TheOverclocker Issue 27

Issue 27 2013 rev 2.1

THE WORLD’S BEST OVERCLOCKING ONLINE MAGAZINE. FOREVER.

Cover Feature

ASUS RAMPAGE IV EXTREME BLACK EDITION

Reviewed

GIGABYTE GVN78TGHZ-3GD Reviewed

PowerColor R9 290 4GB OC Interview

Mad “Mad 222” Tse Lifestyle

Battlefield 4

THIS IS 2013!

T

his, our final issue of 2013, comes just over a month after Issue 26. Now I know why we don’t do this monthly, it is taxing in more way than one can imagine.

Alas I’m here again writing the last Ed’s note for the year. Tired, excited for 2014 and looking forward to the New Year.

One of the things you will have noticed about this issue is that it’s on an entirely new platform. Those that have been with us for a while will find some familiarity with it. We decided to move to this new platform for several reasons which, not only include speed, portability but by and large this makes for a better read and it’s one that we hope you’ll enjoy. The magazine is still available on the older system but this is the one of the future and if you compare the two you’ll easily see why.

So what’s there to say about 2013? Well, it’s been a ride alright. So many things have happened in the OC world. From controversy, wins to sheer fail. It’s all been there. What kind of year would be it though if there wasn’t come controversy surrounding HWBOT? It’s always at the center of it, but for good reason I’d imagine. Regardless of how you feel about the database, its employees or the community’s reliance on it, it is a venture that is necessary and it has by numbers seen more participation now than in the last two to three years. So that has to count for something.

Hardware wise, it’s been what I expected, a new mainstream performance segment platform in the form of Z87 but what really got me excited was Ivy-Bridge E. I couldn’t have imagined that this platform would produce such incredible scores.

Interestingly enough, this chipset has also produced what is in my humble opinion the best motherboard I’ve ever come across.

Yes that’s the one on the cover and I’d not have it any other way. Mind you we’ve had some stunners this year, not limited to but

including GIGABYTE’s Z87X-OC and the ASUS MAXIMUS VI Extreme. I’d think that if you ever needed any motherboards in your arsenal you need at least two of these, possibly all of them.

Graphics card wise, well this epic battle between NVIDIA and AMD has brought us fantastic graphics cards and even better yet, prices. The pricing has been highly contested largely because of AMD’s doing.

I’m appreciative of this and hope to see this happen going into 2014. It’s also good to see the 780 Ti come out with all guns blazing. It is certainly doing the job even though if you looked right now you’d find a few R9 290X cards at the top of most HWBOT lists. I do suspect that many of us are waiting for the KPC Edition cards along with the Lightning and perhaps the HOF card from GALAXY. These are the three we will be watching out for and who knows. ASUS may pull a rabbit out of a hat and provide the community with a blistering 780 Ti of their own. If not we’ll settle for an epic 290X instead. Whatever you prefer, this has been a good year for graphics cards and it’s likely to get better going into 2014.

I had thought to say something about memory vendors here at the end as there was so much to write about, but in the end I figured it’s best to say nothing at all.

This industry should hopefully pick up for them and as a result for us the end users.

There haven’t been any must have sets of memory and the pricing has been anything but sensible for the high end 2933MHz+ kits.

Here’s to 2014 being better on both fronts.

In closing, I’d like to thank all the readers for their support. We are a little light this issue, but hey we’ll be back with even more content in Issue 28. Until then, do enjoy the rest of your 2013 and we will see you all on the flip side.

[ Neo Sibeko - Editor ] Issue 27 | 2013 The OverClocker 3

26

REGULARS 3 - Editor’s note

FEATURES 6 – Q + A with Mad “Mad 222” Tse 12 – ASUS RAMPAGE IV EXTREME Black Edition 34 – Soap Box The Overclocker is published by OCL-Media (cc).

REVIEWS

Editor Neo Sibeko

18 – GALAXY GTX 780 HALL OF FAME 20 – GIGABYTE Z87X-OC Force

Art Director Chris Savides

22 – KINGSTON Hyper X Genesis

Marketing & Sales Jayda Wu

10th Anniversary Edition 16GB Kit 24 – PowerColor R9 290 4GB OC

Contributors Dane Remendes Pieter-Jan "Massman" Plasier

26 – AMD Radeon R9 290X 28 – GIGABYTE GV-N78TGHZ-3GD

For editorial and marketing please contact:

LIFESTYLE

jayda@theoverclocker.com or neo@theoverclocker.com

36 – Battlefield 4 41 – Prolimatech MK-26 Black Edition 42 – OCZ Vertex 450 256GB SSD 43 – Cooler Master Nepton 280L

42

28

4 The OverClocker Issue 27 | 2013

QA

with with Mad “Mad 222” Tse Country Name and City: Hong Kong, China.

What language(s) do you speak?

Cantonese, Mandarin, English.

Your nickname “mad222”, how did that come about?

222 sounds =easy easy easy in Cantonese; mad222=easy to get mad.

When did you start overclocking seriously or rather competitively for points? Is overclocking solely for competitive purposes or do you take part in it for “fun” mainly?

I started overclocking about 8 years ago and began to participate in competitions since the development of my first OC Team in 2008. Yes, I mainly do it for fun.

Which is your favourite benchmark if any and what is your least favourite and why?

I like all kinds of 3D & 2D benchmarks except those with heavy silicon torture.

You’ve been doing a lot of work with GALAXY lately, how did you get together with the company and why do you prefer to work with them over any other vendor?

I started to associate with Galaxy in a competition organized by them back in 2009. Galaxy is a growing company that insistently aims to promote and advocate the concept of “Overclocking” if you will.

