offer.

Related Links:
Gigabyte X99 SOC Force Overclocking Motherboard Review
Gigabyte Z97X SOC Force Overclocking Motherboard Review
Gigabyte Z87X OC Overclocking Motherboard Review
Gigabyte Z77X UP7 Overclocking Motherboard Review
Gigabyte X79 UD7 OC Motherboard Preview
Gigabyte X58A-OC Overclocking Motherboard Review

A Change to Live Overclocking Competitions
There was an article published on Hardware Asylum that talked about how overclocking competitions needed to change if they were to grow into a full ocSport.  Some of the points in the article included removing “bin” from the equation and changing the structure to be more of a game that challenged the overclocker to get the best score possible within a limited set of constraints, submit a score and then do it again.

In this segment Dennis and Darren discuss the new competition format and how it can actually make competitions better for everyone from the manufacturers making the hardware to the overclockers dedicating their time to the hobby/sport and the media struggling to find interest in this niche.

Related Links:
Overclocking Competitions: About the Player not the Hardware

Episode 47 featured music:
Little People - Start Shootin' (http://www.littlepeoplemusic.com/)
Dr. Nol - The Jumo Love Faction (http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Dr_Nol/The_Juno_Love_Faction/01_Dr_Nol_-_Juno_Love_Faction)

 

Incidentally, TeamAU broke another world record with an upcoming OC board, X99 SOC Champion. It was the 3DMARK11 world record.

Hot off the press, new 3DMARK01 world record by TeamAU crew

Attention, attention, attention, TeamAU breaks another world record this week!

New Pifast World Record by pro

The boys have been able to get PSC working nicely on the GIGABYTE Z97X SOC FORCE, this has resulted in a new... (insert drum-roll here)

PIFAST WORLD RECORD

HWBOT link: http://hwbot.org/submission/2678749_teamau_pifast_core_i7_4770k_9sec_760ms

The record was achieved with a set of Patriot PSC cooled with Liquid Nitrogen and a 4770K CPU. We powered the rig with the latest Corsair AX 1500W power supply and of course used EK heat spreaders on the memory.

Another record brought to your friendly local OC team.

pro/James

TeamAU Breaks Aquamark3 World Record: 593,932 marks

Last weekend we began the pre-pre-testing for our upcoming pre-testing of the Aquamark3 benchmark. We were lucky enough to break the AM3 world record with 593932 points, beating the previous mark (and very good record btw) by nearly 8000 points.

We used the following system for the record:

• 4770K CPU on LN2 cooling
• ASUS 980X Strix GPU on stock cooling
• Gigabyte Z97X SOC Force motherboard
• Patriot 2400 MHz PSC memory on LN2 cooling
• EK SF3D heat spreaders on the ram
• Corsair AX1500i

We will have another crack at this soon and see if we can sneak up to the 600,000 mark
http://hwbot.org/submission/2676834_teamau_aquamark_geforce_gtx_980_593932_marks

pro/James

GIGABYTE X99 SOC FORCE Review by JJJC

GIGABYTE are now renowned for their overclocking series of boards that manage not only to appeal to the extreme overclocker, but also the serious gamer or power user. The Z87 and Z97 boards managed to achieve this, and now for the first time since X58 the OC line-up has come back to an X chipset, Intel’s “main” platform, X99.

The board comes package in a nice and large premium box, as often seen in GIGABYTE’S top tier boards.

The back of the board features a nice outline on the features of the board, of which there are many. This is certainly no stripped back bare bones board.

LOL Bill Gates counts to 10!

LEGIT!~

GIGABYTE X99 OC Guide (by sofos1990)

Sofos1990 from Gigabyte OC Lab team did a nice X99 OC guide. We wanted to share it in full.

…

With every new line up of motherboards from GIGABYTE, an OC Guide is made to help the users push the stock limits of their systems. X99 series is no exception to this rule. Coming straight from the OC Lab, here is the GIGABYTE X99-OC Guide made by the famous Soffos1990.
 

Features

 

OC PCIe Switch:

Allows the user to disable individual PCI-E slots. This is especially useful for PCIe diagnostic when it is difficult to remove the PCIe cards with cooling apparatus installed on. Also, you will notice that there are 4 LED lights, one for each PCI-E slot. If the PCIe card installed in the slot is working without a problem, then the LEDs stays on.

