Master Overclocking Arena 2008 - Live!
Join us as we report live from MSI's gathering of overclocking experts in its inaugural Master Overclocking Arena 2008. Find out the latest results and leaders as they happen!
A Gathering of Overclocking Masters
Fans of the wuxia genre will find Huashan a storied locale mentioned in various literary works, which is why it seems more than a coincidence that the Master Overclocking Arena 2008 (MOA) tournament is held at the appropriately named Huashan Cultural-Creative Park. For this is a gathering, not of martial arts exponents, but exponents nonetheless, in the modern art and science of overclocking.
Held on the 9th of November, MSI invited up to twelve teams from all over the world to participate in this overclocking tournament. These contestants have been chosen by MSI from their respective countries after showing that they have the overclocking skills in their national finals. Some may even be familiar names to some of you readers, especially if you have followed our recently concluded HardwareZone IronTech 2008 tournament. In fact, the top three countries and their representatives in IronTech automatically earned the right to participate in the Master Overclocking Arena 2008.
While IronTech was won by Singaporean contestant, Jeremiah Ong, he was unfortunately unable to attend this Master Overclocking Arena tournament in Taiwan due to national service commitment. Therefore, Malaysia's Ng Teng Liang and Alex Tan will replace the Singapore representatives, and along with the Indonesian and Thai contestants, will be trying their best to win this international event.
The cavernous warehouse-like arena for MSI's Master Overclocking Arena 2008. Each team of contestants is given a dedicated workbench to do their overclocking.
This is the first time that MSI is organizing an overclocking event of such an international scale and the company has prepared some very attractive prizes for the top three teams, including their P45D3 Platinum motherboard and Radeon HD 4850 graphics card. There are also hard drives from Western Digital, like its super fast VelociRaptors, PSUs from Enermax and even MSI's latest motherboard for the Intel X58 chipset, the Eclipse. That's just for the hardware, with the top duo in addition, sharing a cash reward of US$3000.
With so many highly motivated overclocking experts gathered for this competition, who will emerge as the Master? Also, check out MSI's website on MOA, with live updates on the results and online voting for the winner of MOA.
The workbench for each team has a standard set of components prepared for them, including your essential display, keyboard, mouse and power supply.
Contestants are given a final briefing on the rules of conduct before they collect their components.
To brief them on the rules, MSI has arranged for top overclocker, Norwegian Sturla, aka Stoolman to be the judge for this event.
To ensure that the critical hardware (motherboard and graphics card) for the teams are randomly assigned, the contestants have to draw lots to determine which set they receive.
Large canisters of liquid nitrogen are ready for the contestants' overclocking attempts. It certainly looks like there's enough nitrogen here to cool the entire arena.
Going along with this 'wuxia' theme, we spotted this 'secret manual' published by Intel introducing its Core 2 processors.
Competition Mechanics
Most overclocking competitions follow generally the same concept and rules and MSI's Master Overclocking Arena is no different. All participating teams (consisting of 2 contestants from each country) are given the same set of components and they have 3 hours to assemble, tweak and modify the hardware and software in order to produce the best performance in two benchmarks, SuperPI MOD 1.5 8M and 3DMark01 SE.
The judges from MSI too will use these components to produce a standard performance score that will act as the baseline comparison. The overclocked performance margin that the contestants achieve over this standard performance score will be recorded and the ones with the highest margins averaged over the two benchmarks will be the winner of Master Overclocking Arena. Contestants are given 50 minutes for each benchmark, during which they can attempt as many benchmark runs as possible, in a bid to achieve their highest scores. These will be updated on a scoreboard so that each team can see who is the current leader.
Just for this event, MSI has issued limited MOA editions of the key components used, namely a MSI P45D3 Platinum and a MSI N9800GTX+. These special editions will have certain enhancements to aid the overclocking attempts. For the motherboard, a special BIOS is available to improve overclocking allowance while the graphics card comes with an extra strength cooler with better heat dissipation.
With the competition using Intel's Core 2 Duo E8600 CPU, it's no surprise to find Intel here as a major sponsor.
The limited MOA Special Edition MSI P45D3 Platinum motherboard that's to be used in this tournament.
