Issue 32 2014 rev 2.1
THE WORLD’S BEST OVERCLOCKING ONLINE MAGAZINE. ISOLATED. Feature
A LOOK BACK AT MSI’S MASTER OVERCLOCKING ARENA 2014 Interview
Q+A WITH WITH CHRISTOPHER “PEPI” BESSE OF FRANCE Reviewed
Reviewed
ALIEN: ISOLATION
CORSAIR DOMINATOR PLATINUM 3,200MHZ DDR4 16GB KIT Reviewed
EVGA GTX 980 CLASSIFIED Reviewed
GIGABYTE X99 UD7 WIFI Reviewed
Feature
OVERCLOCKING
ISOLATION
SENDING OUT INVITES FAR AND WIDE!
MSI X99S X-POWER AC
A GOOD YEAR W
elcome to the final issue of 2014. It’s taken much longer to get to you but it’s finally here in its full glory. 2014 has been if anything an eventful year and unlike past editor’s notes I’ve written during this period. There’s literally a lot to talk about here. We’ve seen some great changes in the overclocking landscape and we can only imagine what 2015 will bring for us. Over and above that we have seen a healthy uptake in PC gaming, be it notebooks, small gaming PCs or whatever else. There’s plenty more to be excited about this year than in 2013. I wait patiently for INTEL’s drive in conjunction with SAMSUNG, for 4K/UHD monitors to retail for the magical $399 mark as this is truly the evolution we’ve needed. This is not only in a gaming context where the benefits of 4K are obvious, but for overclocking as well. I’m relieved to see that we now have FireStrike Ultra, which is inevitably going to be the standard for all our testing here going forward. If anything it will allow us to drop another benchmark, in the form of Catzilla (at least the 720P test) as it serves little to no purpose at all in evaluating the performance of anything remotely resembling a shipping title. Bluntly put, the cats and all were cute in the beginning, but they've become bland in addition to looking decisively dated. This would obviously be true for the 1440P test as well, but it does place more strain on the GPU, so there’s that. However what’s clear is that the time for new benchmarks that are still firmly within the confines of competitive overclocking, but have some real world relevance has come. On to other things overclocking, I’ve been quite vocal about this on our facebook page and even on our twitter account. I do believe that the silent and unsaid, status quo for quality motherboards is something that needs to be discussed more openly by those with the capacity to do so. That doesn’t always fall to media and if anything, that group is the least reliable when it comes to tackling such issues. It’s a matter of transparency and accountability to you the readers. Be it you read one of the few print publications that remain, an e-magazine such as this one or a website. Almost all publication relies on some kind of funding. Since funding is provided primarily by the vendors which provide the very same products we must judge objectively. Try as we may as an industry it is inevitably going to a spiral down into “bought” editorial. Even if no single entity sets out to do so, it
needs only a single person to engage in the grey areas of editorial and ad spend and the rest have to follow. Mind you I’m not saying this is a helpless situation. On the contrary, it is you the readers which can bring about, if you so desire, a change for the better as to what level of honesty is expected in reviews. That simply means, actually reading the pieces all the way through and not just engaging the products superficially. Moreover, this will bring much needed value and meaning back into an award system which at present unfortunately doesn’t mean much. We give out ours as fitting, especially since we don’t have numerical scoring system within the main reviews section, but that only solves a small part of the problem. In an issue where we literally have only the best hardware to cover, that means virtually all products could see an editor’s choice award. I’m sure you can see the problem here. All it needs is that you as readers and consumers should question reviews that slander a product but then end up giving a positive award. For example if we wrote that a specific keyboard was nothing but an exercise in sheer frustration. That it had no redeeming qualities outside of its primary ability of allowing you some form of basic interaction with your computer. That is a pretty damning statement and position to take. It is then inappropriate for us for example to then award such a product a Value, Hardware, Top pick or whatever other award. Rewarding what we found to be anything but a pleasant experience is dishonest above anything else. The sad part however is that, even this doesn’t happen because more times than not plenty of publications write glowing reviews of products that are known to be inferior even by the very manufacturers. That type of “writing” has eroded away at what is otherwise a fairly straight forward process of evaluating products and services as they are likely to be experienced by the end user, you! We as a publication have been subject to many of these pressures, but given that we are bi-monthly and in the context of others, with an odd 50,000 or so readers. Our pressures are incomparable to a site that has millions or hundreds of thousands of visitors daily. Even with that said, be it a publication has 5 readers or 5 million, they should be held to a much higher standard of honesty and objective writing than they are at present. Failure to do this not only slows progress within the industry to a crawl, but we sometimes have none at all. Just like “Only you can stop forest fires”, “only you can change it all for the better”. And with that joke that didn’t go over, I wish you all a happy December and we will see you in January 2015. [ Neo Sibeko - Editor ]
Issue 32 | 2014 The OverClocker 3
46
REGULARS 3 - Editor’s note 6 - Interview with Christopher “Pepi” Besse
FEATURES 12 – A look back at MSI’s Master Overclocking Arena 2014 18 – Overclocking Isolation
The Overclocker is published by OCL-Media (cc).
REVIEWS
Editor Neo Sibeko
24 – MSI X99S X-POWER AC
Art Director Chris Savides
28 – GIGABYTE X99 UD7 WIFI 32 – EVGA GTX 980 CLASSIFIED 36 – CORSAIR DOMINATOR PLATINUM 3200 C16 DDR4 Kit
LIFESTYLE 42 - Alien: Isolation 46 – ASUS Gladius 48 – MSI GS60 GHOST PRO 3K 2QE 50 – EKWB EK-KIT X360
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4 The OverClocker Issue 32 | 2014
Contributors Dane Remendes Pieter-Jan “Massman” Plaisier Timothée Pineau Jayda Wu For editorial and marketing please contact: neo@theoverclocker.com
Issue 32 | 2014 The OverClocker 7
the competition and hardware? I think there are still a few small things that need improvement, but overall it was much better than previous years in my opinion. What is your favourite MOA to date since 2008? It was definitely 2013. It was my first trip to Taiwan ever, only those who travelled there can understand... Do you still compete in the rankings personally or is that not important for your anymore. Do you even find time to be overclocking as much as before? Not for a very long time. Now I only participate in HWBOT Pro OC Cup with my team mate Pt1t under a joint user profile named “The Overclocking Knights”. Together with Benchbros, Der8auer & Dancop we formed “Team Pro OC EU” which is currently ranked 1st. What is your favourite graphics card or platform to overclock? Whatever I can get my hands on as long as it provides fun without 8 The OverClocker Issue 32 | 2014
complications. I hate wasting time. To those that know even a little about you, it’s very obvious that you’re a fan of motorsport. Which discipline do you like specifically, touring, open-wheel racing etc.? I’m a real fan of Time Attack! Unfortunately the nearest championship is in the UK so I stick to amateur track sessions. Besides this, I watch a lot of Rally (Sebastien Loeb FTW !) and a bit of Formula 1. Your car is pretty tricked out. What are you working on adding to it and what mods does it have at present, visual and performance? Ha ha thanks. Engine received every bolt on mod I could buy to get more power besides a new turbo. It’s currently sitting at 434hp (crank) but like every overclocker I always want to push more so next step is to save for a bulletproof engine and a big turbo kit to reach ~750hp. You’re one of the more vocal and
high profile overclockers within the community and perhaps even outside of that. What are your general thoughts on the state of overclocking? Is there perhaps, anything you’d like to see changed in the overclocking community? I’d like to see more & more people involved in extreme overclocking so this hobby can become more popular and maybe evolve into an E-sport. I’d also like to see overclockers relax and have even more fun than they already are! There are still some nice competitions but it’s not as friendly as anymore. I think that like always, once companies, money and support (hardware in this case) got involved, it changed a lot of things. Now I see a lot of overclockers whine like divas about everything and it is seriously not helping. I mean criticism is always fine when it is constructive, but there are relevant topics, right time and the right way to do it. However to finish on a good note, I think that lately, HWBot’s efforts could be a very good way to get new blood
involved in overclocking and change things. Out in France who do you overclock with predominantly or is it a solo effort most time? Mostly a solo effort but I still prefer to join pt1t in his place in Belgium or he travels to MSI France for overclocking sessions.
Any interesting hardware you’re looking forward to in 2015? I would like to see a strong response from AMD to NVIDIA and of course I’m looking forward to Intel's Skylake.
What is your single greatest or most memorable overclocking achievement? No joke, my best memories are How often do you have you writing about me in The overclocking sessions? Overclocker when I took the It depends on what you consider an 3DM05 & 06 WR with a triple SLI OC session. Before and after launch GTX 260 and a golden i7 940 of Z87 and Z97, I used to spend all ES B0 unlocked (940XE). At that my weekends and late nights in the time, it felt very good to be able to office testing BIOS revisions and achieve higher scores than masters reporting feedback to engineers. If we Andre and Kingpin using lower-end talk about real benching, I would say hardware. only once or twice a quarter. 10 The OverClocker Issue 32 | 2014
When last did you play any game and what was it and on what platform? Actually, I started to play a lot more since I began at MSI and discovered Steam. I now own an MSI Nightblade with a GTX780Ti GAMING and play like twice a week, for example Grid 2, Injustice: Gods Among Us, Naruto, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2, Batman Arkham Origins just to name a few. Anything else you’d like to say to everyone reading this? Thank you for this interview, thanks to everyone who supports me and my team, and hello to all my Overclocker friends all over the world!