 

OC Ignition:

Provides power to DIMMs slots, PCIe slots and peripheral devices even when the system is off. This feature is a GIGABYTE exclusive and provides many hidden benefits to users. First of all you can test not only the PSU to make sure it properly works, but also any voltage modifications on your graphics cards, water cooling systems, case mods and fans (Virtually anything that requires the board or PSU to provide power to can be engaged). It is especially useful during cold bug situations when you need a fan to run 24/7 to keep condensation at bay. It also can be used to provide continuous power to the PCIe/PCI based RAM cards that lose memory when they are powered off.

 

AMD R9 390X to feature new HBM memory to replace GDDR5, 9x faster

WCCFTech website posted an article saying that they got some leaks from an AMD presentation in which the manufacturer discusses a new memory standard they are working on incorporating with new graphics cards. It’s up to 9x faster than GDDR5 apparently. Very interesting, as are some of the technical specs below.

Windows 10, anyone try it out yet?

Soooooooooo, Windows 10 is out in beta. Microsoft is providing downloads (tech preview).

I’m about to install it on a test machine to see what it’s all about.

Download link for ISOs is here.

Check out the video about it all!

Who’s excited?

HWBOT showing off Revision 6, overclocking moving to esports?!?

We noticed HWBOT is working towards a revision 6 and have discussed some details about it on the website.

More details over at HWBOT, seems to be taking an esports theme. Let’s see what they can do with this.

Catzilla launched a new 1.3 version, check it out!

Gaming benchmark Catzilla has been updated by the software developer Allbenchmark. Latest version 1.3 has also updated GPU support for some AMD and NVIDIA graphics cards.

Make sure you download a copy and try it out, here is a link: http://www.catzilla.com/download/finish/1-download/66-gigabyte-catzilla-v1-3

Here are the updates posted on ALLBenchmark.com page:

• correct detection of the latest graphics cards and processors (NVIDIA GeForce GTX 745, NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN Z, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 870, 880...)
• Added support of AMD Carrizo
• Added caching of GPU I2C devices to speed-up the scan process
• Added support of more NVIDIA GM107 and GM108 models
• and many more...

Hardware Asylum podcast from Computex OC gathering

Have you guys heard of Hardware Asylum? They have a pretty interesting podcast that covers overclocking and tech in general. Check out the episode from Taipei during Computex 2014

Overclocking Discussions Recorded Live in Taipei

Click on image to listen to podcast

Show Notes

Dennis has been attending Computex since 2003 and has watched the show slowly morph into something a little strange.  Not only has the show become more commercial but many vendors have gone to great lengths to attract visitors to their booth.  Sometimes this effort makes moments memorable and other times, not so much.  One of the hot topics at Computex 2014 is live overclocking including three professional competitions and at least six other independent overclocking demonstrations.

To help talking about the overclocking scene during Computex Dennis pulled in two special guests, Massman from HWBOT and Trouffman from Overclocking TV. 

Related Links:
Vivi`s Unigine Heaven - Xtreme Preset score
Overclocking TV
Computex 2014 HWBOT OC Gathering

Flashback Friday, Adelaide’s Reloaded LAN 2010 with TeamAU

This week we have a look at one of Adelaide’s iconic LANs which stopped operating back in 2011. TeamAU guys used to attend every year and bring some LN2 joy to Adelaidians every year. Fun times, check it out!

Flashback Friday, TeamAU on ABC Good Game TV program talking about overclocking

Back in 2007 TeamAU attended ABC Good Game studios to record a series of overclocking related programs. Dinos22 covered watercooling, Kayl covered phase change cooling and SLI_Dog covered subzero cooling.

We also tried to break some records in the last episode. It was an Australia frequency record as global frequency way out of reach for such a short amount of time we had.

Here are all 4 episodes for you to check out!

Flashback Friday, GOOC 2009 with deanzo and dinos22

After our first taste of a major global OC competition, deanzo & dinos22 made it out of the Australian qualifying rounds as the top 2 overclockers. Regional was held in Thailand and what a great experience that was! We ended up winning the regional. It was a pretty once sided affair but we did slip up on a bonus stage where Nick Shih grabbed the bonus prize.

Anyway, we were through to yet another global final and faced off against a smaller group of OCers compared to 2008. The comp was a controversial one where Fugger and Vapor were suspected of using mipmap tweak (which was never allowed in any contest nor HWBOT) in their 3D stage after everyone analysed their GPU/CPU clock frequencies and frames but it was already too late to do anything about it so it remained unquestioned.

GOOC 2009 Regional – Pan Asia (Thailand)

GOOC 2009 Final in Taiwan

Flashback Friday, dinos22 & deanzo compete at MOA 2009

Dinos22 pulled his camera out to record some of the great memories from Beijing’s MOA 2009 grand final. TeamAU were represented by deanzo and dinos22. We did alright in the first round, 3rd fastest wprime but failed in 3D stage pretty bad.