Any great scores you can tell us about that you’ve achieved using the new 780Ti HOF? Ah... you will get the surprises in time.

6 The OverClocker Issue 27 | 2013

We know you mostly bench NVIDIA graphics cards, but what are your thoughts on the Radeon R9 290X? Frankly, not bad at all if ATI can spend more time on polishing its drivers. I like the idea of core unlock on certain GPU die batches. It’s always fun to unlock something with surprising bonus.

You have been overclocking with a lot of the guys at HKEPC. Do you mainly bench with them or do you have other people you regularly bench with?

I do bench with HKEPC team mates, but I bench alone most of the time.

What are your two favourite motherboards at the moment for the Z87 and the X79 platform?

Asus Z87 M6E & ASRock Z87M OCF; Asus R4E & R4BE. What is the most supportive memory vendor for you and overclocking?

Team, Corsair and Geil at the moment.

Issue 27 | 2013 The OverClocker 7

How feasible is it for you to get access to LN2 where you live and how much is it?

Easily accessible, but way too expense. It costs some HKD 50 per litre.

How often do you have overclocking sessions in a month?

It’s around 4-5 times a month. A few hours per session after work.

What are you currently overclocking?

Galaxy Geforce GTX 780 HOF & Galaxy Geforce GTX760 HOF as pretest preparations for GOC 2013.

Any hardware you’re looking forward to buy in 2014?

Z97 motherboard, for sure, can’t wait to get a touch on it.

What is your favourite graphics card and platform to date?

Galaxy Geforce GTX780 HOF + Intel Ivy-e + Asus X79 R4BE. What is your single greatest or most memorable overclocking achievement?

Galaxy Geforce GTX780 HOF clocked 1933/1922. http://www.3dmark. com/3dm11/7243265 Issue 27 | 2013 The OverClocker 9

Are you currently participating in the HWBOT Pro OC Cup and if so, how is it going for you and your team?

No, I haven’t competed for any HWbot contest for a while.

How is the overclocking scene in Hong Kong? Is it growing or pretty much the same as it has always been?

It’s pretty much the same as before.

Anything you’d like to see changed in the overclocking community right now?

I would like to see more and more OC enthusiasts who really enjoy overclocking with true skills receive more support from different vendors.

Any other insights you would like to share with the community regarding overclocking, hardware or anything related?

Keep doing what you think is the best way to move the community move forward What do you do outside of overclocking that you spend as much time on as you do overclocking?

I spend most of the time with my family Do you have any advice for upcoming competitive overclockers trying LN2 for the first time?

Don’t be scared, keep pouring!

Issue 27 | 2013 The OverClocker 11

RRP: $499.99 | Website: www.asus.com

ASUS RAMPAGE IV EXTREME Black Edition EDITOR’S CHOICE AWARD

OC Hero Award

Test Machine • INTEL Core i7 4960X • CORSAIR Dominator Platinum 4x4GB DDR 2666MHZ C10 • EVGA GTX 780 Classified • Corsair LS 240GB SSD • Cooler Master Silent Pro M2 1500W • Windows 7 64-bit SP1 BIOS 0208

T

his may have started about as a regular review of the Rampage IV Extreme Black Edition. However, during the course of this review, something had changed as it has now turned into our cover feature. At the time of planning this issue, there were so many things we wanted to cover to end 2013 with, but when the RIVE Black Edition showed up; well, let’s just say it put everything else into perspective. It’s truly amazing what a single product or component rather can achieve and how it can shape the many more things outside the scope of its use.

We as overlockers, some

12 The OverClocker Issue 27 | 2013

competitive and others not, have gone from a neglected and frowned upon sub culture, to easily the most addressable group of individuals within the computing space. Every other group is addressed out of necessity, spoken to as a whole and largely dictated to a far larger extent than we are.

With overclockers we may believe our wishers are not granted, we are not given a platform to speak and most importantly, regardless of what it is we request, it is never met with our expectations, if it is met at all.

How easily it would be to forget then, just how far we have traversed this DIY landscape with vendors. To them, overclockers have become a painful necessity. After all, while it is true that there is space for gaming orientated motherboards and such. There are only so many things you can add to a motherboard or graphics card short of an actual game that would make said component gaming centric.

A name alone would not do the trick, yet here we are, many years later and several generations of ROG products to call upon. We find ourselves looking

at what is hopefully not, but potentially the greatest ROG motherboard that will ever be, at least in the near future. As many of us all know, it takes an individual familiar with the community, with the needs of the community or rather wants, to produce a board that resonates with us. It is very easy to see this because out of the top four or maybe even five vendors that are in any way concerned about overclocking, each and every one of them has employed or consulted an overclocker somewhere in their component design. Some have fared better than others, while others, not afforded the voice they should rightfully have, have still managed to make miracles happen. Others are there in spirit only, but whichever

way you look at it, we can say that from within the community, greatness has been brought fourth and it is not evident in any other product so much as it is in the Rampage IV Black Edition.

As Shamino’s last board potentially, at least at ROG, what we have here is peerless, unparalleled work. Not to take anything away from the rest of the team responsible for making this board happen, but we see the characteristics of a motherboard here, that leap out at us speaking a single name. That of Shamino, and if this be his swan song, it must be said that there is no better way to make an exit, or at least we couldn’t possibly imagine a better way.

