HardwareZone Iron Tech 2008: Philippines Semi-Finals Round

This article is also contributed by Jason Marges from the HWM Philippines team.

Introduction

It was a regular Sunday afternoon made extraordinary for the patrons of the Greehills Shopping area in San Juan, Metro Manila as the folks from HardwareZone Philippines, in collaboration with MSI (Micro-Star International), staged the Philippines Semi-Finals leg of the HardwareZone Iron Tech 2008 on 14th September 2008.

Highlighted by an on-the-spot contest of skill, strategy, and composure, Iron Tech 2008 pit six of the country's savviest PC enthusiasts in an intense competition which lasted over four hours. For those of you new to the HardwareZone Iron Tech competition, and to keep a tab on the overall proceedings of the event, do check our HardwareZone Iron Tech 2008 Microsite . The competition mechanics, while not as tough as those we've in-store in the Grand Finals, the Semi-Finals is still adequate to keep the contestants on their toes. In summary, here's what it consists of:-

• Phase 1: The Rigging Challenge - Build the PC from scratch fastest and ensure it works!
• Phase 2: The Setup Challenge - Setup OS, Drivers, Tools and achieve a stable overclocked state within an hour.
• Phase 3: The Benchmark Challenge - Contestants' rigs are put to the limit to see who achieves the best results.

To keep in-line with the article focus, we'll move on to give you the lowdown of the exciting Philippines competition.

The Venue

The event was held at the ground level of the Virra Mall in Greenhills, San Juan, Metro Manila. Located by the mall's garden entrance side, the Iron Tech stage was an instant attention-grabber for all mall-goers, regardless of their familiarity with and passion for PCs and technology, as a whole.

The Semi-Finalists

Six individuals coming from varying backgrounds came to compete for the distinction as the country's top two PC-builders and overclockers to represent the Philippines in the Iron Tech 2008 Grand Finals in Singapore. Successfully emerging tops in the initial selection phase, they were:

• Ronaldo Bejarin, a product development engineer
• Jomar Marfil, a software engineer
• Gil Navarro, an Internet cafe manager
• Paul Neri, a businessman
•  Michelle Patelo, a PC enthusiast
• Alvin Telan, a programmer and consultant

The Rigging Challenge - Phase 1

The main competition was divided into three main stages. The first phase was a showcase of the semi-finalists' speed and efficiency in building a working PC using this uniform set of supplied components as stated below. The fastest would be rewarded with 3 bonus points, first runner-up with 2 points and the second runner-up with 1 point. The rest will receive no extra points.

• MSI P45 Platinum Motherboard
• MSI N9800GT-T2D512 Graphics Card
• Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 Processor
• Kingston HyperX KHX8500D2K2/2G Memory
• Western Digital Caviar WD1600ABS Hard Disk Drive
• Lite-On 20X DVD Writer
• AcBel iPower660 Power Supply Unit
• Hanns G HX191 Monitor
• Antec 120mm Blue LED Casing Fan and accessories
• Logitech Keyboard and Mouse

Quick reflexes, steady hands, strategic placement - that's the game for the first phase of the competition. The Iron Tech 2008 Philippine semi-finalists shifted into high gear as soon as the go signal was given:-

Ronaldo Bejarin lorded over the rest of the participants in this round, finishing his task in a mere 5 minutes and 39 seconds to build his PC from scratch and get it to POST successfully without issues. He was followed by Gil Navarro with a time of 7:40 and Paul Neri clocking in at 11:28.

The Setup/Tweaking Challenge - Phase 2

In the second phase, the competitors were given an hour to install the Vista operating system, the necessary drivers and utilities that they would need for their system tweaking and most importantly, to complete their overclocking trials.

At the end of one hour, whatever tweaked/overclocked settings they've last achieved and verified will then have to be used to go ahead with the last phase, the competition benchmarks. With hundreds of possible tweaking combinations from BIOS settings, to Windows tweaks, to overvclocking settings, there's a lot to juggle in this short space of time and contestants were pushed to the limits of their capabilities and skills to get a stable and powerful system running at its best capacity.

Provided for each contestant were the following drivers and utilities:

• Intel INF drivers, version 9.0.0.1008
• NVIDIA ForceWare 177.79 drivers
• MSI Motherboard and Graphics Bundled Driver CDs
• DirectX 9.0c
• CPU-Z 1.47
• GPU-Z 0.2.7
• SetFSB 2.1.73.0
• MemSet 3.5
• RivaTuner 2.10
• PowerStrip 3.82
• NiBiTor 4.5a
• Core Temp 0.99.3

Again we saw our competitors hard at work on their respective systems, this time tweaking and adjusting their overclocks to their whim and fancy. You can see the intensity in their eyes, as it was a tight battle - right till the very end!