It was a good experience and I really enjoyed MSI’s hospitality and the sightseeing in Beijing as well as meeting some of the legends of overclocking for the first and second times. Always fun.

dinos22

Flashback Friday, dinos22 does an overclocking training video for ALTECH

ALTECH Distribution asked dinos22 for his help to train their staff in liquid nitrogen overclocking back in 2008 and what resulted was a step by step video on how to use liquid nitrogen. Check it out!

Flashback Friday, dinos22 overclocks Nvidia 790i Ultra and E8500 on single stage

Many moons ago I used to be a beta tester for Nvidia and had a lot of fun playing with some of the latest and greatest hardware months before official release. Nvidia had a pretty poor relationship with Intel so 790i ended up being the last of the motherboard chipsets which was a shame as they were starting to get a bit better. Most people probably don’t realise but Nvidia was the first to fix the FSB wall that Intel chipset at the time had due to some of my involvement buying some of the world’s best FSB chips from various overclockers including OPB (Onepagebook) to try test and push past what we were able to do on Intel platform at the time.

Fun times, Nvidia 790i Ultra motherboard with E8500 Wolfdale CPU on single stage with Corsair Dominators and 8800GT. Fun fun fun

dinos22

The Overclocker Issue #30 is out. Best OC mag you will ever read, sub!!!

Neo from The Overclocker Magazine has been a busy bee and put together a stunning issue for everyone to check out. Computex is usually a time when things are jam packed with technology and this mag takes the tech-deliciousness to a new level. Make sure you check it out here and subscribe!

It’s free!!!!!!!

Flashback Friday, Gigabyte Overclocking Masters 2007 Australia

Yay another Friday flashback boys and girls. This is a cracker from 2007. It was treated by Gigabyte as the trial to GOOC (Gigabyte Open Overclocking Championship) which ended up being help globally in 2008.

Atomic Magazine was the host, the place that helped TeamAU kick off the team. Josh (moloko) worked at Atomic as a writer at the time. He also competed in the comp along with dinos22, youngpro and Kayl.

It was an even held in a bar overlooking Darling Harbour in Sydney. We used dry ice but forgot to bring acetone so we experimented with various alcoholic drinks with high alcohol content and nail polish remover which was all a bit of a fail but we still cracked on. Dinos22 took out both 1M SuperPI and 3DMARK06 stages to take the comp. Youngpro was close second while moloko was third. Kayl had a few issues with his setup so he entertained swallowing dry ice pellets and drinking ridiculous amounts of beer LOL.

That was an awesome event, beer, overclocking and general geekness all round lol

TeamAU shows 4000 MHz G.Skill memory on air cooling

TeamAU have partnered with G.Skill and Gigabyte to show how easy it is to achieve 4000 MHz memory clock with G.Skill 3100 MHz modules and the Gigabyte SOC Force LN2 edition.

In this video the CPU is on liquid nitrogen as the integrated memory controller needs colder temperatures to support this high memory clock, however the memory is on stock standard air cooling.

Only 12 months ago 4000 MHz was the memory frequency overall world record, all that has changed is the Z98 chipset and higher quality bins of Hynix MFR memory.

Blast from the past, TeamAU guys compete in GOOC2009 Aussie finals!

Here’s a blast from the past. Back in 2009, Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) did a TV program about overclocking and followed dinos22 in his journey to qualify for GOOC 2009 (Gigabyte Open Overclocking Championship).

The awesome part was seeing all the other competitors were from TeamAU. T_M, Deanzo, bob(nz) and dinos22 were the four guys that made it to the finals. Dinos22 won the final and chose Deanzo as his partner in crime to compete at the regional final in Thailand.

Computex 2014 videos with TeamAU

Here are a few more videos from Computex 2014 from the G.Skill world record stage and TeamAU

pro and elmor pre-testing the 4-way crossfire 290X setup


pro and Hiwa talk with Newegg TV about the G.Skill world record stage


pro explains extreme overclocking with Newegg TV

GIGABYTE shows off OC lab and Z97 development in coop with TeamAU

GIGABYTE just released a video from April’s bench session in which TeamAU guys (dinos22, youngpro and SniperOz) helped break all the legacy 3D world records on the new Z97X-SOC Force motherboards. Check it out!

Overclocking TV interviews SniperOz and dinos22 @HWBOT gathering

OverclockingTV guys have interviewed SniperOz and dinos22 at HWBOT’s Computex gathering where some of world’s best overclockers gathered after Computex 2014 to enjoy each other’s company and do some chillaxed clocking.