A LOOK BACK AT MSI’S MASTER OVERCLOCKING
ARENA 2014 O
n the weekend of October the 17th MSI held the annual MOA (Master Overclocker Arena) competition. As in all the previous competitions, MOA featured over a dozen overclockers from around the world. These competitors had qualified over the course of several months in their respective regions. Unlike in previous competitions though, Instead of having a single class or overclockers all using the same hardware, MSI broke it down to two classes. Obviously entrants could only enter in a single class, but it did allow for those with lesser hardware in class B for instance to show their skill even with limited hardware. In this class there were no regional restrictions and all entrants competed around the world simultaneously leading up to the competition. For the first time ever, MOA was streamed live on Twitch, hosted by none other than OC-TV, which has always been the go to, live overclocking broadcasting agency. As 12 The OverClocker Issue 32 | 2014
expected, the rules were set by MSI and HWBOT to ensure consistency with international overclocking standards. To that end, HWBOT’s resident celebrity (massman)was present, but not in the capacity of a judge, instead as one of the commentators of the live broadcast. The two judges were top overclockers Ian (8pack) from the U.K and Roman (der8auer) from Germany. Two faces and names all competitors were very familiar with. Last year MSI had decided to make this a closed event and this year was the same with no spectators. Only the independent journalists, partners, competitors and of course MSI and its hosts were present at the venue. This obviously allows the overclockers to focus exclusively on the task at hand. However, it is a pity that it has made the event and exercise very niche. We do hope next year, should MSI hosts the competition, that it will perhaps be at a venue where gamers are present as well. After all, the
similarities between competitive gaming and overclocking are more than skin deep and in structure these two activities are by and large very similar. Where hardware is concerned, MSI had a very strong showing this year with not a single piece of hardware failing due to overclocking. As usual there is some hardware that for some reason or another exhibits odd behavior, like a particular SSD as used by the Russian overclocker Xtreme Addict. For some reason Super Pi would not run successfully on this drive which obviously ended his day prematurely. This was the only hardware glitch that was encountered outside of regular extreme overclocking challenges. The involved vendors in the competition, provided not only solid and
reliable hardware, but ensured that each entrant had two sets of hardware, in case one component failed unexpectedly. The hardware for the competition was none other than MSI’s Z97 MPower motherboard, the Intel Core i7 4790K, Cooler Master’s brilliant V1200 platinum and JETFLO 120mm fans. The memory of choice was G.Skill’s TRIEDNTX F3 CL10 2600. KINGSTON’s HYPERX 3K SSDs, VIEWSONIC’s VX2370SMH LED monitors along with keyboards and mice by SteelSeries completed the hardware list. The graphics cards of choice were the sublime MSI GTX 980 GAMING and the very rare, GeForce GTX 780 Ti Lightning MOA edition. During the competition only the 780Ti Lightning could be used for the 3D Benchmark, but after the
Issue 32 | 2014 The OverClocker 13
competition ended and on the following day, the GTX 980 was allowed as well. Throughout the weekend MSI managed to secure over a dozen top score results with their hardware (previously known as “world records�). Not surprising given that many of the world’s prolific overclockers had made it out to the event. With three categories and only two hours for each, the pressure was on for every contestant. Given that many of the competitors had never even used some of the hardware before prior to arriving at the competition, it would be a test of who could best prepare and
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dial in the settings the quickest. Experience would play a major role here and it is perhaps one of the reasons why Vivi ended up taking first place. Familiarity with this kind of competition, helped immensely as he knew that he did not have to win every round, but do pretty well in all three. This was very evident during the 3DMark FireStrike round as he posted one of the first set of scores and with it coincidentally, he would go on to win the competition. Obviously at the time, others were trying to beat this score, but it would not happen and at the end of the grueling day he stood triumphant. Oc_windforce, the
Korean overclocker, usually teamed up with little_boy at various competitions had a fantastic start. He won the Super Pi 32M round. From there his position in the top three was pretty much guaranteed unless something went drastically wrong. Given his consistent performance and perhaps even bias to graphics card benchmarks, he was always going to do well. In Cinebench, dRWeEz managed to place second, displacing Vivi from the number two spot, just below Moose83 the German overclocker. However, due to the poor quality of his first CPU sample during the Super Pi round, he had placed near the bottom of the list. At 6.2GHz, not much was going to happen in such a CPU dependent
benchmark. In the end it was Vivi who walked off with $3,000 USD in cash and hardware to the value of $2,000 (He would claim an additional $500 USD on the following day in the “No-Limits battle�). A close second went to Tolsty MOA 2013 champion who received $2,000. Third place was oc_windforce from Korea with $1,500 USD and fourth place went to Moose83 from Germany earning himself $1,000 USD. Like Vivi, these individuals walked away with over $2,000 USD worth of hardware in addition to their prize money. Since 2008, MSI has been hosting this competition and with each successive event, the input from overclockers has been injected into their retail products. Many of the wonderful Issue 32 | 2014 The OverClocker 15
hardware that MSI has been producing in the last two to three years has been a direct result of this close collaboration between the community, its own internal overclockers and the engineers within the firm. As it is, the battle for component supremacy is no longer a two horse race, but MSI is right in there, with a valid claim to producing the most robust components and products in the market. Separate from the overclocking, MSI had displayed several other motherboards from their gaming range including the previously
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reviewed MSI GTX 980 GAMING. Word was that there wouldn’t be a lightning version of this card for overclockers specifically, but given just how adept the GAMING GTX 980 is already at overclocking, we can fully appreciate why such a product may not come to be. Overall this was a successful competition, with the usual faces and plenty of new faces coming to the show. Veterans and previous winner of the MOA, Lucky_n00b form Indonesia for instance was present, covering the event in the capacity of a journalist but also giving some useful tips to his understudies
that had come to represent the Indonesian overclocking community. Every year, overclockers, amateurs and professionals alike have come to anticipate MSI’s MOA as the single largest overclocking competition in the calendar year. This is viewed as not only an opportunity for competitors to come together, but also a time where new faces to the scene may be introduced. Once you win a live overclocking competition, especially MOA, your status within the community is immortalized. MSI has been doing a stellar job since the beginning in not only promoting overclocking to every enthusiast, but to gamers as well. With each successive generation of gaming hardware, many of their overclocking features make their way on to
their gaming boards. One could even argue that courtesy of these components, getting into overclocking has never been easier. What was previously a ridiculously small community and hobby has transformed how products are designed and what end users can expect from them. This was the first time we attended a live competition where the hardware held up for as long as it did and was without any failure as a result of the extreme conditions it was operated at. We would like to thank MSI for having given us this opportunity to cover this event. We hope to return in 2015 again to see what MSI has prepared. Whatever it may be, it’s guaranteed to be even more exciting. This is MSI’s MOA 2014 in pictures, please do enjoy.
[ The Overclocker ]
Issue 32 | 2014 The OverClocker 17
OVERCLOCKING
ISOLATION LET US OC IN PLACES FAR AND WIDE!
A
fter years of not being active, I had a brief stint at the annual rAge 2014 Expo down in South Africa. As usual the point was to expose the hobby of overclocking to the 30,000 and more people that would filter through the Coca-Cola Dome. As with all overclocking demos there’s a myriad of questions audiences will ask, they will go so far as to suggest things you should be doing and express concerns about it all. As a person who has been within the overclocking ecosystem for a decade, there are so many things that I take for granted. Information that I would think or believe is so pervasive in the general enthusiast community that some of these questions should not ever come up. Obviously I was wrong and that is good and bad for many reasons. That which we call overclocking, is something that many of the competitive overclockers and I included hold dear even when more often than not we are jaded by it all. With every passing generation and platform of hardware, we see ever increasing scores or decreasing calculation times. We’ve seen HWBOT’s transformation from a simple database of scores and a sanctioned score keeper, to a whole organization that has taken it upon itself to mediate the inner workings of this community with the wider enthusiast community and vendors. It’s a difficult task and one that is monumental in its scope. In an ideal world there’d be tutorials on every motherboard released or at the very least a family of motherboards that would guide beginners, intermediate users and advanced users. Helping them extract the best from their systems. All this would be found on HWBOT or a parallel site, where 18 The OverClocker Issue 32 | 2014
the guides are written by the most prolific overclockers of our time. At the very least they would help formulate said guides which would then be consumed by the all. This isn’t the reality we live in though and it’s becoming increasingly more relevant for the entire community to not only act as an ambassador for our past time but to actively engage others outside of our immediate contemporaries. This is not a call to arms or an attempt to rally the elite in some misguided quest to make overclocking accessible to all. What it is; is that those that find themselves putting on shows for curious observers should embrace the opportunity a little more. Engage the “annoying” questions; do not shy away from those that ask “what difference does this all make?” Those of us that have been taking part in this for several years are more often than not oblivious to just how new all this is to the wider gaming and enthusiast community. It doesn’t help that unintentionally or otherwise, our said vendors confuse the message. The search for ever increasing sales figures is what business is about and any means will be employed to see that happen. That means “overclocking” may be communicated in perhaps a suboptimal way to those outside the community. If the various press releases do not resonate with us within, then they have no hope of impressing the ones out on the web. When it comes down to buying decisions, there’s an entire science behind why people buy the products and components they do. If at the end of 2014, most people view overclocking as a risk to their hardware, then something has not gone the way it should have. We ourselves take for granted just how resilient the hardware we use is, in comparison to what was available 10 years ago. Broken pins on CPUs, high risk of condensation damage, and just basic
electrostatic damage. We were vulnerable to any one of these and our hardware was always on the verge of imminent death. This is not the case today where, we may perform hack jobs on sealing. However we manage to get descent runs in and not destroy any hardware at all. It’s not uncommon that we partake in quick subzero overclocking with absolutely no sealing at all. The hardware we have lends itself to surprisingly fewer modifications than before. Today you can easily buy a motherboard that is ready for extreme and competitive overclocking out the box. This was not the case years ago, yet the general message towards buyers and others is that it’s extremely dangerous. Understand that I’m not advocating for disregard for the dangers that overclocking may present to your hardware. What I’m saying is that, the entire industry and community has made some significant strides and thus some of these concerns and misconceptions
shouldn’t exist anymore, at least not within the enthusiast/gaming community. In light of this, I propose overclocking competitions where there is no use of liquid nitrogen or even dry ice for that matter if only to garner attention from a much wider audience. Mind you I’m a proponent and advocate for all things cooled with LN2, however there’s a need for various levels of engagement within overclocking. The various leagues within HWBOT are a great start to this as they do not force anyone in any way to partake in the rankings where they would be out of their depth. This singular and structured approach to overclocking engagement is a step in the right direction. We, however as a community and perhaps even vendors need to do more to make it all significantly more accessible. The limitation isn’t always a financial one, as limiting hardware for instance in a competition to sub $100 graphics cards is good. However, it takes one with significantly more resources to take the Issue 32 | 2014 The OverClocker 19
very same graphics card, mount a cooling pot on it, make all necessary modifications and then overclock it. That entire exercise costs many times more than the retail price of the graphics card, thus the endeavor is largely exclusionary. No, that isn’t quite what is needed. As it is, the recent change in what qualifies as a world record and what doesn’t is a change that has been needed for years on end. It’ll take a while for “world record” to mean anything again. The term at present is devoid of substance and if anything has negative connotations. This isn’t hard to pick up on as the various tech sites that post these press releases attest to this very point. The replies in those forums range from indifference to outright disapproval. Yes, the tendency of forums or any medium of social communication towards negativity is noted. However, there is little to no pessimism when it comes to a regular press release or announcement of a new motherboard or GPU. Yet a showing of what said motherboard or GPU can achieve under the capable hands of competitive overclockers, has anything but the desired effect on potential buyers. This is where I would propose many more competitions, which are by structure, familiar to us but impose limits that are not exclusionary of most people. As stated earlier, no LN2, no pots, just regular, all in one units, and air coolers. No chilled water or anything of the sort. Indeed, this would be very boring for veteran overclockers, but the odds are. Those that do well there are likely to move on to the more challenging competitions, where the competitors are fewer as well as a result. We all appreciate a graphics card that is ready out the box for Liquid Nitrogen, but what does that mean exactly to the tens of thousands of people who are potential buyers of said graphics card? That it’s ready for the day they have gathered all required knowledge and supplementary hardware is not meaningful at all. This can’t be a viable strategy as it gains the customer nothing at all. However, can you imagine a situation where, by way of purchasing a graphics card, you gain ticket entry to a competition using your recent purchase? Since almost all competitions, require that you use the specific vendor’s products anyway, why does that purchase not grant you access to competition automatically? The details of it could be written about at length, but it is one of the many ways in which competitive overclocking can gain popularity, new participants and directly help vendors reach sales targets. This is access to that which was previously and is at present an exclusive community and obscure hobby. It’s simple really, if I as Joe 20 The OverClocker Issue 32 | 2014
