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!

TeamAU refresh the DX11 Heaven Unigine Global World Record

Ever since Haswell platform and AMD R9 290X GPUs came out DX11 Unigine was going to be one of the big 3D WR targets for the overclockers at HWBOT.ORG and TeamAU from Australia has been setting the pace helped with some nice overclocking from a few other countries including UK (8pack) and USA (steponz) using GIGABYTE Z87X-OC and Z87X-OC Force as the boards of choice and AMD R9 290X in 3WAY and 4WAY.

The scoreboard lit up big today with a monster score from the team down under pushing the former WR set by Steponz and dinos22 during GIGABYTE booth OC session at CES2014 by a whopping 200 points to fall just shy of the all illusive 9,000 points.

Jump over to HWBOT for comments and full details.

Here's Cookie! Breaks the Heaven DX11 1xGPU WR on Z87X-OC

Some news from HWBOT.ORG just in with HiCookie taking out the single card Unigine Heaven world record using the GIGABYTE Z87X-OC and R9 290X GPU.

Just so you know, the following keys are fading away on my keyboard: R, E, C, O, and D. Why? Because there are so many Orceds to write about. Just now, Hicookie from Gigabyte has submitted the WR for 1xGPU Heaven DX11. He clocked the Radeon R9 290X to 1355/1725 MHz and beat Sofos1990 by almost 40 points. He was struggling with the efficiency for a very long time. In fact, that's what prevented him from taking the record at the CES'14 overclocking event.

The record is set with an interesting combination of hardware too. At least, interesting for the companies supporting the development of HWBOT. Hicookie used an Intel CPU, GIGABYTE motherboard and graphics card, an SSD and memory from G.SKILL and an Enermax power supply. Cool! But of course all records are created equally and we congratulated 8 Pack when breaking records on non-partner hardware as much as we congratulate Hicookie today! ;-).

World Records Tumble During Las Vegas OC Session

You may well be aware of that GIGABYTE held an Overclocking contest during CES a few weeks ago, we called it the CES 2014 Extreme OC Event – seemed a good name for it. Anyway, one thing you may not be aware of is that during some pretty grueling and lengthy benching sessions, we saw three world record tumble; Cinebench 11.5, Uningine Heaven and 3DMark06. Check out the details below.

Cinebench 11.5 – CPU 4x World Record - Vivi

http://hwbot.org/submission/2479643

• Score: 14.03 points
• GIGABYTE Z87X-OC motherboard
• Intel 4770K CPU running 6.4GHz on liquid nitrogen
• G.SKILL Pi series F3-17600CL7 memory running at 2400MHz 8-11-7-25-1T
• GTX780Ti GPU running at 1550MHz on liquid nitrogen
• Enermax MaxRevo 1500 W PSU

Unigine Heaven Extreme – GPU x4 Word Record - STEPONZ

http://hwbot.org/submission/2479579

• Score: 8710.91 DX11 marks
• GIGABYTE Z87X-OC Force motherboard
• Intel 4770K CPU
• GIGABYTE 4x R9 290X GPUs
• G.SKILL 2666C10 memory
• Enermax MaxRevo 1500W PSU

3DMark06 – GPU x1 World Record – Vivi

http://hwbot.org/submission/2480831

• Score: 56429 marks
• GIGABYTE Z87X-OC motherboard
• Intel 4770K CPU
• GeForce GTX 780Ti
• G.SKILL Pi series memory
• Enermax MaxRevo 1500 W PSU

Official Press Release here.

Facebook Retro OC Photo Contest Winner Announced!

To tie-in with our Retro OC contest on HWBOT, last week we kicked off a Facebook competition giving all our fans and followers the chance to join in the fun and get as ‘Retro’ as possible – The Retro OC Photo contest. The idea was pretty simple; submit a photo (or Photoshopped image) of yourself looking ‘Retro’ holding a GIGABYTE motherboard (or product box) and you’d then have the chance to win a top-end GIGABYTE Z87X-UD7 TH motherboard.

After much discussion and deliberation here at GIGABYTE HQ in Taipei, we selected the above photo submission from Charles Terell from Virginia, US. Charles’ photo ticked all the boxes as far as I’m concerned – a clearly Funk-inspired scene with Charles himself in an alien spaceship sporting crazy silver high-heeled boots holding two GIGABYTE boards. The caption ‘Supergroovalistic GigabyteMotherboardication’ tops it off very nicely. Good work Charles!

Here are some other photo submissions that also came close.

 

A huge thanks to everyone who took part… To check all photos on our Facebook page click here: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151828775482120.1073741838.209090107119&type=1&l=da888aa399

More info about the GIGABYTE Z87X-UD7 TH board here.

CES 2014: JayTwoCents Checks Out the GIGABYTE BRIX Pro

If you’ve never heard of this guy, JayTwoCents is a technology videoblogger that likes to take a more humorous angle on the gadgets, devices and technologies that he covers. In the video below, Jay talks to our man Colin about our new addition to the BRIX family, the BRIX Pro, as well as an overview of the series as a whole.


 GIGABYTE BRIX Pro product page