The souped up MSI GeForce 9800 GTX+ used in MOA. Of course, it's also a Special Edition.
Western Digital's blazing fast VelociRaptor SATA hard drives.
Enermax provides the modular PSUs for MOA. The PSU is critical to the success of overclocking, since the overclockers need higher and stable voltages than usual.
The components used for MOA are listed below:-
- Intel Core 2 Duo E8600
- MSI P45D3 Platinum MOA Special Edition
- OCZ DDR3 PC3-16000 Platinum Edition
- MSI N9800GTX+ MOA Special Edition
- CHIMEI 22GH LCD monitor
- Western Digital VelociRaptor 300GB
- Genius keyboard
- MSI gaming mouse
- Enermax MODU82+ 625W SLI
The one thing that stood out from the component list here is the Intel Core 2 Duo E8600, which has already become famous in its relatively short lifespan for its overclocking capability, with speeds upwards of 4GHz possible even with air cooling. With the contestants given freedom to modify and tweak the hardware in any way with their own tools, not to mention liquid nitrogen, we may even see some world records here.
After all, MSI says that there is an unlimited supply of nitrogen available, along with other materials like hair dryers and vacuum flasks. Of course, there is only 1 set of spare components for each participating team in case of hardware failure, so contestants still have to be cautious. They will be disqualified if they damage both set of components.
Other utilities and drivers used include:-
- Windows XP Professional with SP3
- MOA Special Edition BIOS
- NVIDIA ForceWare 178.24
- SuperPI MOD 1.5 8M
- 3DMark01 SE Build 330
- MSI Dual Core Center
- CPU-Z & GPU-Z
- ATI Tools & RivaTuner
- Memset
- SetFSB
And the Competition Begins
Upon collecting their hardware, the contestants quickly proceeded to their respective workbenches to begin assembling the system. They are given a fixed amount of time to get their systems into boot up to ensure that the hardware is working properly. During this period of time, they can change the components if they are found to be faulty. After everything has been verified to be working, let the overclocking begin!
It's a flurry of activity as the overclockers started their tweaking.
While the overclockers started to work their mojo, MSI took the opportunity to introduce some of the guests invited for this event. Reps from all the major sponsors were present, including some notable names in the industry. There was even a 'demo' of what liquid nitrogen cooling was all about, for those who are unfamiliar.
Roy Taylor, VP for GeForce Programs from NVIDIA.
Regional marketing manager for Western Digital, Mr Patrick Lo.
OCZ's Director of Sales for APAC, Mr David Wang.
The Aussie team of Deanzo and Moloko.
France's Marmott doing some soldering.
Team Greece.
The Malaysian duo.
No one seems to care about MSI's custom cooler, as practically every team had removed it for further modding.
It didn't take long for the contestants to get into their liquid nitrogen phase.
It's yippingly cold as the MC got a taste or rather feel of what liquid nitrogen is capable of.
And that's how things are as we moved past the lunch hour, with all the contestants still hard at work tweaking their systems. We're not even sure if they had more than a bite! The benchmarking segment will be starting shortly and we'll keep you updated as usual!
Voting boxes for the audience for their favorite teams.
Benchmarking Madness
We have just started the first of the two benchmarks, SuperPI. Contestants have 50 minutes to achieve their best possible score in this segment, with the results of the leading contenders updated on a giant scoreboard so that others know who to beat. It's difficult to capture the changing leaders but as we write, Indonesian duo, Alva and Rekky is leading the competition with a SuperPI time of 7.593s, 82% higher than the standard performance score.
A giant scoreboard with the timings of the leading teams is regularly updated so that contestants know who to beat and by how much. A countdown clock is also present to inform them about the remaining time.
With less than 20 minutes to go, the Indonesia team continued to lead the standings, with a slightly improved 7.5s for SuperPI, followed by China's Qu Hao at 7.641s. Like we mentioned before, you can also check the latest results from MSI's website as it happens.
Still top of the chart with 7.5s, Indonesia's Alva Jonathan and Rekky.
