DDR4 Memory Clock Reaches New High, GIGABYTE X99-SOC Champion rocks!

Yes, the GIGABYTE X99-SOC Champion is really making a strong debut. With it’s unique design, the new board is already building itself quite the resume. A few weeks ago, a Secret OC session took place at the GIGABYTE HQ where a total of 9 World Records, 22 Global Firsts and 25 Hardware Firsts were accomplished by 7 of the world’s finest overclockers, all using the X99-SOC Champion. Within these achievements, an impressive performance was submitted by HiCookie with the Highest DDR4 Memory Clock at 4014.6 MHz!!

Well ladies and gentlemen, our famous overclocker just can’t be stopped! Yesterday, HiCookie with the help of Jake and Sofos1990 managed to push this limit to an incredible 4184MHz using Corsair’s Dominator Platinum memory modules.  Now THAT'’s a performance!

http://hwbot.org/submission/2715533

Since Z97-Force LN2’s memory record, a new standard has been establish to claim top memory scores. So we took out the big hardware, a very expensive oscilloscope, to  prove that no cheating took place. Here is the video:

And to top it off, today HWBOT.org published their December achievement review. Taking the first place for this month's most used Motherboards for WR and GFP at HWBOT (… drum roll …) The GIGABYTE X99-SOC Champion!! Here is the press release: http://hwbot.org/news/11725

I don’t know for you guys, but I’m looking forward to 2015 to see what the overclocking world and the GIGABYTE X99-SOC Champion has to surprise us!

HWBOT Country Cup is over, Australia wins again!

HWBOT held another crazy Country Cup tournament or “World Cup of overclocking” as they refer to it and it another stunner in 2014. Australia has successfully defended their title this year in a convincing style, winning all 5 stages. France, Indonesia and Romania made sure that at least some of the stages went down to the wire and no doubt will set precedent for another huge clash in 2015.

Let’s talk about this competition a little for those of you who were not aware there was “an overclocking World Cup” on and how you could get involved next year.

First of all for any of you unfamiliar with the biggest and best known overclocking competition website in the world, make sure you visit HWBOT.ORG. For overclockers, this is a familiar website but perhaps for non-overclockers you may remember the recent articles on ban of Windows 8 for competitive purposes which was largely the result of the HWBOT admin team finding some loopholes in the latest Microsoft OS which have since been patched in most cases. Yes, that’s right, this is the gathering place of some of the world’s biggest and best geeks AND nerds who share a passion for overclocking. It’s become a big community in the last 10 years so definitely something to check out in your free time!

Here is a little more about what County Cup is about from HWBOT Country Cup competition page. The most important thing to remember here is that it is a country wide competition and it is practically impossible to compete without a large community contributing to the results. Overclockers with little experience as well as pro clockers combined efforts to represent their countries and it is important to note that it really is for everyone.

The stages were reduced and somewhat simplified this year. There was an interesting stage only reserved for rookies which were limited in cooling to normal cooling (air and water cooling). Another new addition was the surprise stage which was announced in the last 24 hours. Last stage was awarded a lot of points and could have really made a big impact on final results but didn’t to the relief of all the top runners.

Prizes were pretty generous even though overclockers’ primary motivation was to represent their nations. Australia and France battled it out on majority of stages. It was a test of skills, dedication, organisation and perseverance which a more experienced Australian team was able to triumph with a strong lineup of pro overclockers and rookies combined. Indonesia was also showing some great fighting spirit in later rounds as was the unlucky Romania which lost its third place in the final stage with Indonesia shooting past them with their final Stage 5 submission.

Congratulations to all and all the best to Australia on an emphatic win!

Here are some of our score highlights this year. Considering Australians really did such a great overall job we’ve pulled out some of their best scores to show you!

• Stage 1: SniperOZ from Australia topped the Futuremark 3DMARK Firestrike Ultra score with a GIGABYTE X99 SOC Force and a heavily modified and LN2 cooled GIGABYTE G1 Gaming GTX980 graphics card.