Years ago, a moniker on ROG boards read, “rock solid, heart touching” and as trite as that was. When dealing with this board in particular, that is exactly what comes to mind. This is the one to keep well past its relevance, years after we have a new platform, this Issue 27 | 2013 The OverClocker 13

will be one worth owning. It is nothing short of a crowning achievement for a platform that went from frustrating to outright challenging and dare we say loads of fun. This is assuming though you’re on a semi functional board.

As we’ve stated time and time again, X79 motherboards have been by and large less than adequate and most time atrocious, with the exception of a few, mainly this board’s predecessor or lesser version (one could not have imagine describing the RIVE as a “lesser” version of anything) and far more recently the X79 Dark (with the most modern BIOS versions).

So just how much better is this board than every other board and perhaps even over and above the RIVE? Well, consider the following.

While every motherboard vendor was celebrating memory frequency records, on the Z87 platform, this motherboard was the only board to claim such a record on what just has to be the incorrect platform.

The incredible speeds were not only impressive, but consider the following as well if you will. The said 4GHz clock was achieved with all channels populated. That is with four sticks of memory in quad channel. To this record, to this feat there was not a single rebuttal from any other vendor producing any other board. The quiet that followed this achievement was and remains unprecedented. At a time where every MHz gained in memory frequency warranted a press release, this one achievement is so far ahead of anything else for the chipset that we heard, read and saw nothing close to it. We didn’t even record any attempts.

Not to take anything away from the Maximus VI Impact, which holds the record, but again there’s no need for us to spell out the common factor between these two achievements.

This kind of dominance is ever more pronounced than when the original Rampage IV Extreme showed up two years ago.

So what then would it be that we would single out as the throw down argument for why this has to be the definitive X79 motherboard, perhaps the quintessential overclocking motherboard or all? Well, the answer there is very complicated. You’d have to literarily go on for pages to list all these reasons, however, much like we said before with the MAXIMUS VI Extreme, and others. It’s the simplicity in which overclocking takes place with the Rampage IV Extreme Black Edition that is mind boggling. No matter your experience level, not only are you 14 The OverClocker Issue 27 | 2013

educated in overclocking the said platform by using this board, it helps you at every turn gain the maximum overclocks and efficiency possible.

Unlike any other competing board, it is not taking pot shots in the dark. The RIVE Black Edition is predictable, it is consistent and best of all, its results are repeatable time and time again.

In our own testing, it would be untrue to say that we spent no less than a full 24 hours straight optimizing a single set of memory for operation on this board. This was not because we had any difficulties running the set at spec and far beyond, no. It was simply an exercise that allowed us to marvel at just how far one could take a single set of memory on the X79 platform while making it useable without resorting to LN2 for example.

Not only did the RIVE Black Edition, match all our previous attempts on other Z87 boards, but we were able to do with all four sticks of memory installed. When we needed 3,000MHz from a quad channel 2,666 C10 set, the RIVE Black Edition rose to the challenge and instantly delivered the

results via a profile from which we then tuned for efficiency.

Many may frown upon the use of said profiles and would rather seek out the correct or ideal settings themselves through an arduous process of trial and error. However, we do believe that that the joy of overclocking is not in its difficulty but in traversing the road to your desired milestone the simplest and more efficient way possible. Moreover, the truth is not many of us will be able to optimize memory the same way that Shamino could. It will always be laudable to try, but the reality is that many of us do not have it in us to tune memory to that degree with that level of understanding. Thus, it is best to use the profiles spring board if possible and go forth from there. There aren’t many starts that will be better than those provided within the BIOS. There are an insane number of features that we could go into but that would be pointless. It’s best to think of the RIVE Black Edition as the original board, with even more to

All results were obtained at 4625MHz on an un-optimized Windows 7 64-bit. These are our figures, yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system. Note that we used a 125MHz BClk* to keep the numbers consistent with other X79 motherboards.

Motherboard

Cinebench 11.5

ASUS RIVE Black Edition

14,11

3DMark11

Super Pi 8M

Aida 64 Copy

Aida 64 Latency

BIOS Version

14559

1.26.783

72865

46,6

Bios 0208

1.28.093

64928

50

Bios 2.05

1.28.047

30526

47,8

Bios 0403

Physics: 17090 EVGA X79 Dark

14,1

14442 Physics: 16841

ASUS X79-Deluxe

14,1

14330 Physics: 16092

tweak and marvel at. Perplexing as well, is that the RIVE Black Edition not only presents itself as the best overclocking motherboard we have ever seen, but it so happens to be the greatest gaming motherboard around as well. This is not achieved through gimmicks, no but in a simple and direct way. You will receive your network traffic shaping NIC, but with it some of the best audio you will find on any motherboard right now. There’s no denying the fact that ASUS knows audio, very well actually. With some of that expertise poured into this board, we instantly have a motherboard that is not only dual purpose, but possibly a leader in both applications. It is most certainly the leader when it comes to overclocking of any kind, be it you employ air, liquid, dry ice or LN2 cooling. There’s not a better alternative right now and the odds are, there will never be for the remainder of this platform’s life.

For the gamers who are looking to justify this purchase, consider the Assasin’s Creed: Black Flag coupon as well. After all, as proficient as

this board is at being a gaming motherboard, what best way to promote that rather than packing a triple A title with it? Moreover, it packages the best version of the entire Assasin’s Credd legacy into the package. If you’ve read this far and are contemplating the gaming machine build of your life. In other words your “ultimate” (at least for your budget) gaming rig, simply buy this motherboard and be done with it. Think not of alternatives, potential replacements, nothing of the sort. It is far from being cheap, but it is far ahead of anything else, more so than the price would suggest.

As for the rest of us, it is simply a matter of owing our X79 CPUs at least a single run on the Rampage IV Extreme Black Edition. You’ll never really know the maximum potential of your CPU or memory kit until you have them on this board.

