A Call to Arms: Overclockers Forums HWBot Assault!

We here at the Overclockers Forums Benching Team are taking up arms to knock some heads together and gain a position on the front page of the team rankings on HWBot.

Currently we are in 22nd position, and 892 points away from 20th.  This sounds like a wide gap, but when you consider the resources we have it’s really quite attainable.

I just recently got started on the team and I’m already quite addicted. It’s fun! You don’t have to have any special high dollar hardware (the majority of my points come from my $64 e5200 on a $60 mobo!), nor possess any special skills.  All you need is some time and a bit of determination.  Of course, once you get started it’s hard to resist buying more hardware to benchmark, as well as higher-grade cooling.

I started using air cooling, nothing special at all, and my initial scores were quite uninspiring.  But then I decided to step it up a notch, and put together a fairly excessive water cooling system.  While that was an improvement, it quickly proved to be less then I wanted, and during the recent Forum Wars, I bought a Dry Ice / Liquid Nitrogen CPU pot.  Now I can toss some dry ice in there with some thermal transfer liquid (usually acetone), and get my CPU temps down past ~60*c below zero!   Now I have the 47th highest frequency e5200 in the world!  It’s amazing how much a little guidance from other team members helps, without them I would still be lost in the weeds.

Even if you never make it off the bottom of the rankings, you will still be helping the team and I would wager real money that with the help of our excellent leaders and team members, you won’t stay down there for long at all.

If you’re even vaguely interested, read the first post of this thread. Joining up is easy – all you have to do is run ten benchmarks.  The scores don’t matter at all.  This does two main things:

1) Gains the team a minimum of one point.  This may seem small but every tiny bit helps!

2) Familiarizes you with the benchmarks used as well as the HWBot software.  This is important, as there is nothing more painful in the benching world then setting a high score and then discovering you screwed the screenshot up and it isn’t valid.

At that point you will be granted access to the inner sanctum of benching, where there are many tricks, tips, and strategies waiting to be had. Be careful though. Once you start benching, it’s difficult to avoid overclocking and benching everything you get your hands on!

As a first bit of advice, I recommend doing the following ten, I found them easiest when I was first getting started. The name of each benchmark is linked to its rules, which will tell you how to submit a valid score. If a screenshot is necessary, there are examples provided.

• Wprime32m.
• Wprime 1024m.  (These are the same program, just different tests.)
• SuperPi 1m.
• SuperPi 32m.  (Again, same program two tests.)
• 3dmark01.
• 3dmark03.
• 3dmark05.
• 3dmark06.  (These take a bit of time to download, but are very easy to run.)
• CPUz.  (This one is extremely easy, and it’s a program you need to be familiar with anyway.)
• PIfast.  (This one can be a bit confusing, extract the zip to a folder, then run “hexus_pifast.bat”.  If you run theother ones it will ask for options, and won’t count as a valid score.)

If you want to check out how others have done with your hardware, click on “Hardware Specs” in the upper left of the HWBot homepage. It will walk you through finding either your processor or video card, where it will show you how they’ve performed on the various benchmarks. This is also a good way to set yourself goals, as you can look up exactly what other people have done with the same hardware.

There you go. Ten benchmarks, and you’re on the team. If you’re a social person, come join for the camaraderie. If you’re ultra competitive, come join us to try and beat us – and everybody else. Either way, we would love to see you join the Overclockers Forums Benching Team!

–Bobnova