HardwareZone Iron Tech 2008: Indonesia Semi-Finals

This article is also contributed by HWM Indonesia Editor, Martin Wijaya.

Introduction

If you've been following our coverage of our regional competitions in the Philippines and Malaysia closely, then you're probably curious to find out how the Indonesian leg of our Iron Tech 2008 semi-finals turned out and boy, you're in for a ride. Held over in Jakarta, Indonesia at the Mangga Dua Square on a balmy Saturday morning on the 20 Sep, the event was made possible thanks to our main sponsor, Micro-Star International (MSI) and our other partners (more information on our Iron Tech 2008 microsite) who have contributed the various hardware and software for the event. As usual, our contestants were given identical hardware and software from the same batch and these were randomly handed out to ensure everyone had a level playing field.

Similar to our other regional semi-finals, the top two winners of this event will advance to the grand finals held in Singapore to compete against the best of the region, so you're probably guessing that this would be a highly competitive event - which wasn't really the case as the contestants appeared to know each other pretty well and were spotted discussing strategies amongst themselves for the competition.

The Semi-Finalists

Our six contestants come from a wide range of backgrounds and occupations (including a dentist!) and they are:

• Afiat, a dentist and entrepreneur
• Raihan Fuadi, a student
• Hendy Hidayat, a student
• Patar, an entrepreneur
• Alva Jonathan, a student
• Rekky, a graphic designer

The Rigging Challenge - Phase 1

Being fast here is the name of the game, and Alva Jonathan pulled it off with a time of 3 minutes and 5 seconds. Hot on his heels was Patar Unggul Kurniadi, with a respectable timing of 5 minutes and 21 seconds. Do note that the hardware setup is different for all regions, so while timing comparisons are inevitable, they aren't really comparable.

The Setup/Tweaking Challenge - Phase 2

In our second phase, contestants are given a short time period (1 hour) to install Windows Vista and tweak the system to their satisfaction. The fastest to finish, would of course, get the most points and once again, Alva Jonathan did a Sonic the Hedgehog impression with a time of 45 minutes and 2 seconds for this phase. Due to exceptional circumstances, the contestants were given a time extension. And thus, the leading man Alva was followed by Rekky with 1 hour, 5 minutes and 43 seconds, with the other contestants following up in the next 10 to 20 minutes.

Having tweaked the tweaks and overclocked the clocks, our contestants will be crossing their fingers for the next phase of the competition - the highly anticipated benchmarking phase.

The Benchmark Challenge - Phase 3

Failure here in this phase may not be an option for some, but it all boils down to how stable their systems are. As per our rules, the rigs were to use their settings from the previous phase to determine how well they did on the three benchmarks that we've selected for this round.

They are: -

• PCMark 05 (default settings)
• Furmark (default settings)
• Super Pi 1.5 (computing to 4M decimal places)

Meanwhile, while the benchmarking process was going on, our very supportive audience were treated to a stage show and a chance to win some goodies.

The Scores 

We Are The Champions

With the final scores tabulated, it was no surprise that Alva Jonathan came in first with Rekky as the runner-up for the Indonesian semi-final leg. Both contestants did well to come this far as you can see from the final scoring, which showed off how dominating Alva Jonathan was. They will be representing Indonesia in the HardwareZone Iron Tech 2008 grand finals to be held in Singapore on the 12 October.

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