There is no other board that will bring you this close to the edge this conveniently. You could write it down to the OC-Panel, perhaps

the exhaustive memory tweaking options, the CPU tuning functions, the power delivery on the board or anything else. The bottom line is; this is the greatest motherboard ever made. It is so finely executed it should be a study for all future motherboards. There are no further accolades we could shower upon this board even if we wanted to, had we still used a numeric rating system this would be a perfect score. There’s nothing else like it. We here at TheOverclocker Magazine, pay our greatest respects to the team behind this board and more importantly Peter “Shamino” Tan, for time and time again producing products that pushed the industry forward and made us marvel at what was possible with focus and an unyielding dedication to perfection.

This board much like the man will and should live on the tongues and minds of overclockers for years to come. It’s unconceivable how magnificent it is.

[The Overclocker]

Issue 27 | 2013 The OverClocker 15

GALAXY GTX 780 HALL OF FAME RRP: $539.99 | Website: www.galaxytech.com

Test Machine • INTEL Core i7 4960X • EVGA X79 Dark (v2.05) • CORSAIR Dominator Platinum 4x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10 • ADATA SX910 128GB SSD • Cooler Master Silent Pro M2 1500W • Windows 7 64-bit SP1 (FW 331.58)

HARDWARE

As with most GTX 780s catering to enthusiasts and overclockers, the HOF features a somewhat elaborate cooler featuring several heat pipes (four to be exact) combined with a vapour chamber design to help keep the GPU cool. How well this works obviously depends on your environment but in our fairly warm testing environment, we never saw temperatures passing 68’C. With that said, when increasing VDDC and clocks together you may see temperatures as high as 74 18 The OverClocker Issue 27 | 2013

to 78’C. This is to be expected though when pushing clock speeds past the 1.3GHz mark.

As with other 780s on the market, the card makes use of the CHiL CHL8318 controller with I2C Bus support. The 8+2phase PWM may seem to be on the low side especially considering that competing cards have as much as a 16-phase circuit, but that shouldn’t be an issue at all as the card is able to provide up to 480A to the GPU. As shown by some results, the GPU is as equally capable of hitting those high clock speeds as other cards which on paper may seemingly provide more power.

Rounding it all up is the usual dual BIOS system, operated via a spring switch at the rear of the card. When pressed a secondary BIOS with a high GPU clock profile is used, but with that comes a much higher fan speed (set to 100%) and noise of course. The other BIOS is the normal mode, with the inherent OC that GALAXY set (1006MHz base).

Value Award

OC Hero Award

THE PERFORMANCE ( AIR OC)

Air overclocking on this card is a typical GTX 780 affair.

Cards do vary in overclocking potential, but suffice to say this particular sample faired pretty well when it came to the GPU clocks. Disabling Turbo will always help the situation and as such we were able to finish a slew of Benchmarks at 1306MHz. Not necessarily the highest we’ve seen but certainly respectable. The only down side is the memory which wouldn’t really do anything more than 1652MHz (SDR) or at the most 1700MHz if you kept the GPU clock standard. That is however, nothing to do with GALAXY or their engineering efforts, but the ELPIDA memory which just doesn’t come to the party. We aren’t sure if there are any cards that use different memory, but suffice to say this clock should in theory improve under cold even if it’s by a small margin.

Failing that rest assured that the GPU core will definitely

Summary

All results were obtained at 4625MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit. These are our results, yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system.

Graphics Card

3DMark Fire Strike

Catzilla: 1080p

3DMark11

HWBOT Unigine Heaven Xtreme

Hitman:Absolution (Ultra 4xAA)

GALAXY GTX 780 Hall Of Fame OC

10883

14697

15787

3390,746

75,76

1.3GHz GPU /6.4GHz Memory

Graphics: 11979

Hardware: 14132

Graphics: 15924

NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan OC

10196

15414

15317

3261,555

75,56

1175MHz/6.8GHz Memory

Graphics: 11528

Hardware: 14880

Graphics: 16922

GALAXY GTX 780 Hall Of Fame

9800

13080

14453

3052,971

66,95

Default

Graphics: 10648

Hardware: 12578

Graphics: 14354

NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN

8960

13483

13729

3032,096

69,81

Default

Graphics: 9952

Hardware: 13060

Graphics: 14474

make up for it. If you’re buying this card solely for your gaming purposes then you’re in luck because 1,215MHz for example doesn’t need any GPU adjustments at all. You simply set the clock and start running your benchmarks or games.

THE EXTREME OVERCLOCKING (LN2)

The most notable scores produced with this card are from Computex 2013.

At Galaxy’s booth, several noteworthy and high calibre overclockers (including but not limited to OC-Windforce, Mad 222 and Duck_san) took to conquering various 3DMark benchmarks. Throughout the entire week several records were broken and where they were not, the scores were very impressive none the less. Looking at the screenshots you can see that, the GPU clocks are there for sure, sometimes, it’s the memory that isn’t coming to the party as we observed with air cooling.

This is unfortunate, but hardly a party stopper. We finally have another vendor catering for extreme overclocking and that can only mean good things for us all. Do keep in mind though that overclocking of any graphics card is not simply a matter of attaching a GPU pot and clocking the GPU. You’ll get somewhere with that but not anywhere near where you should be. So be mindful that once again you’ll need an LN2 BIOS (easily available on the net through a Google search) at the very least and a few mods.