Score link: http://hwbot.org/submission/2700364_sniperoz_3dmark___fire_strike_ultra_geforce_gtx_980_5127_marks

• Stage 2: Robbo2 from Australia with a monster XTU score with GIGABYTE Z97X-SOC Force and 4770K. CPU was clocked to 6GHz+!

Score link: http://hwbot.org/submission/2701218_robbo2_xtu_core_i7_4770k_1505_marks

• Stage 3: PHO5PHORIC from Australia with a freak 3DMARK ICE STORM score to help Australia top the charts. He overclocked his GIGABYTE Z97X-SOC Force and 4790K CPU to a crazy 5148MHz

Score link: http://hwbot.org/submission/2703275_pho5ph0ric_3dmark___ice_storm_geforce_gtx_760_242891_marks

• Stage 4: Zeropluszero with the fastest AMD SuperPI PC with a huge score on a little Gigabyte F2A88XN-WIFI and A10-7850K CPU

Score link: http://hwbot.org/submission/2705502_zeropluszero_superpi___32m_a10_7850k_12min_17sec_437ms

Hardware Asylum podcast on evolution of overclocking motherboards

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 and pro level overclocker or 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.

GIGABYTE has been the leading market innovator in the dedicated overclocking motherboards and it’s good to see someone put it into perspective (i.e. overclocking boards existed well before our first series but there was no dedicated product serious which focuses features specifically towards enthusiasts and overclocking until GIGABYTE started it all some 5-6 years ago).

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)

 

Hardware Asylum have little experience and information on our upcoming X99 SOC Champion board just yet but let’s just say that it will be continuing the legacy X58A-OC started. Incidentally, TeamAU broke another world record with this board today, the 3DMARK11. Here is the score and what this board has been used to achieve so far. There is going to be a heck of a lot more to come, stay tuned!

X99-SOC Champion – Let it Rain Records

Along with our in-house overclockers HiCookie, Sofos and Dino, we invited 4 of the world’s best overclockers to the GIGABYTE OC lab to test the new X99-SOC Champion motherboard and see if it really lives up to its Champion name.

The results are impressive; after 7 days of almost nonstop benching, the team of elite overclockers achieved a total of 9 World Records, 22 Global Firsts and 25 Hardware Firsts all using the X99-SOC Champion. On top of that, HiCookie also managed to reach the Highest DDR4 Memory Clock Worldwide Overall Ranking for X99 motherboards with a frequency of 4014.6 MHz (Quad Channel).

Here is the summary:

9 World Records (Also Global 1st and Hardware 1st) 3DMARK11 – Entry 3DMARK11 – Performance 3DMARK Vantage 3DMARK Fire Strike 3DMARK Fire Strike Extreme 3DMARK - CLOUD GATE 3DMARK - ICE STORM 3DMARK - ICE STORM EXTREME XTU

13 Global Firsts (Also Hardware 1st) 3DMARK11 – Performance 1xGPU 3DMARK11 – Performance 2x GPU 3DMARK11 – Performance 3XGPU 3DMARK Vantage 3XGPU 3DMARK Fire Strike 2xGPU 3DMARK Fire Strike 3xGPU 3DMARK Fire Strike Extreme 2xGPU 3DMARK Fire Strike Extreme 3xGPU 3DMARK - SKY DIVER 2xGPU 3DMARK - FIRE STRIKE ULTRA 2xGPU 3DMARK - ICE STORM 2xGPU CATZILLA - 720P 2xGPU CATZILLA – 1440P 2xGPU