soap buy a Radeon 7770 for example. This is all I can afford, but if that purchase has gained me access to a competition where I may win a Radeon 290. Chances are I would be more than willing to participate in it, with just the system I have and the one I use to play games. That is at home however, in terms of live competition there’s an even more organic way to engage people. We should have, at this time, discarded our inherent reliance on fixed synthetic benchmarks. This is not to undermine the often impressive work that Futuremark and others have done. It is however saying that, the tie in between the “regular” enthusiast and competitive overclockers must be strengthened by way of more relevant application benchmarks. Several games at present include built in benchmarks, why not have those as the applications with which performance is measured? At a live event, this is far more engaging and even for spectators, they are more than likely to be familiar with the performance of a game rather than 3DMark FireStrike Ultra. How many of us know what a Radeon 280 scores in that benchmark for example? I would wager that very few people do. Even if we were to use such a benchmark, its staccato frame rate is anything but impressive or appealing to anyone. It is not a great showing for the hardware and perhaps even the benchmark itself. Contrast that with the fly-through benchmark of Hitman: Absolution, BioShock Infinite or any other “triple A”. Artistically these are more appealing, likely to be familiar and they have a direct relevance to what most people do who are at these competitions as spectators. If to an audience member, they are able to witness a particular game benchmark showing a frame rate of 46, instead of what they experience at home at 32 with lower image quality. It is direct way of incentivizing that individual to buy that particular graphics card. We may and always do appreciate ever increasing 3DMark scores, but there’s hardly anyone who knows what a good 3DMark score is for instance. What does 3,000 points in 3DMark FireStrike mean? What games does that play and at what quality? It’s a number, but it is meaningless in isolation. Yet a frame rate is something nearly everybody can relate to. There are plenty of opportunities afforded by a slight adjustment in how we as a community, vendors and all involved presently in overclocking deal with the larger computing space. To those within the industry we by and large understand why overclocking at a competitive level matters. This is either as a necessary undertaking for the purpose of selling components, or to a lesser degree an opportunity to refine future components through user feedback Issue 32 | 2014 The OverClocker 21
(a least that’s what I would like to think). There’s the issue of relevance though where for the sole purpose of reaching an even higher synthetic score, we turn to GPU setups that cost several thousands of dollars. In the same way that we appreciate quarter mile runs with highly tuned cars, it is not of mass market interest and there’s no real way to make it so. The volumes of people who can appreciate that exercise, but are capable of partaking in it are almost not worth counting. That doesn’t mean it’s not something we shouldn’t have. Consider however that a quarter mile drag competition with regular street legal cars is a lot more accessible. That very same car will go on a shopping run after the sprint. This is exactly how a competition with unmodified hardware or mass hardware can be significantly more attractive. That very same computer that was taking part in the competition for the highest Hitman frame rate is well and truly capable of actually running that game. That is to me probably the most direct way to engage everyone in this common interest and passion for hardware. How long it took for us to get a UHD/4K benchmark is indicative of this disparity between the competitive overclocking scene and the general enthusiast and/or gamer. There should not be a situation where you can get more information about game or system performance using a singular title, than you can with a benchmark which only serves the purpose of gauging system performance. I must add that it need not be a coordinated effort by all involved to do this and perhaps it falls to the vendors more than anyone else to make these changes. After all, they are the entities that stand 22 The OverClocker Issue 32 | 2014
to gain the most from this. With all the above said, I’m well aware that within the hardware industry, creativity is a distant second to mimicry and maintenance of the status quo. It is always perplexing to come across so many within the various companies that are not in tune with their customers. This is overclockers and gamers alike. It is possibly the only industry where every product or component goes from engineering to retail, with every step between only serving to facilitate that. As such, all the above is probably esoteric at best to those which can affect this change. Vendors make this hardware for “gamers” and market them by way of overclockers and competitive overclockers. Yet, neither of these two demographics is understood in any capacity that resembles adequate. Alas, that is a topic for another editorial piece. For now, this was a brief and perhaps superficial look at how we can all move to a more inviting, encouraging and diverse overclocking landscape. I still believe that we’ve so much potential, that we’ve not begun to tap into it, despite how far we’ve come. There’s no question that overclocking will continue to grow organically and may even be at an accelerated rate in the near future. Whatever the future may have for us, it necessitates that we constantly re-evaluate our ecosystem and make improvements where we can. For now though, it’s great to see an increase in the visibility of overclocking competitions and gatherings the world over. Personally I can’t wait to see even more of these, from 2015 going forward hopefully with some of the suggestions herein.
[ TheOverclocker ]
MSI X99S X-POWER AC RRP: $384.99 | Website: www.msi.com
Test Machine • INTEL Core i7 5960X • CORSAIR Dominator Platinum DDR4 3200 C16 • NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 • SAMSUNG PX941 512GB • CORSAIR AX1500i • Windows 8.1
H
ere with us this issue is another MSI overclocking motherboard. With each generation we see subtle changes to the physical layout of the MSI motherboards, but that isn’t a bad thing. They are in general well designed and for the purposes of competitive overclocking offer all the bells and whistles to attack the competitive rankings. In a word, MSI has hit their stride and this will only continue with future motherboards and certainly 24 The OverClocker Issue 32 | 2014
with graphics cards. With the X99S-XPOWER MSI has brought back several features which we are highly appreciative off. In fact we wish that more vendors would take these ideas into consideration and implement them on their motherboards. Many of these conveniences are not talked about enough in editorial and we are guilty of that as well here at TheOverclocker. For instance, MSI has included with this motherboard an “OC BACKPLATE”. Simply put this is a back plate that does not have the grooved screw holes. These are obviously necessary for regular coolers, but for extreme overclocking, the normal back plate is troublesome. Since most bars as used on LN2 pots are grooved as well and of the same diameter they can be used with a regular plate, provided you don’t’ mind making holes in the
plastic film that’s on the board by default. This film prevents regular screws as used on normal coolers from going through the back, the very thing you want for mounting your pot. Thus the OC BACKPLATE is without any threading so your barbs go right through and are easily secured on the underside of the motherboard. There’s no turning of the barbs individually, hundreds of times trying to get them all through the board and potentially causing an uneven mount on the CPU. The OC BACKPLATE is not only appreciated but we would say is a necessary addition to any and all overclocking motherboards. Together with “Delid Die Guard” as seen on the Z97 equivalent of this board provide some very useful overclocking components. (Diminished application for the guard however as there’s no need
for that with Haswell-E CPUs). Adding to the above is the OC Fan stand, the fan isn’t included, but you can get a matching yellow accented fan from Shark. Board layout is the typical affair but we do have the added benefit of DIRECT USB which is just a USB port on the motherboard where you can attach any USB device. It’s useful for USB keys that have a BIOS update, utilities, drivers or anything like that. You need not reach for the back of the motherboard which can be a chore or some sorts. This is added convenience that we wish once again was present on other competing boards as well. The oddity here is that MSI clearly acknowledges the benefit of not having to reach for the back of the motherboard, yet the Clear CMOS button, which will come into use plenty of times during overclocking, is located
at the rear of the motherboard. Where you’d expect a clear CMOS button you find instead a “Complete Discharge” button which only differs from a normal clear CMOS button in that it apparently clears data stored in the PCH as well. This is certainly a convenient feature to have but rarely if ever has it ever proven to be more useful than a regular CMOS reset button. The rest you should be well and truly familiar with by now, as MSI has kept largely the same design ethos as with their more recent offerings. The BIOS is still butter smooth and it is an absolute pleasure to navigate. It’s detailed but not difficult at all to use with a mouse or keyboard. We can never sing its praises enough and on this motherboard it’s very much welcome. So this should be the ultimate X99 motherboard,
at least under $400. MSI’s crowning achievement for the current crop of overclocking motherboards. This would be the case save for two issues it suffers from. The first is that this board is not capable of the high UNCORE frequencies (around 3.5GHz for our particular CPU which has seen upwards of 4.5GHz on another motherboard) but secondly and perhaps isolated to this motherboard is that there are issues with memory overclocking. Currently on the site it stipulates that this motherboard is capable of DRAM speeds in excess of 3333MHz. Throughout the entire testing duration of this motherboard, we were never able to get 3,000MHz to work let alone 3,200MHz, the native frequency of our testing kit. We have to wonder how this 3,333MHz was achieved and with Issue 32 | 2014 The OverClocker 25
which BIOS and set of memory this was done. Ultimately this is probably the largest problem we have with this motherboard. MSI by its very nature and certainly in its MOA competitions sells many of their motherboards as overclocking boards. When confronted with an issue like this, it is only fair to try other combinations of hardware; however that goes against the fundamentals of a controlled test environment. If the behaviour of the hardware is consistent with other motherboards and this particular board exhibits odd behaviour. We must investigate the incompatibility and make the initial assumption that it is very motherboard specific. What we found is that, this inability to load an X.M.P profile successfully indeed spoke
26 The OverClocker Issue 32 | 2014
more of the BIOS issues than our testing hardware. Using the latest public BIOS available at the time of writing (1.4B) upon loading the X.M.P profile, the Bclk would automatically increase to 120MHz. Obviously there’s not a single CPU we are aware of that can use this base clock while keeping the 1X base clock multiplier. Using 1.25X is possible however that would mean “under clocking” from the reference 125MHz to 120MHz and thus pulling down all related clock frequencies in the system as well (PCI-E clock for example). To give you some context or back story to this. If this was an issue prevalent in all X99 motherboards then we would be more than forgiving of this simple yet greatly disappointing incompatibility. If this issue, much like the UNCORE situation,
was a symptom of once again the inability to make the most out of a platforms potential performance we would understand. However this is something else, because we have motherboards from other vendors where the very same memory and the very same CPU have no problem reaching these memory frequencies (As per standard testing procedure and philosophy of only using reporting repeatable results). Far more concerning is that even the cheapest X99 motherboard we have at our disposal is capable of this. The entire point of X.M.P is that you load the profile and the system sets itself accordingly. It is at the very least a simple way for everyone to extract the most from their systems, regardless of their proficiency or skill level. Thus, when a motherboard such as this, geared towards
overclocking and performance by its very design is not capable of such, we are at the very least disappointed. That aside, this is overall a solid motherboard provided you keep your memory speeds below or at the 2,666MHz mark (Remember the 1.4B BIOS doesn’t even have multipliers above 2,6666MHz). It’s more of what we’ve seen before from previous MSI offerings on the Z97 platform. Those particular motherboards are sublime and the X99S-XPower AC follows them closely within the BIOS, board layout and in just about every value add feature. There’s very little to complain about here short of the memory issue, but it turns out that, this singular issue is enough to undermine our perception of this motherboard. We’ve no question that this will be resolved with future BIOS updates and in fact we had throughout the last part of our editorial process, received a 1.51 beta BIOS. It at the very least allowed the
system to POST with the X.M.P loaded but sadly we could not get into windows at all. It is however a step in the right direction. Depending on when you plan on making your purchase, this could just be the motherboard to get for all your overclocking undertakings on the X99 platform. At present consider waiting a while before purchase and look to see how the situation with the memory pans out. That is only if you care about such things though. If not, and you’re only ever planning on the lower frequency memory, there’s really no reason why you should not be looking to buy the X-POWER. As stated earlier, it does have some neat features and at the very least is a great looking board if aesthetics matter to you. The X-POWER then in closing is a competent board that with one or two BIOS updates could just be what was promised and the motherboard you want. [ TheOverclocker ]
Summary MSI has once again manufactured a respectable high end motherboard. It has all the bells and whistles we’ve come to expect from their overclocking line of products and perhaps a few more features. It’s unfortunate that there’s a memory clock issue that persists even months after it was released, preventing it from being a board we would recommend immediately. There is hope however that it will get rectified and chances are by the time you read this, it will be fixed.