And the time's up for the SuperPI benchmark segment. Clinging to their slim lead, the Indonesian team has taken a major step towards winning this competition by taking the top spot for SuperPI. Can they continue this streak in the next benchmark, 3DMark01? We'll find out soon as the 3DMark01 benchmarking starts in 15 minutes....
The Indonesian team has won the SuperPI benchmark segment, with a winning time of 7.5s. No other team managed a faster time despite the Indonesians holding this lead for more than half the allocated time.
It's Retro Time with 3DMark01!
The second phase of the competition has started, with the contestants now running through 3DMark01 in order to get the highest score. Once again, the Indonesians have leapt to the top of the charts, with a 99k score for 3DMark01, thanks to their 6GHz CPU.
It's liquid nitrogen overload here from the Taiwanese team of Suen Jheng Dong and Lin Yuan Ming.
Indonesia has taken an early lead going into Round 2.
Things are heating up now with 27 minutes left on the clock. Amidst a cheer from the watching audience, Taiwan's Suen Jheng Dong and Lin Yuan MIng has jumped into contention by breaking the 100k barrier in 3DMark01 but Indonesia maintains its lead by improving on its personal best to 100334. Less than a hundred points in 3DMark01 is the difference between the two.
With 21 minutes on the clock and the top positions unchanged, judge Sturla has announced that a 50 minute extension will be given to all teams. Looking at the chart now, where only 4 teams have managed to produce a stable system capable of generating a 3DMark01 score, it's perhaps not a surprise that there has been a time extension.
More cheers from the crows and we have a new leader for Round 2, 3DMark01, with the Taiwanese duo finally overtaking the Indonesians with 42 minutes gone. Also, out of nowhere, South Africa is now in second place, pushing the Indonesians down to third. Margins between the top three are razor thin at the moment, with the Taiwanese only ahead by around 1%.
The latest standings now show the Taiwanese increasing their lead, while the Greek team has squeezed into the top three.
The home crowd supporting the Taiwanese team.
Greece is now in 2nd place for 3DMark01.
Back to the drawing board? Indonesia seems to have taken apart their systems and is now making some last min mods in order to get back the top spot.
While the top position remains unchanged, the Taiwanese have extended their advantage over the second place team, which is now Greece. This pushes the South African and Indonesian teams to 3rd and 4th respectively. With 25 minutes on the clock now, is there time for another surprise?
As we enter the final ten minutes of the competition, South Africa has taken the lead in 3DMark01 with its most recent attempt, knocking Taiwan off its perch at last. The difference between the two remains very small but then, time is quickly running out too.
And what do you know, Greece has taken the 3DMark01 segment with a 101711 3DMark01 score in the very last minute! This was done with its CPU running at 5.71GHz!
As the clock ticked to zero, Greece came fighting back to take the top spot, a mere 107 points higher than the Taiwan team.
The Master of Overclocking
After a long day of PC overclocking and modding lasting around seven hours, a winning team has emerged. There are no losers however, as every team will at least walk away with the motherboards and graphics cards set aside for them. (Unless they have thoroughly trashed them during the overclocking that is.)
It's been a long long day but the contestants still has to dismantle and pack their systems after the end of the competition.
The other aftermath, the remnants of the refreshment corner.
The audience waiting patiently for the competition to end, with the added lure of the lucky draw (up to three MSI notebooks to be won) keeping them here.
Thanks to their dominant performance in SuperPI, Indonesia walked away as the overall winner in this inaugural Master Overclocking Arena 2008. Second was Greece while Taiwan picked up the third spot.
The third placed team from Taiwan.
The second placed winner of MOA 2008 - Greece.
The deserving winners of MOA 2008 - Indonesian duo Alva Jonathan and Rekky!
Overall, MSI's MOA 2008 has been quite the success, with ten contestants beating the previous SuperPI records set at other recent overclocking competitions. We are sure that all the overclockers enjoyed the experience of pushing the limits of the hardware and perhaps more importantly, the friends that they have made here at this event.
For MSI, this tournament affirms the company's push to appeal to the enthusiast crowd and with MSI taking close note of all the mods that the overclockers did to their P45D3 Platinum board, it may help them improve even further on their motherboard design and BIOS.
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