“ S AT UR D AY WA S T HE M A IN E V E N T, W HI C H
S AW V I S I TO R S QUE UIN G UP O U T S ID E T HE
E N T R A N C E W E L L B E FO R E O P E NIN G T IME .”
simulates high-end gaming. GPUPI
1B is essentially SuperPI for graphics
cards, but it calculates PI to a billion
decimal places instead of the 1 million
or 32 million generally seen with
SuperPI for the host processor.
Each stage of the event would see
first place taking 50 points, second
place 48 points, third place 46 points
and so on, with each sequential
position scoring two points less than
the last with 12th place taking 28
points. If an overclocker could not
submit a score for a round no points
would be awarded.
In the event of a tie, 3DMark Time
Spy Extreme would be used as the
tiebreaker, with GPUPI 1B used as the
secondary tiebreaker if need be.
This roundup of benchmarks
tested the skill of the overclockers
in multiple ways, as no two of them
behaved the same way. Throughout
the four tests, the CPU, RAM and
graphics card would be pushed to
their absolute limits, as well as the
overclockers themselves.
Whereas Geekbench3 was all about
the CPU at a capped and relatively
easy frequency and GPUPI doesn’t
rely on CPU speed at all, the 3DMark
benchmarks are a completely different
playing field as you have to find the
maximum speed that both the CPU
and graphics card can achieve under
liquid nitrogen. Fortunately, only the
GPU score mattered, so focus was
primarily on reaching high GPU clock
frequencies rather than high CPU
clock frequencies.
Once the overclockers had insulated
their hardware and finished prepping it
was go time. On every bench there was
plenty of with hardware, liquid nitrogen
pots, multimeters, thermal probes and
meters, thermos flasks for pouring
the liquid nitrogen, hairdryers and
blowtorches to warm things up if they
got a bit too cold.
Judging was handled by three well
known and respected members of the
competitive overclocking community.
Pieter-Jan, commonly known as
PJ or Massman from HWBOT, the
Issue 43 | 2018 The OverClocker 15