Would you buy it? Not at present but perhaps in future.
Issue 32 | 2014 The OverClocker 27
GIGABYTE X99 UD7 WIFI RRP: $384.99 | Website: www.gigabyte.com Test Machine • INTEL Core i7 5960X • CORSAIR Dominator Platinum DDR4 3200 C16 • NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 • SAMSUNG PX941 512GB • CORSAIR AX1500i • Windows 8.1
I
f you’re confused as to why we are looking at GIGABYTE’s mainstream motherboard line (UltraDurable) instead of the SOC FORCE or the Gaming range we’ve grown very fond of here. Well, we’ll not beat about it, but let it be known that the UD7 is better. That’s not a typo or a facetious attempt at what would otherwise be a dull intro.
28 The OverClocker Issue 32 | 2014
This is actually true for many reasons. Perhaps and most relevant is that in the DIY hardware industry of today. Especially for competitive overclockers and power users, we rely on software. More specifically we rely on the firmware of the various components we buy. This applies to motherboards more than it does anything else really, because outside of the LN2 BIOS for our graphics cards and other voltage tuning software, there’s nothing else that’s needed. For motherboards, we need the brilliance right here; we need it to work better with each update. We need a firmware that, with successive iterations, adds features, increases compatibility and for the most part makes a
good product even better. This is ideally what we would like to see, this is especially for overclocking motherboards if not exclusively. In the context of the UD7, this motherboard is a sleeper hit with us because it has an identical BIOS to the SOCFORCE and the G1 GAMING. By identical we really do mean, identical in layout, options and everything, save for the colour scheme in HD mode on the GAMING motherboard. Everything else is the same
however. Thus while we may expect better from the overclocking and GAMING range, for Ultra-Durable this interface is more than enough. As such, in its context the X99 UD7 is possibly, and for us most certainly, the best X99 GIGABYTE has on offer. This is in practical terms as well, because unlike with other boards we’ve tried, this motherboard overclocks with relative ease. We aren’t talking about the base clock
as we’d argue that Bclk tuning is meaningless if you have a working UNCORE implementation and a BIOS that’s well tuned for memory clocking. With just about every motherboard capable of the small 3 to 5MHz base clock tuning, there’s no reason to celebrate that on any board. Yet, with that said, the UD7 is capable of a pleasant 106MHz with little to no fuss. More surprisingly, this motherboard in the entire
line-up offered us the highest Uncore frequency for our particular CPU at 3625MHz. In combination with that Uncore frequency our memory operated with ease at the prescribed 3200MHz. This is not to be taken lightly as this is not an easy task for many a motherboard. In fact, at the time of writing we were only aware of a single vendor that has all their motherboards working in such a manner. What the GIGABYTE X99 UD7 has done is basically steal the thunder from every other board we thought of initially when looking at the current GIGABYTE range. Given that this board isn’t about overclocking at all, it does it relatively well. How far you’ll fair with Liquid Nitrogen overclocking remains to be see. One potential problem is that the singular CPU 12V power connector may not be enough to see your CPU operate reliably (without shutting down) at the higher frequencies. This will depend of course on your CPU but we would think anything around 5GHz and higher will need additional power. Fortunately you can buy a two-one Y-shape power adapter that will allow your CPU to draw even more power without tripping your PSU. However, consider the fact that we are here talking about extreme overclocking on an ultra-durable board. That in itself is impressive, but GIGABYTE has gone farther than this to facilitate this process via the on-board buttons. These are not for adjusting clock speeds, but the simple conveniences which we’ve grown to take for granted. Clear CMOS, Power, Reset, a Post LED and in this case a DTB button (Direct To BIOS). This is obviously very helpful when overclocking and the POST sequence is far too quick for you to catch with the “Del” key. This is even more important when using Windows 8.1s UEFI booting schemes where there’s no way to readily distinguish between the POST Issue 32 | 2014 The OverClocker 29
process and the loading of the operating system. Just hit this button and you’ll be in the BIOS ready to change more parameters as you see fit. In addition, the UD7 also features BIOS switches, where you can pick between single and dual BIOS modes. For a motherboard that is in no way meant for overclocking it has plenty of overclocking functionality. For the more “regular” features, it has the bells and whistles of the GAMING motherboard save for the premium audio via the Recon 3D solution. This is the tried and tested ALC1150 codec backed by Nichicon fie gold capacitors. You also get an op-amp here, thus the audio solution is more than capable of gaming. It doesn’t sound
30 The OverClocker Issue 32 | 2014
too bad either for movies and music and is certainly enough for most people. Away from the audio, we have support for M.2 NGFF drives that are as long as 110mm. That is you can have up to 1TB of solid state storage on an M.2 drive working on this motherboard. Along with that you’ll receive support for the latest WiFi and Blutooth standard. It’s a full package with very little if anything we could nit-pick at. Perhaps it’s that we had little to no expectations of the motherboard that we came away impressed with what has been delivered. Regardless, it is a worthy motherboard for any power user or if you will overclocker as well. The only issue and perhaps
the biggest issue with this motherboard is availability. It just isn’t easy to find on any of the regular online retail stores we reference. At the time of writing it was not available on Newegg, tiger direct or amazon. You may even be led to believe that this motherboard only existed for editorial purposes in which case it would be very unfortunate as this motherboard that stands head and shoulders above its stable mates. Perhaps the UD5 shares this motherboard’s DNA and if you can’t find this one you could go with that instead. However, we would caution you because you could end up with a motherboard and obviously experience that is completely different from what you had expected. Thus it
may be worth searching with a fine tooth comb for this one if you’re convinced and ready to purchase. Aesthetics aren’t something that should be of paramount importance to anyone buying in the ultra-durable range. This motherboard is all business, but even with that, it manages to make the black and gold/ yellow accents work in a way that make it oddly attractive. When powered it has the audio Led path lighting along with the new illuminated rear IO panel. Both of which lend themselves well to just about any gaming build you can think of. As such it’s very possible that those that are interested in a pure gaming motherboard may end up with the UD7 instead. It works well in a gaming context as well despite lacking the expensive audio circuitry and processor or the dedicated gaming Qualcomm Atheros Killer NIC. You’ll find instead dual INTEL Gigabit functionality which in
our experience offers identical performance but has the added benefit of transparency to your user experience. As stated earlier, this is no nonsense motherboard that has plenty of features, but doesn’t oversell itself with any one of them. It overclocks better than it should, arguably looks better than the gaming board, has the same BIOS as the overclocking SOC-Force and in essence losses nothing to either one that really matters. From our vantage point, this is probably the best in the range and it would be even better if you could actually buy the motherboard as readily as the others. If you do manage to find it however for a reasonable price (that is you should expect to pay around the $390 mark by our estimates or a little more) then you should pick it up as you’re not likely to be disappointed with it in the least.
Summary GIGABYTE’s X99-UD7 WiFi is representation of a motherboard that just came together in the most unexpected but most fortunate way. It has M.2 support, 3200MHz memory capability, some neat overclocking features, great looks and impeccable build quality. There’s not much to dislike here other than how scare it is. It’s in our opinion the best X99 motherboard from GIGABYTE and that automatically makes it amongst the better boards on the market. If you can find one, do consider it.