 

SniperOz

 

 

dinos22

 

TeamAU destroy 3DMark Vantage and FireStrike-E records

Youngpro was was invited for the 4th successive year to overclock on the G.Skill booth. G.Skill has established a reputation as having the most impressive overclocking booth and this year was no different.

This year we had a specific target; To grab the 2 records we were missing, 3DMark Vantage and 3Dmark Firestrike Extreme. 

Records fall live on stage

Elmor and Coolice from ASUS teamed up with pro to create a new 3DMark Vantage world record live on the G.Skill stage.

3DMark Vantage 99045

4 ASUS R9 290X cards at 1385 MHz core, liquid nitrogen cooled

ASUS X79 Rampage Black Edition

G.Skill TridentX 2666C10 memory

G.Skill SSD

Antec HCP 1200 power supplies

The end result was over 99,000 in 3DMark Vantage and a new world record. Equally as impressive was just over 24,000 in 3DMark Firestrike, only 18 points behind the record at the time.

During Firestrike we were also able to extract 1445 MHz from the graphics cards, very crazy clocks for the AMD 290X cards in 4-way.

The rag continues...

After the Computex week finished we attended the HWBOT Computex Gathering event, where the "rag" continued.

TeamAU's own pro and SniperOZ teamed up with 8Pack and Coolice to smash the 3DMark Firestrike Extreme record on livestream. This took 2 days solid work, from individually testing the cards, to slowly building them up in a 4-way configuration, the end result was magic.

K|NGP|N and Galaxy had both broken the record earlier in the week made which made it even more special. A very proud moment for all of us, this was the only 3D record we didn't hold.

3DMark Firestrike Extreme 25300 Marks

4x ASUS Matrix 780TI cards at 1700 MHz core, 2000MHz memory

Der8auer raptor slim GPU pots, liquid nitrogen cooled - The best GPU slims on the market

ASUS X79 Rampage Black Edition

G.Skill TridentX 2666C10 memory

G.Skill SSD

Antec HCP 1300 power supplies

Big shout outs to Coolice, without his consistent advice and support this score would never be possible.

The whole session was captured on livestream by Overclocking-TV, you can catch the entire 6 hours of footage here, the magic happens in the last hour or so. Click the image below to view the stream.

As of this moment TeamAU currently holds all the 3D global records, now we can rest!

Day 2 @Computex 2014, we're making it rain

TeamAU was at Intel's "Unleash the beast" OC contest. Dinos22 was with GIGABYTE and JJJC was with EVGA. Both of the guys walked away with cash prizes and a bag of fun. Dino made it rain!

Handy Gigabyte Z97 benching software upload

Hey guys,

I figured I’d put up an upload of some handy sofware/drives/apps for benching the new Gigabyte Z97 platform on Windows XP and Win 7/8.

Here’s what’s uploaded, click on the link to download.

Kids react to old computers! This is brilliant, check it out hahah

OCAU Z97 comp is over, winners announced

I wanted to congratulate all the competition winners from the recent Z97 OC comp on OCAU forum (Overclockers Australia). GIGABYTE sponsored the competition with all top 3 prizes being Z97X-SOC Force and a participation prize (Z87X-OC).

This competition was based on 3 tests:

• Stage 1 Catzilla - 576P - CCC (crap card challenge) GT610 test
• Stage 2 Superpi 8M - 4GHz Cap 
• Stage 3 3dmark01 - CCC (crap card challenge) GT610

The competition was not that straight forward. Contestants had to learn how to solder modifications on a really cheap graphics card (Nvidia GT610) and see if they can extract more MHz out of the GPU via mods and various cooling techniques. The modified card could be used on two different stages and it proved to be more than a handful. In the end, Robbo2 was the overall winner with the first place in Catzilla, while Newlife managed to snag the 3DMark01 round and bullants took the 8M superpi but has not contested the rest of the stages. GT610 GPUs operate at 810Mhz stock core and 600MHz memory. There guys were able to run them at 1400MHz core and over 900MHz memory for good measure!

• Robbo2 @ 26Points - First Place Winner
• Newlife @ 18 Points - Second Place Winner
• T8y @ 16 Points - Third Place Winner

Participation prize (Z87X-OC) went to a new Aussie rookie overclocker Paulie_AU who put a fantastic effort and is one of our future overclocking hopes with some great performances in HWBOT Rookie Rumble cups. Good luck Paulie on the next stage of that competition!

I’ll leave you with some memorable images from the competition itself which you can check out at OCAU forum.