 

At the end of the short but intensive system setup and tweaking session, the below table lists what the contestants managed to achieve. Do bear in mind that the contestants will have to use these settings to compete in the benchmarking segment next and they cannot tweak the settings any further. Any benchmarking failures would mean no score on that particular test. As mentioned earlier, there are hundreds of possible settings one can perform at the BIOS, hardware and software levels, but since overclocking the systems would garner the most change, we report in brief of the settings they will be using in the next phase:-

For the contestants who've yet to enter battle in the other countries, don't worry memorizing these figures as your hardware would differ and your mileage in your competition would greatly vary.

The Benchmark Challenge - Phase 3

Finally, the respective rigs were put to the test in the third round, where each setup was made to run three benchmarks. PCMark05 was already made known to the contestants before the competition to give them an idea of what to expect. However, there were two more surprise benchmarks to follow that posed a greater challenge to them. Here's the complete benchmarks list:-

• PCMark05 (at default settings)
• SuperPi Mod 1.5 (computing to 1M decimal places)
• XMpeg 5.03 video encoding test (using a 1GB .VOB file)

Like the components used in the semi-finals competition, the benchmarks too vary from country to country (depending on what dates the competition commence). So to the contestants of other countries reading this report, don't be too happy yet as both the hardware and software would differ again, posing a fresh challenge for you! More benchmarks and tougher contest mechanics will be seen in the Grand Finals in Singapore, but for now in the Semi Finals round, here's what the Philippines contestants managed out of their hurriedly tweaked systems in short notice:-

The Results

DNF = Did Not manage to Finish

As you can see in the benchmark results outcome, some contestants had pushed their system a tad too much in this competition or didn't manage to optimize them enough in the given time and thus weren't able to complete some of the benchmarks. As per the rules mentioned earlier, this phase involves the benchmarking session in which the last overclocked settings used in the Setup phase would stay affective. Hence when the benchmark fails to run them at those settings, the contestant gets no score for it. Harsh, but those are the rules to contest in the HardwareZone Iron Tech competition where one must stand out from the rest to use their skills, capabilities and knowledge to derive at the best overclocked state that's suitable for the real-world challenge at the fastest possible time.

Speaking of scores, the contestants were then awarded scores for each of the benchmark rounds based on the ranking :-

• Position #1: 10 points
• Position #2: 8 points
• Position #3: 6 points
• Position #4: 4 points
• Position #5: 3 points
• Position #6: 2 points

The final scores, including the bonus points awarded for the system rigging phase is as follows:-

As The Dust Settled...

With tight scores and each competitor having a fair shot at the top two spots up until the final benchmark round, it was Gil Navarro and Ronaldo Bejarin who prevailed above everyone else in the end, finishing with the top two aggregate scores across all rounds. Both of them are set to represent the Philippines in the Iron Tech 2008 Grand Finals to be held in Singapore on 12th October, 2008. They were also awarded with the MSI P45 Platinum and MSI N9800GT-T2D512, similar to those used in the competition.

The Beginning of Something Bigger?

At the end of the day, two among six PC experts rose above the rest to stake their claim on the bigger prize - the HardwareZone Iron Tech 2008 Grand Finals plum. More than this, though, the contestants saw the event as a big step forward for the PC enthusiast crowd of the Philippines.

"With competitions like these, overclocking becomes more than a hobby; it becomes more of a sport - one that involves knowledge and skills dealing with all of these different sorts of components. Getting more out of what you pay for - this is what overclocking is all about," shares Paul Neri, with a tone still brimming with excitement and positivity even after the event�s close.

At this point, HardwareZone would like to thank the following partners for their support in Iron Tech 2008 - Philippines Semi-Finals Round:-

• MSI (Micro-Star International)
• Intel
• Kingston
• Western Digital
•  Lite-On
• AcBel
• Logitech
• Hanns G
• Antec
• Microsoft
• NetEssentials
• TipidPC.com
• V-Mall

Editor's Note: Stay tuned to more HardwareZone Iron Tech coverage and updates as the Thailand and Indonesia Semi-Finals commence shortly!

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