Would you buy it? For the right price, yes
[ TheOverclocker ]
Issue 32 | 2014 The OverClocker 31
EVGA GTX 980 CLASSIFIED RRP: $699.99 | Website: www.evga.com Test Machine • • • • •
INTEL Core i7 5960X ASUS X99-A (1005) SAMSUNG PX941 512GB CORSAIR AX1500i Windows 8.1 (FW 344.65)
S
o here it is, the GeForce GTX 980. The successor to the GTX 780 from almost two years ago. With so much anticipation, especially from the gaming community, this GPU couldn’t have turned out better. Chances are you’ve read a dozen reviews to date and you may even own this very same model we are reviewing. While it's true we remain benchmark centric,
32 The OverClocker Issue 32 | 2014
it is important, especially as this is the non-TI version of the Maxwell GPU, that we concern ourselves with game performance a little more. Despite what we may want to believe and what vendors would have us believe. The GTX 980 is not a UHD or “4K” ready graphics card. Less so, even if not by much is the GTX 970. We have to put that out there so you can view the results in context. If you have to play any title at those settings you’re still better served by the GTX 780Ti. It may not be as efficient or as elegant a GPU, but it makes up for it with brute force. This naturally extends to the TITAN-Black and the TITAN-Z of course. That’s what you’ll
want for that resolution. With that out the way we can focus on what really matters and that is just how sublime the performance the GTX 980 has been in current games and believe it or not, in competitive overclocking benchmarks as well. In that particular scenario, there’s no need to compete for the top spot (Globally) using the 780Ti. Given that the GTX 980 has all the world records save for Unigine Heaven and Catzilla, the choice of GPUs for competitive overclockers has not only become simpler, but perhaps cheaper. If you compare the very best GTX 780 Ti cards on the market (KPC, Matrix Platinum and HOF V2), to what is currently
the best GTX 980 in the EVGA GTX 980 Classified. The price difference is a couple of hundred and sometimes more. More importantly, much like with the original K|NGP|N edition card, you genuinely don’t need much to reach these stratospheric frequencies apart from a pot, LN2 BIOS and this tool that’s freely available. It really is that straight forward. We can’t repeat how important this is, because as some of you may know. There are difficulties in delivering a graphics card to the market that's ready for LN2 right out the box. There are so many checks and red-tape, especially from NVIDIA’s Green light program
which make it difficult for not only EVGA but other vendors as well. 'Tis simple what we desire yet it is a matter of circumventing protection mechanisms for vendors. Given that most enthusiasts and would be overclockers these days want a card that needs no permanent or irreversible modifications. The task for EVGA is made increasingly more difficult in delivering a card that satisfies the more casual user and the veteran overclocker together. With that said, when looking at a graphics card such as this. It is a given that it is engineered very well for a mass produced part. If only a single sample was being manufactured, perhaps we’d
see what kind of graphics card both TiN and K|NGP|N envision in their dreams. This however is close enough, because after all, there hasn’t been any other GTX 980 that has repeatedly delivered such strong results with clock speeds consistently above the 2GHz mark, regardless of the sample. This is a very important point actually. Regardless of the claims, ultimately - the measure of any graphics card that isn’t reference is in how far it will overclock with the least amount of effort. As a result of every vendor having pre-overclocked cards, it is increasingly more confusing for end users. If you’re a competitive overclocker, it’s very easy; you simply buy Issue 32 | 2014 The OverClocker 33
this card if you can afford the near $700 price tag. If you’re a gamer and enthusiast, there has to be something that will justify the additional $150 over the normal ACX 2.0 GTX 980 or you’re simply paying too much. We’d like to be able to tell you that the Classified cards have higher overclocks in general than the regular cards, but that’s simply not true. Like most other GTX 980s on the market from tier one vendors. Your GTX 980 Classified will likely reach its limits around the 1500MHz mark(real clock). There’s no changing that and there’s arguably nothing EVGA can do about that as that’s just a silicon lottery. If you’re lucky you’ll get the golden
card that will do 1600MHz or more, but for the most part you should not be buying this in the hope that you’ll achieve higher clocks using exclusively air cooling. Do not be disheartened though as you’ll have a far easier time reaching the said 1500MHz clock than you would with perhaps another card; this is especially because we needed no voltage tuning on this particular sample we tested to reach 1500MHz. We just simply pushed the slider, hit apply and that was all there was to it. Adding more voltage helped us reach 1545MHz, but given the quirky way of how software voltage control works on the
GTX 980 cards, the additional 45MHz was not worth the effort. More importantly, as some of you may have figured out by now. The GTX 980 is sometimes bandwidth bound. This is made evident at QHD and glaringly so at UHD resolutions. It literally starts yielding diminishing returns as the core clock rises. Thus, you must be mindful of how you go about your overclocking as simply pushing the core clock will just cause unnecessary load on the GPU for little to no gain in actual performance. Again this is talking about QHD and UHD games. For standard FHD, there’s honestly no reason to even bother with overclocking.
Bioshock Infinite 1920x1080
2560x1440
3840x2160
Classified OC (1.5GHz/8.3GHz)
198,4
134,67
56
EVGA GTX 980 Classified
186,36
124,19
50,16
NVIDIA GTX TITAN Black
131,89
84,89
41,86
Tomb Raider 1920x1080
2560x1440
3840x2160
NVIDIA GTX TITAN Black
147,4
95,5
44,8
Classified OC (1.5GHz/8.3GHz)
191,2
120
40,4
EVGA GTX 980 Classified
174,1
109,8
31,2
Hitman: Absolution 1920x1080
2560x1440
3840x2160
NVIDIA GTX TITAN Black
74,5
49,3
25,4
Classified OC (1.5GHz/8.3GHz)
81,6
55
24,8
EVGA GTX 980 Classified
75
48,6
22,2
1920x1080
2560x1440
3840x2160
Metro Last Light NVIDIA GTX TITAN Black
87,45
59,24
30,63
Classified OC (1.5GHz/8.3GHz)
107,03
70,79
29,95
EVGA GTX 980 Classified
100,56
65,98
29,5
3DMark FireStrike
3DMark FireStrike Extreme
3DMark11
3DMark Vantage
Catzilla: 720P
Heaven Xtreme
Classified OC (1.5GHz/8.3GHz)
14291
7027
20361
61092
33642
4107,146
EVGA GTX 980 Classified
13175
6521
19536
59343
31049
3735,6
NVIDIA GTX TITAN Black
10569
5209
15467
55162
26714
3374,286
34 The OverClocker Issue 32 | 2014
If you’ve glanced at the performance figures, it’s very obvious that even with a 144Hz screen, the graphics card is more than capable of keeping up and you’re already living in gaming nirvana. The difference with the CLASSIFIED card is that, we could run games with a memory clock of 2,075MHz. That’s “8.3GHz” game capable with no adjustment to any voltage or TDP. You may be thinking this is just an isolated case, but it is not because just about every Classified card we’re aware of is capable of this feat. With the addition of FBVDD (as per EVBOT designation) you may reach even higher clock speeds. In our own testing when we used the EVBOT we reached a scorching 2.29GHz, which is “+1075” on the EVGA Precision X 16 tool. Something we’ve never achieved on any other graphics card. If there’s any reason to buy this 980 card for games, it has to be because out of all the GTX 980s on the market
this one has the memory overclocking legroom to make your games butter smooth at those higher resolutions. That’s just under 15.5% bandwidth gain and certainly not something you’ll be able to achieve on every card outside of the Classified range. Thus, it’s only fitting that you start your search here for that potential 4K gaming rig you’re building. For the rest of the competitive overclockers, there’s no need to tell you just what this card can do as you’ve likely seen it yourself in action if you don’t already own one. It’s simply the easiest and most direct way to go about overclocking the GTX 980 thus far. There’s no “shhh shhh” required, or anything of the sort. Buy the card, ready your LN2 supply, mount your pot and you’re good to go. If you’re feeling brave you can tackle four of them at a time much like K|NGP|N did (at 2000MHz each!) and go for the handful of GPU records we have at present.
Is this all worth $700? Well that depends really, it’s a premium product and it has the appropriate pricing. Much like all other “Classified” products from EVGA it costs a pretty penny. In the context of other products, the 780Ti Classified K|NGP|N Edition is currently available at $570 and that’s a card that can still deliver and for UHD gaming is still superior to any GTX 980 there is on the market. In light of this, $700 is a little too much. At $50 less, it would literally spell the end for any other GTX 980 on the market as there’d simply be no reason to buy any other 980. Be that as it may, the EVGA GTX 980 Classified is a one fantastic card. If your pocket allows and you’re in the market for a GTX 980, we would urge you to consider this card first. [ TheOverclocker ]
Summary Our first review of a third party GTX 980 happens to be of the fastest GTX 980 on the market. That has the potential of skewing our perspective on the GPU in general, but in this case it’s for the better. The performance is excellent and the build quality impeccable. EVGA has done a convincing job with the GTX 980 Classified. It would be the quintessential GPU for today’s gaming if it was a little more price competitive.
Would you buy it? If money was no object, yes most certainly
Issue 32 | 2014 The OverClocker 35
CORSAIR DOMINATOR PLATINUM 3,200MHz DDR4 16GB Kit
Hardware Award
OC Hero Award
ERP: $749.99 | Website: www.corsair.com
Test Machine • INTEL Core i7 5960X • ASUS X99-A (1005) / GIGABYTE X99-UD7 WiFi (F7d) • SAMSUNG PX941 512GB • CORSAIR AX1500i • Windows 8.1
A
re you ready for your new X99 build? Are you finally retiring your X79 “benching” setup and looking for the right set of memory to match it all? Well, you just may be in 36 The OverClocker Issue 32 | 2014
luck because according to CORSAIR, they have just the memory you seek, but more importantly, the kit you desire. At 3,200MHz, this kit is about as fast as you can get right now, because the 3,333MHz sets are virtually none existent from just about every memory vendor. The SKUs are there, but that has little to nothing to do with retail availability. For those who will go out and spend this much on a 16GB kit, you best do so with the intention of making use of this frequency or perhaps performance. If you’re using a motherboard that just can’t
manage to get this memory working or perhaps does not have the necessary divider working, then you should move right along. This DRAM costs more than any and all X99 motherboards and as such, there’s some considerable thought that should be undertaken before deciding this is the set you want. We will not mince words; this is an insanely expensive set of memory, but it does in the world of extreme overclockers and enthusiasts make far more sense than those 3,200MHz DDR3 8GB kits which retail for more than double the