However it’s nothing any self-respecting overclocker can’t figure out. (While we wrote this, Mad 222 managed an impressive 21832 in 3DMark11. Not present on the BOT, but a valid score verified

by Futuremark. That was with the GPU core clocking in at an insane 1,933MHz. If that doesn’t speak to the quality of the card in question, then nothing else will. )

This is our first experience with Galaxy’s HOF GPUs and as the saying goes.

First impressions last and this has been a fairly good one. Actually, it’s been a little better than expected if only because there is true intention behind the card and it’s not just marketing and sales solely. The card is genuinely made with overclockers in mind and it isn’t any harder to put under cold than the other top 780 cards on the market. The GPU clocks are there under LN2 that’s for sure. For those that are looking at just air cooling, well you’ll face some problems with the LEPIDA memory used as it just doesn’t clock as well as Hynix or Samsung GDDR5, but fear not because even if you’re just tweaking the GPU core, there’s plenty of overclocking headroom left for you to play with.

Visually, it’s one of the best if not the best as it dukes it out with the MSI GTX 780 Lighting.

The White PCB besides being unusual should lend itself well to case mods or anybody wanting to show off their beastly graphics card. If there was a matching water block for it, we can imagine it would even be more enticing. So, ultimately we have an impressive piece of kit here. If it weren’t for the EVGA GTX 780 Classified, it’d be neck and neck with the MSI GTX 780 Lightning as the fastest GTX 780 cards money can buy. However, being comparable to a graphics card that costs $80 more is an honour in itself. It also happens to be the cheapest OC orientated 780 on the market and for that it certainly deserves our praise.

Would you buy it?

Most certainly, there is absolutely no reason to skip out on this one, especially at the new price of the all GTX 708 cards

[ The Overclocker ] Issue 27 | 2013 The OverClocker 19

Hardware Award

GIGABYTE Z87X-OC Force RRP: $399.99 | Website: www.gigabyte.com

Test Machine • INTEL Core i7 4770K • CORSAIR Dominator Platinum 2x4GB DDR 666MHZ C10 • Corsair Force LS 240GB • Cooler Master Silent Pro M2 1500W • Windows 7 64-bit SP1 • Bios Version F8b

L

ast issue we had the great opportunity of putting the Z87X-OC through its paces and finding it to be the most impressive GIGABYTE motherboard to date. Despite having to prove itself against two other pure overclocking motherboards, the Z87X-OC came across as the champion of motherboards, which should be GIGABYTE’s pride and joy. If you didn’t read that review, you can find it here.

This issue we were greeted with the bigger, grander version of the Z87X-OC. This board is supposed to be 20 The OverClocker Issue 27 | 2013

the ultimate overclocking board for the Z87 platform.

It features many things that you will not find on the cheaper board including or primarily 4-way SLI support.

More than that though, the OC Force provides you with dual LAN capabilities, WiFi and Bluetooth support, an additional 4 SATA ports and superior audio via the improved ALC898 chip as opposed to the older ALC892 on the OC board.

The form factor has also changed for the OC Force to that of the E-ATX standard as the board is 2cm longer. You’ll be hard pressed to notice that the board is literarily packed with components.

What you may find peculiar though is that despite costing twice as much, in the context of overclocking, this board has fewer OC buttons than the Z87X-OC. The OC Force is missing the mem-safe, settings lock, clear battery and direct to BIOS buttons.

None of these buttons are

a necessity of course, but consider that if you are going to be overclocking and tweaking memory. There are going to be plenty of times when you can’t POST the system because of overly aggressive timings or invalid settings. Sorting through this on the Z87X-OC as a result will be much quicker than it is on the OC-Force.

To offset the absence of all these features though, GIGABYTE has, as mentioned previously, added 4-way SLI support via the familiar PLX switching chip. How useful this is on the Z87 platform is debatable as the 4770K simply lacks the horsepower required to keep four high end graphics cards working at their optimum performance.

As always though, this switching IC will rob you of performance if you’re using a single graphics card. To that end, GIGABYTE provides an additional 16X full length PCIe slot that’s wired directly to the CPU. This is a sensible and

All results were obtained at 4600MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit. These are our figures; yours may vary, so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system.

Motherboard

Cinebench 11.5

3DMark11

Super Pi 8M

Aida 64 Copy

Aida 64 Latency

INTEL DZ87KLT-75K

10,05

12793

1.26.206

32753

32

1.25.904

33698

41,1

1.25.993

33728

42

Physics: 12724 GIGABYTE Z87X-OC

10,15

14098 Physics: 12677

GIGABYTE Z87X-OC Force

10,15

13899 Physics: 12690

much welcomed feature that should be on all boards with such a chip.

The conundrum here however is that if you’re going to use one graphics card, then you would be better served by the Z87X-OC. If you want to overclock four graphics cards, then you should ideally move to the X79 platform. The problem here though, is that GIGABYTE, much like all the other vendors save for one, doesn’t necessarily have a competent board for the X79 platform. Thus, this situation as a matter of circumstance necessitates the existence of the Z87X-OC Force.

It’s one of those situations where we understand where the vendor needs to be and what the user requires.

Those needs however, don’t necessarily intersect.

In what almost seems a point to compensate for this, GIGABYTE in addition to the features mentioned earlier provides a third party Marvell controller for four additional SATA 6Gbps ports, bringing the total drive support to 10. For the liquid cooling enthusiast, GIGABYTE provides a hybrid liquid/active fan cooling solution for the PWM area of the board and the switching chip.

