October HWBOT contest

There is a new team contest up at HWBOT. It started a few days ago. We already missed the first stage, but the second stage is going on now. The current stage is an ivy bridge 3dmark 2000 contest. Anyone that can should submit a result and we can see how we do as a team over the remainder of the month. The info and background are here. Each contest runs a few days and it looks to be a different benchmark for each stage.

Rush #1: AMD CPU (over)
Rush #2: Ivy Bridge CPU (running now!)
Rush #3: Socket 939 Platform
Rush #4: AGP Graphics Card
Rush #5: LGA775 CPU
Rush #6: SD-Ram Memory
Rush #7: N/A

odd chalenges

Damn!!! Missed the amd contest I got some 939 gear but no good vid cards for 3d01, may take a stab though

I don't really get the point of this contest lol...
Stages all 3 days long, and it feels like your team have to do this for a living to compete :

I was going to try a 939 submission, but the board I have is dead.

Ha, the two stages I could have competed in are over. Go figure.

I'm not really motivated to start in this competition especially that stages are bleh. Generally all hardware for which I have no board or something burned lately.

Just looked at this and its half finished already, man they don't give you much time do they

ya the only hardware i got for it right now is over...

I might see if I can get a submission in for socket 939.

I'll have to load up 3DMark 2001 I guess, never ran (or even installed) that bench before.

There is a ton of stuff to learn on that one. Make sure to check lbb for tips.

Did manage to make a submission for 939 3DMark 2001 stage, wasn't real great though.

Made 35k, took 10th place. No points though.

Tried a few tweaks, but just couldn't get much past 35k. Didn't really have time to fully test out potential tweaks and overclocks though, just set my A64 X2 4200+ to 3GHz and went on along with that. Memory at DDR429 (2.5-3-3-7-1T), nVidia GeForce 9800GT at stock settings (I'd never overclocked it and didn't know what to expect or what to set frequencies to).

Actually, most of the tweaks I tried resulted in lower scores for some reason. When I set priority from Normal to Real-time my score actually went down 300pts; still trying to figure that one out.

Pulled my socket A\462 rig back out of retirement for the AGP stage.

Naturally, it didn't want to run. WTF?! Ran fine last time I used it during the HWBot Team Cup 2012, GeForce history tour, GF5 stage. So, I was immediately thrown into a dimension of pissed off I haven't visited lately. I guess I don't have the most patience with things that I know have no good reason not to work. Hell, the board's been sitting in a box wrapped in an anti-static bag ever since the competition ended, it can't very well suffer any damage there.

So, I've been cussing like a sailor for the last hour while trying to get it running again.

First I discovered that I had the CMOS jumper set in the clear position, so I resolve that (why the hell would they make pins 2-3 the Normal state when all other manufacturers make 1-2 Normal and 2-3 the CLR CMOS pins?). Still wouldn't run. Finally got into bios after many random changes to pin configurations and hardware configurations, turned off Chassis Intrusion Detection, set it to halt on No Errors, and configured everything else I needed.

She's running now! For now at least...

Probably won't pass POST again tomorrow with my luck tonight.

On the bright side, I never reformatted the drive I used for benching with this board last time, so I won't have to reinstall the OS. At least that will save me some time.

I'll likely be running 3DMark03 tomorrow, assuming this thing is still running. My POS FX5200 won't be putting up any outstanding scores though, so if anyone has better hardware, feel free to run and submit yours too. My score will just be a fallback in case no one else submits.

Unfortunately, the FX5200 is the best I have on hand in AGP flavor at the moment.

Ha! That's a familiar sounding story. The struggle to get things running will drive a person insane sometimes.