price (How on earth these were considered remotely plausible sets of memory boggles the mind). We managed to test this kit on about four difference motherboards and could only conclusively state that it works on two of them without having to go through hoops to get it there. Granted, you’ve no business buying such a set if you’re not well versed with BIOS/UEFI tuning. However that shouldn't be a prerequisite for any set of memory. The days of the old 637MHz~ OCZ Platinum DDR memory are long behind us (If you remember that set for the DFI NF4 SLI-DR, then I’m talking to you) and we’ll have none of those shenanigans. You should be able to load the X.M.P profile and have your memory work reliably at the given frequency. Fortunately throughout the testing of this kit, compatibility with boards increased with each passing
week. From essentially working on only ASUS motherboards with other motherboards exhibiting a variety of problems ranging from failing POST, to generating errors in Hyper PI 32M, it’s been steadily improving and we can confirm this kit working a variety of boards from ASUS and GIGABYTE. CORSAIR’s own compatibility list for this kit only has the Rampage V Extreme as a qualified board, but this list should grow as more boards are tested we’d imagine. That aside, once you’ve managed to get the DRAM working as it should, you then have to deal with the UNCORE or NB frequency. Of course you should know this as anyone reading this magazine. If you don’t however. we’ll break it down for you as succinctly as possible. This frequency, which has an independent multiplier to the core and memory, has a very large impact on memory
bandwidth. Basically you want this UNCORE frequency to be as high as possible. If it is set too low, it will cap performance and regardless of what you do to the memory frequency. There will be no performance scaling. Unless you’re aiming at specifically reaching high memory clocks for the sake of CPU-Z validation, your UNCORE speed should be at the very least the same frequency as your DRAM speed. In this case that would be 3,200MHz. Easy enough to achieve given that with the CPU we used (and just about any other CPU for the platform for that matter) the reference UNCORE frequency when using X.M.P was 3 to 3.1GHz (close enough to matching the memory frequency), with multiplier settings set to auto or disabled [EIST, TURBO, C6/ C7 etc.] Thus, one need only set 32X manually and you’re ready to “enjoy” your Issue 32 | 2014 The OverClocker 37
3200MHz speed. For select boards where this may prove troublesome, it is best to just avoid this memory completely as there’s no fixing low UNCORE frequency management via a BIOS update. If you must have the memory speed however and don’t mind some minor soldering work, you may solder two pins on the underside of your CPU which should allow you to reach at least 4GHz if not higher on the NB clock (This mod comes courtesy of Der8euar of Team PRO OC EU / LN2 Pot manufacturer and all ‘round spiffy guy). Be advised that with such a high memory clock and UNCORE frequency; some systems
38 The OverClocker Issue 32 | 2014
may have trouble resuming from sleep states. Other than that there really isn’t anything else to concern yourself with as far as compatibility is concerned. What of the overclocking headroom and performance? Well, as insinuated earlier, we are already dealing with a glass ceiling of sorts with memory rated at this frequency. The frequency will not scale much higher than this using air or liquid cooling( at 1.35V). This depends on the CPU and motherboard almost exclusively. One just never knows what a particular CPU sample is good for in combination with the motherboard and the memory. In our very specific example, trying anything
above 3350MHz rendered the system incapable of POSTING at all. Using a higher base clock multiplier was out of the question as, this CPU like many are not capable of using the 32X multiplier in combination with a 1.25X base clock. So that endeavor was perhaps never a real option. Still, we have to say it is significantly easier and simpler reaching these frequencies with DDR4 (and in particular this set) than it is with DDR3. Not only that, the performance is substantially better. We’ve thus far not seen any indication of performance discrepancies between single or dual sided memory modules with DDR4, so the fact that this kit for example uses single sided DIMMs
Dominator Platinum 3200
DRAM Read
DRAM Write
DRAM Copy
DRAM Latency
Super Pi 32M
Frequency
Timings
78439
62404
78380
51,8
416,469
3200
15-16-15-20-1T
75849
62354
74166
51,6
415,897
3000
14-14-14-20-1T
73552
62311
70433
52,6
418,639
2800
13-14-14-20-1T
72902
62274
68654
52,9
417,359
2666
12-13-13-20-1T
should be of no concern at all. With the maximum DRAM speed attained, we backed down all the way to 2,666MHz and proceeded to test which timings offered the best real world performance. Would it be 2,666MHz with lower timings or would it be the default 3,200MHz given the massive impact UNCORE had as well in determining this. Our results suggested that 3,000MHz was actually the sweet spot, delivering the fastest Super Pi 32M time. 3DMark11’s CPU test disagreed however and the best performance seemed to come at 3,200MHz, which means you’d need to tune the memory according to your particular needs. Operating the memory at much lower frequencies in the hopes of attaining better timings proved fruitless as the scaling was nowhere near what we had expected. Our experience echoed what we were told by those who are well versed with DDR4; voltage looks to be key above all else. Should you want substantially lower timings then you will need to increase the DRAM voltage above 1.5V. Naturally this will have a detrimental effect on the lifespan of your modules and may eventually cause irreversible damage to the sticks. Which at this price is
something we’d think many would try and avoid, but if you’re going for gold, there may not be any other way, regardless of your cooling. After all the testing and fiddling with settings we could manage in a reasonable time frame, we only confirmed what we initially suspected. This CORSAIR DOMINATOR PLATINUM DDR4 3200 set is the fastest memory we’ve ever come across. Sure, CORSAIR along with some other vendors have higher SKUs, but those are largely academic as they will prove even harder to operate at the rated frequencies than this set. For all practical reasons this is the memory of choice for those who are after nothing but performance. We suspect this is particularly the competitive overclockers who are well funded. For the more regular “enthusiasts” or power users, it may be better to go with the Vengeance LPX 2666MHz 32GB kit. It may only be 2,666MHz but it is roughly $60 cheaper and offers double the capacity while offering wider compatibility. This particular set is the cutting edge and is appropriately priced. If there’s going to be any worthwhile frequency overclocking achievement done, it’s going to be with
this kind of kit and as with all things related to such pursuits, you’ll need only the best memory available and what CORSAIR is offering here, is exactly that. The best high performance overclocking DDR4 memory we've tested.
[TheOverclocker]
Summary CORSAIR is no stranger to the elitist group of memory modules. With each generation of memory CORSAIR has managed to produce some noteworthy kits and this Dominator Platinum kit is a classic example of this. Their focus may be gaming related even with the Vengeance kits, but with such kits CORSAIR quietly reaffirms its ability to produce some of the best if not the best sets of performance memory money can buy. The price is steep, but the performance is there to justify it.
Would you buy it? If price was not a factor, definitely
Issue 32 | 2014 The OverClocker 39
 
S G N I K N A
A view from the community
In every issue of The Overclocker we present you an overview of the HWBOT League rankings. From Pro OC to Rookie you can find the top-10 of each category in the tables below. Thumbs up to everyone who made the hall of fame!
R
OC League Rankings
The current leaders starting from Pro OC going to Rookie are Team Pro OC EU, 8 Pack, BarboneNet, Riska, Natybaby2013 and pho5ph0ric.
Pro OC
Elite
Extreme
1
Team Pro OC EU
471 pts
1
8 Pack
2871.6 pts
1
BarboneNet
1696.7 pts
2
OCUKPro
451 pts
2
Smoke
2558.4 pts
2
Hideo
1584.5 pts
3
KRONOS PRO OC
445 pts
3
TeamAU
2278.8 pts
3
Moose83
1539.1 pts
4
KPC Pro OC #2
376 pts
4
Vivi
2074.3 pts
4
l0ud_sil3nc3
1503.3 pts
5
Hardware.Info Pro OC 370 pts
5
sofos1990
2034.7 pts
5
mtech
1483.6 pts
6
NP2Korea Pro OC
358 pts
6
Wizerty
1945.6 pts
6
michel90
1475.9 pts
7
United Overclockers
235 pts
7
der8auer
1929.1 pts
7
TaPaKaH
1442.1 pts
8
Overclockers Pro OC
217 pts
8
StrategosSan
1761.6 pts
8
Amateurs
1258.6 pts
9
Ph_Team Hungary
165 pts
9
zzolio
1761.4 pts
9
I.nfraR.ed
1257.8 pts
163 pts
10 Xtreme Addict
1745.6 pts
10 Mikecdm
1229.2 pts
10 JagatReview.com
Enthusiasts
Novice
Rookie
1
riska
939.9 pts
1
Natybaby2013
520.6 pts
1
pho5ph0ric
392.5 pts
2
poparamiro
854.3 pts
2
zwitterion93
504.2 pts
2
Arne Saknussemm
292.7 pts
3
vadimua
821.9 pts
3
spider220075
455.2 pts
3
nexus35
235.3 pts
4
Menthol
769.4 pts
4
nvidiaforever2
408.2 pts
4
balmore.rivas.73
180.2 pts
5
Punk Sods
749.8 pts
5
kjjweber
356.3 pts
5
BigSmokie
149.4 pts
6
alexmx
698.1 pts
6
Matsglobetrotter
316.7 pts
6
alvaro.f.rodriguez
139.2 pts
7
zupernico
664.9 pts
7
george.kokovinis
314.8 pts
7
D@rkKey
129.6 pts
8
NATA 58
648.9 pts
8
sprayman.ws
305.4 pts
8
IOWA
106.3 pts
9
sskmercer
642.7 pts
9
Soorena
297.7 pts
9
4Core
92.9 pts
624.2 pts
10 manurap46
296.0 pts
10 mshagg
10 twisted1
90.6 pts
(standings as of November 27, 2014)
2
Gumanoid
S NKINGS A R OC League Rankings
- ASUS AOOC 2014 -
ASUS AOOC 2014 Qualifiers
ASUS AOOC 2014 Final
1 8 Pack
78 pts
1 Dancop | BenchBros
108 pts
2 Dancop
60 pts
2 Xtreme Addict | Giorgioprimo
104 pts
3 Wizerty
50 pts
3 Wizerty | TerraRaptor
91 pts
- GIGABYTE Competitions -
GIGABYTE Z97 Beat the Heat Challenge
GIGABYTE Target OC
1 DFORDOG
78 pts
1 I.nfraR.ed
1 pts
2 Yin92
69 pts
2 Gumanoid
1 pts
3 ZeR0_Dan
46 pts
3 fgi
1 pts
- HyperX OC Takeover -
HyperX OC Takeover 2014 EMEA Qualifiers
HyperX OC Takeover 2014 NA Qualifiers
1 Perica_barii
61 pts
1 Splave.ROM
75 pts
2 8 Pack
59 pts
2 l0ud_sil3nc3
54 pts
3 varand
55 pts
3 coolhandluke41
48 pts
- MSI Master Overclocking Arena 2014 MSI MOA 2014 Classic Battle
MSI MOA 2014 No Limits Battle
1 Vivi
152.2%
1 Wizerty
70 pts
2 T0lsty
151.9%
2 bboyjezz
64 pts
3 oc_windforce
151.5%
3 steponz
42 pts
- Rookie Rumble Rookie Rumble #9
Rookie Rumble AMD #6
1 zwitterion93
141 pts
1 zwitterion93
141 pts
2 daNE
123 pts
2 JunkDogg
127 pts
3 arhaam
98 pts
3 l3gendluk3
91 pts
Rookie Rumble #10
Rookie Rumble AMD #7
1 daNE
141 pts
1 daNE
150 pts
2 zwitterion93
114 pts
2 zwitterion93
123 pts
3 pho5ph0ric
104 pts
3 nik.bloomberg
104 pts
Rookie Rumble #11
Rookie Rumble AMD #8
1 daNE
141 pts
2 IOWA
123 pts
3 nexus35
82 pts
1 daNE
2
2 william.takeshita 3 nik.bloomberg
150 pts 118 pts
Gumanoid 103 pts
Our Biggest Project Ever Takes O The HWBOT World Tour creates global exposure for regional gatherings and ties local communities to the rest of the world. Together with our event partners we welcome you at our events in North America (Montreal), Europe (Poitiers) and Asia (Taipei).
Click to find out more
The OC Show Your overclocking talk-show In each episode of the OC Show, Pieter (Massman - HWBOT) and Tim (Xyala - OCTV) cover things that happened in the overclocking community. This includes upcoming events, new hardware releases, interesting overclocking records, benchmark discussions, and maybe even a tiny bit of industry gossip.
For the 2014 season finale of "The OC Show" (S01E06), join Tim and Pieter from the Moscow Cyber Stadium to have a chat about: • the MSI MOA 2014 Finals • the ASUS AOOC 2014 Europe Final • the OC-Esports.io competitive OC platform • the HWBOT World Tour 2015 & World Series • upcoming competitions by Galax (GOC), Jagat Review (AOCT) & HyperX (HOT) Relax, grab some pop-corn & enjoy the show.