All these additions and in some cases subtractions

result in the Z87X-OC Force which as you’ve seen is exactly double the price of the Z87X-OC. Do we believe that these changes justify the price premium? On paper they probably do as every additional component GIGABYTE places on the motherboard costs money, thus there’s no way this board costs the company as much as the Z87X-OC. Does this additional spend on the side of the user though result in a significantly better motherboard? That answer for us is not necessarily.

There are cases where this board will be a must have and for whatever reason the G1.

Sniper 5 is not an option at all. In such a situation then you should definitely buy this board. However, the G1 Sniper 5 will provide you with better audio (significantly better audio) and you’ll get the dual NIC support (a better solution via a Killer E2200 controller) as well. So ultimately the OC Force’s job is not made difficult not by competing products from others vendors per say but by its own stable mates that are thoroughly featured in very specific ways that they overlap mostly with what the OC Force is offering.

An odd position this motherboard finds itself in then. Technically it’s a sublime. Thoroughly better

than the previous Z77X-UP7 with none of the drawbacks and all the advances made

by GIGABYTE since then.

It definitely has a place in GIGABYTE’s pantheon of motherboards. Overall this is a solid motherboard that will serve many to most overclockers well enough to warrant its pricing. For the more discerning competitive overclocker though, you may still be better served by the Z87X-OC. [The Overclocker]

Summary The GIGABYTE Z87XOC-Force is something of a mix between the G1.Sniper 5 and the purist Z87X-OC Force.

On paper that is killer combination to have but in practice you’re probably still better off with buying these two bards separately. Still, the Z87X-OC force is one feature packed premium overclocking board.

Would you buy it?

Only if we couldn’t get the Z87X-OC Force or the G1.Sniper 5

Issue 27 | 2013 The OverClocker 21

EDITOR’S CHOICE AWARD

GIGABYTE GV-N78TGHZ-3GD RRP: TBA | Website: www.gigabyte.com only shipped in its reference form. The 780 Ti, is being offered to NVIDIA’s partners as single GPUs, • INTEL Core i7 4960X thus we have come to cards such • ASUS Rampage IV Extreme as this one from GIGABYTE. Black Edition (0208) At this point you’ve probably • CORSAIR Dominator Platinum 4x4GB DDR3 read through several GTX 780 2666MHZ CL10 Ti reviews online or in print. So • Corsair Force LS 240GB SSD typical or rather reference Ti • Cooler Master Silent Pro M2 performance is familiar to you.

1500W It may be small sometimes but • Windows 7 64-bit SP1 (FW none the less, the 780 Ti has 331.82) claimed back the crown for NVIDIA as the vendor with the VIDIA’s release of the fastest GPU on the market.

GTX 780 Ti was what we If however, that isn’t enough had waited for and you are in search of since the introduction of the even more performance. Then GTX TITAN. It was no secret that this particular model from GK110 still had some unused GIGABYTE is going to be what silicon space, but we were you need. As you would expect, unsure if there would ever be GIGABYTE has gone with a a SKU that utilized the full core new PCB with enhanced power logic. The GTX 780 Ti does that in circuitry, a BIOS with a higher a way, but not entirely. As many of power limit and obviously of you know, the GTX 780 Ti is great importance, their latest gimped where it comes incarnation of the Windforce to compute performance. For 3X cooler. As it stands this is the most part or in almost all GIGABYTE’s latest version and contexts, the reduced doubleby far the most impressive. precision performance The claim is that it has has no bearing on gaming up to 450Watts of cooling performance. Thus, there are performance. A high figure very few situations or if any and one we can’t really test but where the TITAN will outperform nonetheless are compelled to the GTX 780 Ti. give some credibility to. After all, More importantly for the 780 it really did keep this particular Ti, is that unlike the TITAN which graphics card very cool, where

Test Machine

N

28 The OverClocker Issue 27 | 2013

load temperatures peaked at 68 to 71’C depending on the load on it.

Turning the card over, we see GIGABYTE has added some class and function by way of a back plate to the card. This plate did get warm during load, but that was to be expected as it was aiding in keeping the graphics card cool, acting as a large heat sink to the components on the back of the GPU. In addition to this cooling, this back plate increases the structural rigidity of the graphics card, preventing it from flexing under the weight of the Windforce cooler.

On the PCB, GIGABYTE have not done too much to enhance the power delivery, but instead opted for an 8-phase PWM as opposed to the 6-phase design on the reference card.

To really overclock the GTX 780 Ti with liquid nitrogen or perhaps dry ice, you may need some additional power, but that isn’t the focus of this card. This model is purely for gaming and delivering the most cost effective but efficient configuration possible for this GPU. This also happens to be where this card earns its high price tag and manages to impress us thoroughly at the same time.

All results were obtained at 4625MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit. These are our results, yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system.

Graphics Card

GIGABYTE GV-N78TGHZ3GD OC 1297MHz GPU /7.8GHz

3DMark Fire Strike

3DMark Fire Strike Extreme

3DMark11

3DMark Vantage

Catzilla: 1080p

HWBOT Heaven Extreme 3821,779

12290

6238

17509

56289

16427

Graphics: 13744

Graphics: 6421

Graphics: 18065

GPU Score: 57760

Hardware: 16532

GIGABYTE GV-N78TGHZ11617 5941 16834 54177 15690 3GD (SBQIJDT (SBQIJDT (SBQIJDT (16 4DPSF )BSEXBSF

Overclocked Radeon R9 290X 1125MHz GPU /6GHz

17285

55619

15775

11051

5578

16188

51576

12595

Graphics: 12435

Graphics: 5788

Graphics: 16587

GPU Score: 52189

Hardware: 12147

As stated previously, for your competitive overclocking endeavours, it is best you look for another GTX 780 Ti, but for your gaming needs there isn’t a better GTX 780 Ti that we can think of.