2 Hardware 1sts DDR4 Memory Clock 4014.6 MHz SuperPI - 32M Core i7 5960X (5min 9sec 110ms)

1 Top X99 Reference Clock 182.49 MHz

X99-SOC Champion Achievements at GIGABYTE Secret OC, December 2014

3DMARK11 – Entryhttp://hwbot.org/submission/2693895 · World Record · Global First Place (3xGPU) · Hardware First Place (3x GEFORCE GTX 980)	3DMARK11 – Performancehttp://hwbot.org/submission/2692880 · Global First Place (1xGPU) · Hardware First Place (1x GEFORCE GTX 980)
3DMARK11 – Performance http://hwbot.org/submission/2693244 · Global First Place (2xGPU) · Hardware First Place (2x GEFORCE GTX 980)	3DMARK11 – Performance http://hwbot.org/submission/2693883 · Global First Place (3x GPU) · Hardware First Place (3x GEFORCE GTX 980)
3DMARK11 – Performance http://hwbot.org/submission/2691701 · World Record · Global First Place (4x GPU) · Hardware First Place (4x GEFORCE GTX 980)	3DMARK Vantage http://hwbot.org/submission/2693871 · Global First Place (3x GPU) · Hardware First Place (3x GEFORCE GTX 980)
3DMARK Vantage http://hwbot.org/submission/2691694 · World Record · Global First Place (4x GPU) · Hardware First Place (4x GEFORCE GTX 980)	3DMARK Fire Strike http://hwbot.org/submission/2693243 · Global First Place (2x GPU) · Hardware First Place (2x GEFORCE GTX 980)
3DMARK Fire Strike http://hwbot.org/submission/2693861 · Global First Place (3x GPU) · Hardware First Place (3x GEFORCE GTX 980)	3DMARK Fire Strike http://hwbot.org/submission/2692803 · World Record · Global First Place (4x GPU) · Hardware First Place (4x GEFORCE GTX 980)
3DMARK Fire Strike Extreme http://hwbot.org/submission/2693099 · Global First Place (2x GPU) · Hardware First Place (2x GEFORCE GTX 980)	3DMARK Fire Strike Extreme http://hwbot.org/submission/2693863 · Global First Place (3x GPU) · Hardware First Place (3x GEFORCE GTX 980)
3DMARK Fire Strike Extreme http://hwbot.org/submission/2691696 · World Record · Global First Place (4x GPU) · Hardware First Place (4x GEFORCE GTX 980)	3DMARK - SKY DIVER http://hwbot.org/submission/2693925 · Global First Place (2x GPU) · Hardware First Place (2x GEFORCE GTX 980)
3DMARK - CLOUD GATE http://hwbot.org/submission/2693252 · World Record · Global First Place (2x GPU) · Hardware First Place (2x GEFORCE GTX 980)	3DMARK - FIRE STRIKE ULTRA http://hwbot.org/submission/2693101 · Global First Place (2x GPU) · Hardware First Place (2x GEFORCE GTX 980)
3DMARK - ICE STORM http://hwbot.org/submission/2693261 · Global First Place (2x GPU) · Hardware First Place (2x GEFORCE GTX 980)	3DMARK - ICE STORM http://hwbot.org/submission/2693899 · World Record · Global First Place (3x GPU) · Hardware First Place (3x GEFORCE GTX 980)
3DMARK - ICE STORM EXTREME http://hwbot.org/submission/2693278 · World Record · Global First Place (2x GPU) · Hardware First Place (2x GEFORCE GTX 980)	CATZILLA - 720P http://hwbot.org/submission/2693939 · Global First Place (2x GPU) · Hardware First Place (2x GEFORCE GTX 980)
CATZILLA – 1440P http://hwbot.org/submission/2693937 · Global First Place (2x GPU) · Hardware First Place (2x GEFORCE GTX 980)	XTU http://hwbot.org/submission/2691705 · World Record · Global First Place (8 Cores) · Hardware First Place (Core i7 5960X)
Memory Clock – DDR4 http://hwbot.org/submission/2693948 · Hardware First Place (DDR4 SDRAM)	SuperPI - 32M http://hwbot.org/submission/2691722 · Hardware First Place (Core i7 5960X)
REFERENCE CLOCK http://hwbot.org/submission/2695651 · Hardware First Place (X99-SOC Champion)