Discuss this episode hwbot.org/tosdiscuss
 
The OC Show
MSI MOA 2014 Aftermovie In this brief recap, take a look at the MOA 2014 official aftermovie. Take a look at what happened and how it all went down in the largest overclocking competition in the calender year.
B O R NT OG A ME GeForceGTX 980 Seri es Graphi cs Cards
GAMING GEAR AWARD
ASUS Gladius RRP: $80.99 | Website: www.asus.com SPECS SIZE: 126mm x 67mm x 45mm WEIGHT: 116g INTERFACE: USB BUTTONS: 6 (Omron D2F/C) SENSOR: 6400 optical sensor
A
sus has had plenty of gaming mice for several years. Many of them were a hit and miss affair for me, to the point where I didn’t even think of ASUS when considering a mouse. The STRIX Claw was possibly the first mouse I may have considered from ASUS but even then I just wasn’t moved from what I read and saw on the web about it. Granted that mice, like all peripherals are subject to personal preference, I still believed and still do believe that with the Gladius, ASUS has struck the right chord. This is true for a few people I know as well because much like I, they had had little to low expectations from this one. It’s one of those times where I ‘m actually glad I went into this review with this perspective because it made using the mouse only that much more pleasurable. Before I go further, I’ll make it 46 The OverClocker Issue 32 | 2014
known that I absolutely have no love for the scroll wheel on the Gladius. This could be a defect of this particular sample but the button press is mushy, unpredictable and requires an excessive amount of force to activate. The problem is that even this isn’t consistent. Sometimes it will require very little force to engage, then at other times you’ll press and nothing will happen at all. The scrolling function is without issue, but the button press is useless and I just couldn’t use it at all in any game. Fortunately that’s about the only thing that is overtly wrong with this mouse and like I said earlier, I do suspect this may be isolated to this particular mouse. If it’s not, well, it is something ASUS can hopefully improve on in future iterations. Everything else, concerning this mouse however is actually impressive. Surprisingly so in fact because it’s simple in design but works so well. After using a fairly cumbersome and elaborate mouse over the last three months, I had forgot what it was like to have such few buttons on a mouse. You would not say six buttons are few, but in this day and age with mice that have upwards of 12 buttons. Six is a conservative number. With those six buttons however, you can pretty
much do anything and everything you need to do in any FPS game. This is important to note because the Gladius is an FPS mouse and will not be ideal for those who want a mouse for the hundreds of hours they spend on RTS games. This is not for that demographic. It is a focused precision tool that may not help you in your headshot trophy pursuit, but will most certainly not hinder you in anyway. As a palm grip user, I do like the height and it is wide enough to support the entire palm and not just the centre. As far as comfort goes, there aren’t many mice I’ve used that feel this good. Partially responsible for this comfort I suppose are the patterned rubber sides which provide plenty of grip. There’s nothing futuristic or unusual about the Gladius, it’s a straight forward mouse design that is very well constructed and focused. The time I spent with this mouse made me realize just how much I missed well executed simplicity. This minimalistic design ethos pours into the mouse interface or Armoury software as well. I’m always fascinated by mice interfaces and by and large they are good. These days it’s hard to find an outright poorly designed interface, but even then there are some that leave
you wanting. This isn’t the case with Amoury. Dressed in the various red ROG hues it’s straight forward and well laid out. It makes all the features of the mouse easy to configure. What I appreciate especially is the mouse sensitivity button which only has two settings. In reality, that is all you need. You’re either sniping or firing down the sights. There’s quite possibly never been a situation where I’ve needed three or more mouse sensitivity settings in any game. With the Gladius, you press once and you’re at the low/ alternate setting. Press again and you’re back to normal. There’s a light to remind you (whenever you have time to take your eyes off the screen) of what setting you’ve engaged, but it isn’t necessary at all I believe, as you can only have one or the other setting engaged. One of the many unique features of the Gladius is that it is the only mouse I’m aware of that allows you to have a polling rate of up to 2000Hz. Sounds academic more than anything else and it is for the most part, but that doesn’t mean the claim is vacuous. Setting it to 2000Hz actually results in the mouse polling at that rate. Another nifty feature of this mouse is the ability to control the degree of angle snapping. Most mice allow
you to either turn it off or on, but the Armoury software allows you to pick exactly how much of it you want or how little. You can dial in the perfect setting for your game. It is peculiar though that you are not able to set independent X and Y-axis sensitivity, which for a mouse that allows you so much fine grain control, is a little disappointing. Fortunately this isn’t too much of an issue during gameplay and setting general sensitivity and polling rate along with the level of snapping allows you plenty of freedom. As I had mentioned before, you may configure the lift-off distance sensitivity, but this is a semi-hidden setting. You have to select the surface calibration check-box first and only then can you set the lift-off distance. There’s plenty more to this mouse and I could go on the whole day or better yet for many more pages, but I’ll leave it at that for now and talk about the presentation of the mouse. ROG products can be said to many a thing, but cheap is not one of them. This is once again very clear with the Gladius as it is packaged with a high quality breathable carry bag. You’ll also find within the package two USB cables; one braided and a shorter, stiffer
plastic cable. I personally prefer the softer braided cable, but it’s always good to have the option of either, especially if you don’t have a mouse bungie. The plastic cable can tend to limit movement or result in unwanted negative feedback to your movement, potentially causing erratic mouse movement. This is an earnest effort by the ROG team and one that I can respect immensely. There’s nothing gimmicky or pretentious about this mouse and it delivers in spades in FPS games. The more I used it the better I found it. The Gladius could be my favourite mouse for the moment. I’m underwhelmed by the scroll wheel, but despite that this is still a great mouse that more than makes up for this short coming in just about every other area. ASUS has finally created a mouse that is worthy of your attention and if you do pick this up, you might be pleasantly surprised. It is better than many mice that retail for the same price or more and it has some unique features to boot. As always, if you’re in the market and are looking for something outside of the norm, give the ROG Gladius a spin, you just may like it. [ Iron-Synapse ] Issue 32 | 2014 The OverClocker 47
Alien: Isolation Genre: Survival horror Developer: The Creative Assembly Publisher: SEGA Website: http://www.alienisolation.com Price: $49.99
A
fter the depressing debacle that was Aliens: Colonial Marines, it was all but impossible for me to feel any form of excitement leading up to the launch of Alien: Isolation. Not only was I terribly bitter after shrugging my way through Gearbox’s pitifully average first-person shooter, but Isolation developer The Creative Assembly was going the arguably more difficult route of aiming to replicate Ridley Scott’s Alien, rather than James Cameron’s Aliens. Which is to say that it was going the route of delivering tense, thoughtful survival horror rather than mindless, teethgrinding action. So I mostly ignored the game to be honest, until a copy of it made its way to my desk. And I’m so glad it did. First, let me clarify what I mean by the above, in case it’s still unclear. To me, it’s theoretically relatively simple to ensure excitement by delivering an endless stream of things for players to shoot and punch and explode, to get their hearts pumping with the thrill of 42 The OverClocker Issue 32 | 2014
being unstoppable killing machines. That’s what Aliens is. Rebellion’s Aliens versus Predator (released back in 1999) and its sequel, even though they aren’t strictly centred on the Aliens franchise, are perhaps the best examples of how to do action-packed Aliens right. On the other hand, it’s arguably far more challenging to coax the flow of adrenaline by generating sustained tension and instilling a constant sense of dread in the player, to deliver a true horror experience in which feelings of supreme helplessness are the defining emotion. And while AvP is plenty challenging and tense in its own way, there’s not been a game that’s truly captured the essence of Ridley Scott’s original Alien. Until now. Isolation casts you as Amanda Ripley, daughter of Ellen Ripley, recurring protagonist in the Alien/s canon. It’s set in the time between the first two films; 15 years after Alien, and 42 years prior to Aliens. Ellen’s still quietly drifting through space
with Jonesy the cat when Amanda learns that the flight recorder of the Nostromo has been recovered, and travels to the space station Sevastopol in the hopes of accessing the recorder and uncovering clues pertaining to her mother’s disappearance. Naturally, there’s no chance such an adventure would ever go off without a hitch, and it isn’t long before you’re struggling for survival within Sevastopol’s metallic depths. Crucially, the developers have managed to recreate the look and feel of Alien with remarkable accuracy. The lo-fi sci-fi aesthetic is faithfully captured, littered with the beeps and boops of simplistic terminals and the gentle whirr of tape recorders. Screens flicker and growl with snowy static, and most things are covered in big, glowing buttons and flashing lights. It’s a view of the future as seen from the ‘70s, and I love the notion that humanity was seemingly much too preoccupied with racing to the farthest reaches of space to waste time inventing things like full-colour user interfaces for their computers. The visual design is impressive, and so is the technology that powers it – outstanding lighting and smoke effects generously enhance the game’s persistently oppressive atmosphere, and the sound design is similarly effective. The deceptive groans and clangs of the Sevastopol keep you on the edge of your seat, and you’ll feel chills every time you hear the xenomorph’s unmistakable hiss. Playing Isolation brought back memories of playing System Shock and its sequel. Most of your time in Isolation is spent skulking in the shadows, trying to avoid the plethora of dangers aboard the station. The alien isn’t the only threat here: bands of human survivors are often hostile,
driven to kill by the station’s desperate circumstances. Sevastopol’s governing AI has also gone a bit loopy, and as a result many of the Working Joe androids who service the station are significantly more murderous than usual. There are weapons in the game that’ll do in a pinch, and facing threats head-on is possible, but never recommended. Ammo is scarce and Ripley’s no warrior, meaning combat situations are brilliantly unforgiving. It’s better to use the environment to your advantage, hacking terminals to turn off lights and create audible distractions, or using the game’s simple but effective crafting system to create things like smoke bombs and noisemakers to help you avoid contact. Your crafted items can often be placed as proximity traps, so you can wire up pipe bombs or EMPs to
take out groups of enemies should they wander too close if you choose. Obviously, the game’s defining factor is the xenomorph itself. The way it’s employed in Isolation is genius. As with the original film, there’s only one alien to contend with in the game – and while it’s seldom the primary threat in any given situation, it’s always lurking near the back of your mind. You’re always keenly aware that the actions you take could attract it: make too much noise, get caught in a firefight, and the alien could appear to make an already tough situation borderline impossible. Being hunted by the alien creates the sort of overwhelming tension that few games manage to evoke. Move too quickly, make one wrong move, knock over a glass beaker and it’ll be on you faster than you can say “I wonder if it heard me”. Issue 32 | 2014 The OverClocker 43
There’s no killing it either; all you’re really able to do is hide in lockers, scurry under tables, and hope that it’s enough for it to ignore your scent and disappear into a vent. As fond as I’ve become of this game, there are some bizarre mechanics in place that don’t necessarily sour the experience, but they nonetheless had me scratching my head. I understand that it’s often necessary for developers to artificially limit the player’s ability to traverse the environment and break the progression system they’ve so carefully planned, but it seems bizarre that Ripley is incapable of jumping over counters, or even hopping over a knee high stack of suitcases. In a game this immersive, it’s absurd
44 The OverClocker Issue 32 | 2014
when situations arise where there’s a crafting blueprint in plain sight that’s guaranteed to aid my ability to survive, but a low counter is preventing me from reaching it. As much as I adore the game’s narrative-conscious save system – which sees you inputting an ID card at save terminals scattered throughout levels, waiting a few seconds (during which you’re very vulnerable), and then saving the game – it does lead to frustration. This is a very difficult game and save terminals are quite scarce, which means that you’re often forced to re-play large chunks of it over and over again. As a result the smallest of mistakes are deeply punishing, and it eventually becomes painful.