Clock speeds is where GIGABYTE have been particularly aggressive, delivering a boost clock of 1150MHz out the box. Not only is this a higher clock than on any other GIGABYTE graphics card, but it’s a mighty 23.9% higher than what NVIDIA will provide you with on the reference GTX 780 Ti. Even more impressive though, is that the real clock under gaming and benchmark conditions is even higher at an astonishing 1215MHz. At these frequencies, the performance differences between this card and the reference 780 Ti are made vividly clear.

While the reference GTX 780 Ti is a fast card, just a little faster than the Radeon R9 290X, GIGABYTE’s 780 Ti GHZ Edition card, simply distances itself away from the 290X by some margin. To put this into perspective, you will notice that an overclocked Radeon R9 290X is slower in all tests, when compared to the

GIGABYTE 780Ti GHz Edition.

Out the box performance is phenomenal making this the fastest graphics card we have ever had the opportunity to test. The numbers are more than compelling and be it you’re gaming at 1080p or UHD resolutions, this is the graphics card you should consider over and above all others (dual GPU solutions withstanding) as we doubt if there will be any other vendor with a 780 Ti clocked this high.

Our attempts at further increasing the clock speed on this graphics card were quickly curbed. We managed an additional 82MHz, on the core, and 800MHz on the memory before things became unstable.

That’s a mere 6% overclock on the core, but do consider that it’s 6% on top of the 23.9% you buy the card with. Providing additional cooling to the graphics card didn’t help, thus our conclusion is that you’re likely in need of more VDDC voltage.

Unfortunately GIGABYTE�s own software will limit you to 1.21V much like all other voltage control software. There are several ways to get around this, but we would caution you about this as you do run the risk of damaging the card or at the very

3639,79

3502,696

least voiding your warranty.

Should you need additional performance for competitive overclocking purposes, then perhaps you should consider one of the other cards that are geared more specifically to overclocking. For your gaming purposes however, GIGABYTE’s GV-N78TGHZ is near perfect. It runs cool, hardly audible and it’s incredibly fast. GIGABYTE’s best graphics card to date by far. 

[ The Overclocker ]

Summary GIGABYTE has managed to make the fastest single GPU graphics card to date with the GV-N78TGHz. With such a high clock speed and impressive cooling capabilities, it delivers cracking performance that has yet to be matched by any other. There is little to no incentive for looking elsewhere for your gaming needs.

Would you buy it?

Yes, without hesitation!

Issue 27 | 2013 The OverClocker 29

Kingston Hyper X Genesis 10th Anniversary Edition 16GB Kit RRP: $225.99 | Website: www.kingston.com

Test Machine • INTEL Core i7 4960X • ASUS Rampage IV Extreme Black Edition (0208) • AMD Radeon R9 290X • Corsair Force LS 240GB SSD • Cooler Master Silent Pro M2 1500W • Windows 7 64-bit SP1 (Catalyst 13.11)

K

ingston Hyper X memory is likely the oldest enthusiast series we know of. Not surprising given that Kingston is possibly the oldest manufacture of high speed DRAM. For all intents and purposes, experienced overclockers will remember a set of Kingston Hyper X memory at some point in their overclocking history. This is particularly true of the BH5 DDR memory era. Most of us will remember just how pervasive the Hyper X 2x512MB 2-2-25 Memory was and virtually everyone was operating these in at 500MHz or higher.

22 The OverClocker Issue 27 | 2013

That was a long time ago though and since then Kingston has had various successes and challenges. Much like most memory vendors, the DRAM industry has been both kind and of late very challenging. For us on the receiving end, we’re still holding on to our DIMMS with PSC chips and such, patiently waiting for the day where we may have champion memory again reminiscent of the BH5/ BH6 and perhaps even TCCD of old. Until that day, kits such as we have here are what we may expect from Kingston or at least on the lower end of their product range.

Kingston marked off this kit as their anniversary addition, celebrating exactly 10 years of the Hyper X brand. If such engraving means anything to you, you’ll appreciate having a limited edition set of memory.

We however are exclusively focused on the performance or at least in how far we can push this set of memory before it gives in. Usually we would test

this set on the Z87 platform, but it is four sticks and we do happen to have a particularly useful platform for quad channel kits. If there is ever going to be a motherboard that would push a set to its limits, it would have to be the Rampage IV Extreme Black Edition and thus we tested on this motherboard to see just how far we could go.

We started at 2133MHz and attempted to tighten the settings as much as we could. With the tightest primary timings set to 10-11-11-28-2T, our memory was not able to go lower much more than that. We could not post at C9 thus we promptly moved on to the next divider available to us which was 2400MHz. Starting with the XMP profile, we measured typical results for this configuration.

Some tuning was in order for the secondary and tertiary timings which yielded much improvement, but for the most part the numbers you see here are only those reported by the

All results were obtained at 4625MHz s on a normal install of Windows 7 64-bit. These are our results, yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system.

Memory

AIDA 64 Read

AIDA 64 Write

AIDA 64 Copy

AIDA 64 Latency

SuperPi 8M

Frequency

Timings

Kingston Hyper X Genesis 2400MHz 4x4GB

57112

41267

53923

61,2

1.29.513

2133

10-11-11-28-2T

60941

43658

57247

60,2

1.29.590

2400

11-13-13-30-2T

40535

35797

38340

52,3

1.30.044

2600

12-14-14-36-2T

respective benchmarks with only the XMP profile loaded.