Z97X-SOC Force Achievements at GIGABYTE Secret OC, December 2014

3DMARK05http://hwbot.org/submission/2695712 · World Record · Global First Place (1x GPU) · Hardware First Place (GEFORCE GTX 980)	3DMARK06 http://hwbot.org/submission/2695711 · World Record · Global First Place (1x GPU) · Hardware First Place (GEFORCE GTX 980)
3DMARK06 http://hwbot.org/submission/2695093 · Global First Place (2x GPU) · Hardware First Place (2x GEFORCE GTX 580)	PIFast http://hwbot.org/submission/2678749 · World Record · Global First Place · Hardware First Place (Core i7 4770K)
Aquamark http://hwbot.org/submission/2676834 · World Record · Global First Place (1x GPU) · Hardware First Place (GEFORCE GTX 980)

GIGABYTE Goodbye 2014 OC Challenge

This is it guys, the last OC competition of 2014!  So get ready, tune your GIGBAYTE Z97 motherboards and run for the best performance. Here are the details for this challenge. You can also visit the competition page on HWBOT for all the rules and tracking of all scores.

http://oc-esports.io/#/round/gbt_goodbye2014_challenge

Contest Stages

Stage 1: XTU

• Highest score wins
• CPU Speed must be set at 4.5GHz (4497MHz to 4503MHz)
• Must submit before midnight on Sunday, December 21^st (following the UTC+08:00 time zone)

Stage 2: Highest CPUz

• Highest score wins
• Must submit before midnight on Sunday, December 28^th (following the UTC+08:00 time zone)

Stage 3: Super Pi 32m

• The target score is to be revealed on HWBOT on Monday, December 29^th
• Submission will be open for 24 hours on Sunday, January 4^th 2015 (following the UTC+08:00 time zone).

 

Contest Prizes

Stage 1 ~ 3

• 1^st place of each stage will receive a Z97X-SOC FORCE LN2 motherboard

Overall Challenge

• 1^st place: $1,000 USD
• 2^nd place: $600 USD
• 3^rd place: $400 USD

Lucky draw (To be held at the end of the competition)

• 3 randomly selected participants will receive an X99M-Gaming 5 motherboard

$2,000 USD	X99M-Gaming 5	Z97X-SOC FORCE LN2

The GIGABYTE Goodbye 2014 OC Challenge will run from December 5^th 2014 until January 4^th 2015, midnight (UTC+08:00).

Good luck to all!

Global BRIX Giveaway Winner

Earlier this year we posted a great story of how a BRIX Pro was used for the automation/remote control process of a trimaran, part of a sailing promo run by Vodafone NZ. (here)
After reviewing all submissions, we are happy to announce that Ryan Paul Hooper won! The winner takes home a GIGABYTE BXBR-1900 Brix PC , a 4GB DDR3L memory module and a Force LX 128GB SSD drive from Corsair. Congratulations Ryan and thanks to everyone for your participation!
You can review all other submissions here: https://www.facebook.com/GIGABYTE/posts/10152820275576948

Project Addison, SlipperySkip’s Compact Gaming PC feat. GIGABYTE mobo and VGA

In terms of retro and most unique looking case mod, it’s hard to find more skilled than Jeffrey Stephenson’s hands. Also known as SlipperySkip, Jeffrey started a new project this year which featured a GIGABYTE Z97N-WIFI Mini-ITX motherboard and a Mini-ITX sized GeForce GTX 970 graphics card. With this kind of hardware, it was easy for him to achieve his project goal which was “to design and build a powerful as possible gaming rig into a small as possible enclosure”. 
This project was inspired by the Canadian radio design from the 1940s, the Addison Model 2
Here are the full specs of this unique build:
Intel Core i7-4770K CPU
Gigabyte Z97N-WiFi Mini-ITX Motherboard
Gigabyte GTX970 Video Card
HyperX Fury 8GB System Memory
HyperX 480GB SSD
Silverstone 450W Modular SFX Power Supply
All-In-One Generic 120mm water cooling system
You can see the full work log on Slippery Skip’s forum here: http://slipperyskip.com/forum/index.php?topic=7.30
To skip to the final picture of the project, here is Jeffrey Stephenson’s website: http://slipperyskip.com/page41.html
Nice work Jeffrey!