Some of the alien’s movement patterns are canned, or at least they seem to be – it’s suspicious that it always seems to loiter around the exact room or locker in which you’re cowering, occasionally stopping by for a closer look. While this is great for maintaining tension, it does make staying alive between save points especially tough. And speaking of hiding in lockers, why is it that holding your breath for longer than a few seconds (to help avoid detection) causes you to lose health? Occasionally the xenomorph AI bugs out a bit, and it vibrates on the spot or gets trapped in geometry – it’s nothing too serious, but it shatters the illusion when it happens. There are a few technical issues as well, particularly with regards to frame rate in the console versions (the PC version is butter smooth though), and a handful of audio bugs that severely hamper immersion. Thankfully, it’s nothing a patch won’t fix. Strange design choices and tchnical stumbles aside, this is a fantastic game, one that’s finally done Alien justice. It’s remarkably atmospheric, and the developers have successfully made the xenomorph scary again after other games and films have caused it to lose some of its terror factor. If you’re a fan of this hugely iconic franchise, there’s no excuse for you to not play Isolation. [ Dane Remendes ]
Would you buy it? I love Alien. I love Aliens. Alien: Isolation is one of the best games out there to bear the name of this iconic franchise, so hell yes I’d buy it.
The Score
9.1/10 Issue 32 | 2014 The OverClocker 45
Tomb Raider Ultra 1080P: 64.4FPS (32.2FPS Native resolution) 3DMark Firestrike: 5543 PCMark 8 Creativity Suit: 5996 Battery test (PCMark8): 88min37sec
GAMING GEAR AWARD
MSI GS60 GHOST PRO 3K 2QE RRP: $2,299 | Website: www.msi.com
B
efore I go further I will start by stating that there are about five different iterations of this very notebook at different prices, with different configurations. The product name has nothing to do with anything really and MSI may as well just name the notebook products after the serial numbers. Actually I’m pretty sure that’s what’s happened, as a single change in any one of the letters or numbers can signify a completely different notebook with an entirely different user experience. Thus, only look to this review as a rough guide of what MSI has as a product somewhere in their many SKUs. If you are convinced by the end of this review that this is what you want, make doubly sure this is what you’re actually getting as you may end up with a lemon when I had tested a diamond. Now that we have that out the way, let’s get the bad over with. I’ve already mentioned the confusing naming schemes, but more importantly I’m still perplexed by the 3K or even 4K option on this notebook. It’s a 15.6” screen and such pixel
48 The OverClocker Issue 32 | 2014
densities are great on the desktop I suppose but serve no purpose. More importantly there’s not a single triple A title that is playable at these resolutions and you’ll inevitably end up selecting 1080p, thus negating the point of having such a high pixel density in the first place. If this notebook was available in regular 1080P (probably is) then that’s what you should be buying. That and the tacky gold finish aside, this is still a stellar notebook. Actually this is a very good notebook. Sure it isn’t perfect but compared to the GT72 we reviewed last issue, I would take this over that model any day and I liked that notebook. There are many reasons for this but if we’re concentrating on the specification and that solely. This notebook has the upper hand because it has the power where it counts. You get 16GB of DDR3 1600MHz memory in dual channel, two x 256GB drives in RAID and a fairly potent CPU as well. Just those three alone make for a powerful combination of hardware that will handle all tasks and certainly all modern games well at full HD.
Best of all, this power comes in a sleek and thin profile that is hard to not appreciate. As far as capability goes, in my tests I found that the GS60 performed just as well as the 880M powered GT72 and in fact it was faster in many of the benchmarks. Even with “just” two SSDs, it was just as fast as the three SSD configuration found in the GT72. All this may make it seem as if I don’t appreciate the GT72, but that is far from the truth actually. That was a good notebook; it’s just that this one is even better where it matters most. For the requested price (if it is indeed this price) it is very hard to beat as it just ticks all the right boxes and even when you use it, you can’t help but be impressed with what MSI have managed to pack into such a small profile. For the first time you can actually have desktop performance on the go without having to worry about a notebook that only has battery life good enough for 20 minutes of gaming. After all, that is the entire point of a notebook. Portability is key, before power and the GS60 does both pretty well.
MSI has, unlike with the previous model included a profile management system that has three pre-sets ranging from economy through to the sport mode. Each is selfexplanatory and they obviously affect performance accordingly. The great thing is that with the Geforce Experience software along with what MSI has for these profiles, you can extend your gaming sessions for hours on end without a noticeable drop in performance. This is especially true when you’re playing RTS games, where battery life can be extended anywhere from 30 minutes to a whole hour, with no perceivable loss in performance. I can only imagine how much more power would be saved if MSI had gone with a 1080P IPS display instead of this 3K panel. Having said that, the panel is something to behold in reality as it is nothing short of incredible. From every angle, the colours remain sharp and focused. I didn’t notice any bleed at all or any distortion regardless of what was on-screen. In a conundrum of sorts, MSI has paired a brilliant panel together with an impressive GPU, but they don’t quite work optimally together in performance numbers. However even at 1080P this display is great and there’s little
to no incentive to play on an external display, at least there isn’t one for qualitative reasons. Sound is as you’d expect out of such a small body, it’s adequate and surprisingly detailed, but obviously has nothing remotely resembling bass. Thus you’ll want to use a headset or plug it into a set of speakers. The provided audio is of adequate quality and is enhanced by the Sound Blaster Cinema software. Rarely would I expect software to make such a large difference but in the case of this notebook it does and is a valuable addition to the software package. I’ve previously written about the SteelSeries software and nothing has changed in regards to that package. It has plenty of configuration options, but isn’t the most intuitive application to use so there could be some improvement there. In the time I spent with this GS60 Pro, one thing was very clear and that was how much better it is as a whole than the previous GS60 which I really liked. Some aspects have not been improved so it’s equal there, but in every other way it is better and thus overall it is a much improved product. There are plenty of gaming notebooks on the market and
there will be even more. MSI is at the forefront of it all providing some really great systems for all pockets and this is one of their best units to date. There’s a 4K model as I had mentioned previously and I can’t imagine it being better in any than this one, thus I’d say if you want the super high resolution then this is good enough. It is also likely to cost you a little less. Here’s to another great gaming notebook from MSI, there’s some distance to travel until MSI has an absolute lead over every other vendor, but at the pace that they are going it won’t be long until the company can rightfully claim to make the best gaming notebooks money can buy. They have certainly eclipsed Alienware and have other vendors squarely in their sights (At least I hope so). The GS60 Ghost Pro 3K 2QE becomes the best gaming notebook out of MSI for me and I’m sure if you use it even for a little while in person you’d agree. It isn’t perfect, but it gets so much right that it more than makes up for whatever short comings there may be. For those who have the funds, you can’t do much better than the GS60 Ghost Pro 3K. You should give it some serious consideration.
[ Iron-Synapse ]
Issue 32 | 2014 The OverClocker 49
EKWB EK-KIT X360 RRP: $453.69 | Website: www.ekwb.com SPECS COMPATIBILITY: LGA775/1366/115X/20111/AMD COMPONENTS: 360mm Radiator, 3x Fan, Pump, Reservoir, tubing, fittings, concentrate, universal CPU block, Y-cable splitter, ATX Bridge plug.
I
’ve said it many times and I keep saying it again. Water or liquid cooling these days doesn’t give you more overclocking headroom for CPUs than regular air cooling. To buy a liquid cooling kit for the sole purpose or at least in the hopes of increasing your daily overclock is futile. It is not going to happen especially with the high end air coolers we have these days like the Noctua NH-D15 which outperforms some AIO 240mm units. Those days are behind us and right now, it’s either you go sub-zero degree cooling or use any cooler which catches your eye. This is true 99.9% of the time, but the X360 is probably the 0.001% where it actually does allow higher overclocks for your CPU compared to NPTU "*0 VOJUT.
50 The OverClocker Issue 32 | 2014
I so happened to receive this cooler soon after the Haswell-E CPUs released, thus I had only spent a brief amount of time with the CPU using SFHVMBS cooling. One thing was certain however and that is that the 5960X was a hot CPU. Even the very good ones were hot. There’s nothing that can be done about B CPU that has that many BDUJWF $16 cores. This XBT B CMFTTJOH BT JU XBT a perfect opportunity for EKWB’s X360 to prove that it is worth the hefty price tag it commands. Keep in mind that this is an entire kit, all the components are available from EKWB separately, but IBWF have put together for end users to buy without having to figure out which one piece goes with another. Inside the box you’ll find that each component has a manual with it that assumes you bought the individual item, thus it makes no reference to how you’d fit it all together as part of the X360 TFU. Do not be alarmed though, because despite how complicated it all looks with all the various pieces laid out in front of you. It’s a fairly straight forward process. In fact once you have this system connected removing and mounting it can be a fairly rudimentary process. Perfect for people like me who do not use a case and have to change
out CPUs, motherboards and other components regularly. As far as simplicity goes for the mounting system, I would say that the X360 is only second to the Corsair Hydro series and those are AIO coolers which are not in the same class as the X360. As you would expect from EKWB, the workmanship of all parts is impeccable. The degree with which FWFO Uhe barCs aSF machined is incredible *UhT in stark contrast to so many All in one coolers that flood the market yearly. If I had to make an analogy or a direct comparison to cars, EKWB would be Rolls Royce, where All-in onecoolers were family station wagons (minus the wood). In light of just the material quality, the price of the X360 begins to make sense and you should know that it will last you an incredibly long time 4o in the grand scheme of it all, it’s worth the price. Performance though is probably what you care most about, I most certainly care about that more than anything and this is where the X360 makes an argument for itself as one of the best ready to buy all in one cooling kits on the market. I would say that this is outright the best water cooling kit you can buy right now, but I know that’s not
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