Congratulations to Vivi from South Africa on No.1 HWBOT OC League ranking

We would like to congratulate Vivi from South Africa on his world No.1 ranking in the Overclockers League on HWBOT. This is an individual ranking league which has historically been the best benchmark on who the ultimate overclockers are in the world. Vivi has managed to finally concur the top spot after setting his sights on it for the last several months.

We’ve noticed a couple of huge overclocks from the young South African on posted HWBOT this weekend. The scores were multithreaded scores in nature based on based on HWBOT Prime and Wprime. The hardware used was Intel 4770K CPU and GIGABYTE Z87X-OC motherboard which have been Vivi’s “go to” hardware for numerous world records over the last year.

P.S. HWBOT does have other leagues which also attracts some of the biggest names in OC but they are primarily based on team scores and while individuals in Pro OC league do get rankings, it’s more about the team rather than a sole quest for an individual to attack a large number of benchmarks as is in The Overclockers League.

3DMARK03 global world record broken by TeamAU

I figured it was time to dust off the Gigabyte 7970SOC GPUs and Gigabyte Z87X-OC for some 3DMARK03 action today.

It probably wasn’t the smartest idea as it’s been getting pretty humid in Sydney and that means condensation all over the motherboard and VGAs pretty quickly but I used lots of fans LOL (and started browsing local sales site Gumtree for dehumidifiers while I was overclocking heheh).

 

Onto the fun part! I recently sourced an upgraded watercooling setup based on some sweet EK waterblocks and a quad waterclock bridge you see on top of the GPUs which connects all 4 GPU blocks very neatly.

On top of that, all I had to do is buy some new tubing (of course it had to be orange, OC colours FTW!), some Koolance QDC quick fittings and Bob was my uncle. Very flexible setup and now I can literally pull all 4 GPUs out in 10 seconds and check them or clean, dry, troubleshoot, etc etc. I must say that I would make sure to pay attention to the way you mount your GPUs as it is a little different to what I was used, so if you are upgrading from older style blocks make sure you double check your mounting. The older Swiftech, Dtek blocks I used to use had a different mounting mechanism with a GPU backplate which this one is simply mounting screws direct into the waterclock like a normal air cooler style mount. The older gear has no flexibility or performance that these have so it was a timely upgrade that is for sure!

Definitely go check out EK WBs!

Alright so the new 3DMARK03 global world record is at 293,827 points.

You can swing to HWBOT for result details and full spec.

 

dinos22

Wednesday laughs: Have you ever helped mum fix a PC over the phone? #lol

Have you ever had to help your mum fix a computer or anything tech related over the phone? Oh man does Ronny Chieng have a story for you! Ronny is a stand up comic and appeared on Sydney Comedy Festival, pretty funny guy and so true!!!

Warning: Some language, FUNNY!

 

Thanks to Sydney Comedy Festival FB page

Video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr84R1xi6Tg

AMD’s Mantle: The biggest innovation in gaming since DX 9 says Extremetech

There’s been a lot of talk recently about AMD’s latest technology and I find there are some valid opinions about why Mantle has some worrying trends for the GPU industry with some of the bad old habits creeping up to latest trends in GPU technological development. John Gillooly had a look at this topic in some detail in his article named “The seismic shift facing Nvidia and AMD”. John is a veteran IT/gaming/enthusiast journo that has been there and done that so to speak. It is concerning when someone with such a broadminded view and experience notices a change in the industry that could be detrimental to the end users long term.

That brings me to also mention an article Extremetech has put up recently in which they argue AMD Mantle is the biggest innovation in gaming since DX9 (DirectX 9) which is incidentally the sort of proprietary tech John’s article refers to. Is it really time to let go of DirectX and bypass it completely and develop API that will let games directly interact with GPUs? There probably is but should the big players push for open standard rather than proprietary tech? I think it’s probably in their interest judging by what happened in the past.

The idea behind AMD Mantle is pretty interesting, particularly for the under powered PCs as DirectX was more of an impediment as it created extra overhead in performance and decreased vital FPS so the systems that were used based on AMD Kaveri FM2+ gained the highest FPS when Mantle was enabled while more powerful Intel based system based on GIGABYTE Z87X-D3H and Intel 4770K saw smaller gains with single cards. Basically Mantle untapped the unused frames in a struggling AMD CPU based system by a larger margin.



There was a change once Extremetech ran crossfire and Intel 4770K was just exceptionally fast and was capable of minimising the bottleneck and had better results overall. This would probably change once a third or forth GPU was added in the mix and I’m sure once Mantle matures, people with 3/4way GPU systems and air/water cooled CPUs will be able to untap the heavy bottleneck modern GPUs have. Being early days there was also some mention of irregularities with graphics quality but I am sure a lot of it will get ironed out sooner or later.



Great tech, just wish it was pushed for open standard so that everyone can enjoy, not just people that purchase AMD based GPUs!

AVHUB took a liking to GIGABYTE’s OP-AMP sound implementation, check it out!

Jez Ford from AVHUB is the sort of guy his industry colleagues would point to when they think of an audiophile who can really put sound equipment to the test. That is exactly how I got ahold of Jez by asking a few guys in the industry. It was somewhat of an honour to meet Jez last year and put a PC together for him to test GIGABYTE’s Sniper 5 motherboard’s sound card and OP-AMP technology for that reason. I must say when you deal with someone who is so particular about what he does, it can be a little intimidating and does get the nerves rattled considering you are entering unmarked waters so to speak. Jez turned out to be a nice guy you could have a beer or ten at the local pub and was really intrigued by all the technology that motherboard manufacturers such as GIGABYTE develop these days.

Audiophiles are very particular about their hardware. You can see what I mean when you read the first two paragraphs of the article

'Killer Gaming Motherboard’ screams the packaging for the G1 Sniper5 from Gigabyte, Taiwan-based manufacturer of computer hardware.

Well that’s nice, but why come to an audio magazine with such computerware; why would we be interested?

I put together a rig with some spare parts I had in the lab which included the CoolerMaster HAF XB case and Seidon 240 water cooler running on GIGABYTE Sniper 5, Intel 4770K, Corsair Dominators and ForceGT SSD. The optional OP-AMP kit was also supplied which GIGABYTE sell separately so he can test various sound outputs and basically left it and asked for an honest review, no questions asked (as I always do). I got a call a few weeks later that the PC is ready to be picked up, the testing was done and review submitted to print, exciting! The print version of the article was to come out the following month and I eagerly waited for the mag to see what the man had to say about GIGABYTE’s sound tech. Jez thought it was impressive despite the reservations that linger from audio purists and integrated circuitries. Here are a couple of quotes

But it’s certainly worth connecting the stereo output to your hi-fi direct, so you can hear what the Gigabyte card can do with music. It proved rather impressive.

Our first listening notes show surprise at how little noise could be discerned from the output; it required absolute cranking to dangerously high levels before slight noise was audible, and even that might have been down to the lower-quality-than-usual cable and connectors we used to accommodate the minijack output rather than RCAs

What about this swapping out of different op amps? Hi-fi fans certainly love tweaking, but messing with the circuit boards? Scary! But in we went with the supplied plastic tweezers (see right), swapping out the original (Ti OPA2134PA) for the one extra op amp that comes with the board, an LM4562…………Three more were supplied in a Premium Upgrade Kit — a Burr-Brown OPA2111KP, Linear Technology’s LT1358CN8 and Analog Devices AD827 JNZ. We liked the Analog Devices chip’s slightly brighter more engaging sound too

Jump over to AVHUB for the full review and see what Jez Ford has to say in detail!