the Polish team, finishing only 6th,
whereas their main competitors
Greece and Indonesia took places 2
and 1. Rather surprisingly, Belgium
took 3rd place in the PCMark7
stage, one which was not loved by
many competitors. Statements like
“Seriously, hate it” and “This stage
will be complete fail” give you an
idea of how unloved this one was.
Hate or not, it was still a part of the
competition.
Although ending only 2nd in this
stage, the Greek team showed
why they are regarded as top
in the PCMark scene. Not only
did they smash the existing top
score, they did it on two different
platforms. Indonesia did very well
too (obviously) and won the stage
the same way Greece placed 1st
and 2nd in stage 1 through 4:
consistency.
Stages 5, based around the
Heaven DX9 benchmark, and
6 also brought along a couple
of interesting results. Take for
instance Xtreme Addicts’ mighty
impressive GTX 285 hitting clocks
all the way up to 1290/1550 or the
already mentioned top scoring
Stelaras hitting 8902 points in
PCMark7.
STAGE SEVEN: 3DMARK11
The highlight of this year’s Country
Cup competition was stage 7.
Only one submission per country
was required, but given the
difficulty of the stage limitation
(AMD CPU, no GPU limitation)
25 points were awarded to the
winning score. The HWBOT staff
tested this configuration a couple
of weeks before the competition
was announced and having
experienced the level of difficulty,
we were aware that this stage
was likely to be decisive for the
final ranking. After all, it wasn’t
just a matter of picking the right
hardware (Bulldozer or Thuban),
but also figuring out how to hit
top frequencies on the CPU core,
the CPU memory controller, the
memory as well as the graphics
cards, certainly no easy task.
Several teams did seem to
underestimate the challenge
involved with this stage. Greece,
for instance, submitted their only
12 The OverClocker Issue 18 | 2012
“Several teams did seem to
underestimate the challenge involved
with this stage. Greece, for instance,
submitted their only result in the last 5
minutes of the competition! Indonesia
as well as Poland suffered from
efficiency problems, causing them to
lose several hundred points...”
result in the last 5 minutes of the
competition! Indonesia as well as
Poland suffered from efficiency
problems, causing them to lose
several hundred points in the
benchmark. Nevertheless, the
three main contenders for the
Country Cup title put their cards
on the table, each running a full
LN2 4-Way SLI setup. The difficulty
of such a system setup cannot
be underestimated and even just
for attempting to run this kind of
configuration, they each deserve a
medal for bravery.
In the end, it was Poland which
took the win, hitting well over
6800MHz on an AMD Bulldozer with
4x GTX580 at 1050/1150. Indonesia
came close, with a 6600MHz CPU
and the graphics cards clocked
at a very solid 1150/1200. Greece
came in third with a CPU clocked
just below 6300MHz and the
four graphics cards running at
1100/1150, impressive to say the
least. Looking further down the
rankings, we spotted Hungary
running almost 6.9GHz on their FX8150 as well as a bunch of 3-Way
SLI configurations.
THE NAUGHTY ONES!
Before we conclude this write
up, let’s shed some light on a few
controversial issues which arose
during the competition.
• Deleting submissions – Due to
an internal problem related to
the distribution of the prizes,
one member of a team moved
the scores he submitted to the
competition to a different country.
However, since this happened after
the competition had been closed
(and final ranking was made), this
will have no effect on the final
ranking or prize distribution.
• Hardware sharing – In stage
four, one of the teams apparently
shared memory sticks across
submissions. Hardware sharing
is indeed not allowed, but the
HWBOT staff believes that it
wasn’t clear enough at the
start of the competition. The
memory clock stage revolved
around memory overclocking
using different platforms (not
memory itself), which might have
confused members. The staff
takes full responsibility for this
problem and will not remove the
submissions made in that stage.
The staff will use a different
approach in future competitions.
• X58A-OC mainboard – After the
competition finished, a member
noticed a strange relation
between the IMC and memory
clock for certain submissions in
stage 4. We looked into the issue
and the reported frequencies
seem legit. Further research is
necessary, but what the outcome
may be, the validations count for
this competition. More info: link.
END
With over 1,000 results submitted,
the HWBOT Country Cup 2011 is