The RIVE Black edition has this ability to make all sets of memory appear better than they would on other motherboards thus, you must assume that the numbers we have here are not a worst case scenario but are typical on what to expect on an equivalently competent board.

We have often seen 2400MHz kits reach speeds past the 2,600MHz mark and typically hit 2800MHz, albeit with some dubious timings. Still we had high hopes for this kit, but unfortunately we hit our limit at 2,600MHz. Please note that we had to drop our BClk back to 100MHz for this multiplier, as we couldn’t test the typical 2,666MHz. The numbers we recorded are slightly lower than they would be with the CPU at 4625MHz, but for the most part they do represent fairly accurately what the memory is capable of.

At the 2,600MHz frequency, we had to sacrifice on the primary timings and resort to the Raw MHz profile in the motherboard BIOS. From there, we lowered each setting individually,

meticulously testing for stability.

Merely adjusting the primary timings didn’t help us because this set proved particularly sensitive to several secondary settings. After hours of testing each setting, we were finally able to settle on a 2,600MHz configuration that was not only stable but would cold boot every time. At these settings, we lost out on the AIDA 64 performance and just about in everything else, but we did decrease the memory latency substantially.

Our SuperPi 8M score suffered but it wasn’t as dramatic as one would have initially thought, given in particular that we had gone from 11-13-13-30 to 1214-14-36. At the end, the ideal settings for this RAM seem to be 2,400MHz. From here one can tune other settings to squeeze out even more performance from the RAM. As far as overclocking memory is concerned, there are definitely better options on the market from Kingston which recently announced their 2,800MHz Predator kit. This set along with the other Beast SKUs that have displayed some

competence to overclockers will provide you with the leg room and performance that you may need for your overclocking pursuits. This Genesis kit is thus relegated to that which would probably suit gamers rather than competitive overclockers.

At the time of writing we didn’t have a price but if the kit retails for anything around the $250 to $260 mark then it should make for a worthwhile purchase for the above mentioned demographic.

[The Overclocker]

Summary Depending on pricing this may be a kit well worth the purchase for a gaming machine.

For overclockers, you may want to look at the Predatoror Beast Series instead.

Would you buy it?

If we couldn’t find the Beast or Predator kits, perhaps

Issue 27 | 2013 The OverClocker 23

Value Award

PowerColor R9 290 4GB OC RRP: $399.99 | Website: www.powercolor.com

Test Machine • INTEL Core i7 4960X • ASUS Rampage IV Extreme Black Edition (0208) • CORSAIR Dominator Platinum 4x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10 • Corsair Force LS 240GB SSD • Cooler Master Silent Pro M2 1500W • Windows 7 64-bit SP1 (Catalyst 13.9 B11)

T

o say AMD’s Hawaii GPUs have been anything but controversial would be an understatement. At least in a gaming sense especially because of the new Mantle API. This is AMD’s game changer and if it does take off, it would make for a very interesting GPU landscape. The incentive from AMD’s perspective for doing this is sensible but how that works for us as end users remains to be seen. No matter how it’s spun, we have been here before in the mid to late 90s and this is no different in practice.

That however is specifically to do with gaming which is primarily what this card is for.

The absence of customised designs has left very little room for variance in overclocking

24 The OverClocker Issue 27 | 2013

between different vendor offerings. So essentially what we bring to you here is a reference card review of the AMD R9 290 GPU. The only difference here is that PowerColor has seen it fit to ship their card with a slight overclock, more specifically a 25MHz overclock. Everything else about the card though remains that which AMD showed off and has been providing to its other partners. A 25MHz overclock is not going to make a significant different in performance but having that at least would perhaps help separate the PowerColor card from the rest. Even better though or more meaningful than the slight overclock is how this particular card didn’t have a dynamic clock speed dependant on temperature.

Load temperatures were very high at 94’C however the clock speed remained at 975MHz. This is great if only you’re guaranteed performance that matches that of the AMD press cards and because of the minute overclock the performance is actually better for the most part.

Oddly enough, despite what we had read before purchasing our PowerColor sample for this review, this card remained

relatively quiet. More so than we could have ever thought it would be. There simply wasn’t any noise while we tested the card and as stated earlier, the clock speeds remained consistent.

It is only when we increased the fan speed from the default profile to anything above 60% where the noise levels became unbearable.

Under normal circumstances though, there would be no need to do this despite the high load temperature. If the GPU is able to operate at that temperature and not result in decreased performance, then we see no need to set a higher fan speed. Overclocking will obviously require you to do so, but in a gaming context, this isn’t necessary at all given that you’re only ever going to get noise for it and nothing else.

At $400, the closest card to this from NVIDIA would be the GTX 770, however it’s obvious that this GPU will not be able to compete with the R9 290, thus we had to instead compare it with the many custom GTX 780 cards on the market. In this particular case we compared it to the EVGA GTX 780 Classified.

A GPU that, like many, features an out-the-box overclock, custom PCB, and cooler has

All results were obtained at 4625MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit. These are our results, yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system.

Graphics Card

3DMark Fires Strike

3DMark Fire Strike Extreme

3DMark11

3DMark Vantage

Catzilla: 1080p

HWBOT Heaven Extreme 3361,51

PowerColor R9 290 OC

10631

5221

15814

50445

11637

1150/1450

Graphics: 11962

Graphics: 5365

Graphics: 16735

GPU Score: 50555

Hardware: 11682

AMD R9 290X

EVGA GTX 780 Classified

PowerColor R9 290 OC 4GB

9867

4935

14837

48990

10700

Graphics: 10959

Graphics: 5079

14803

GPU Score: 48432

Hardware: 10723

9703

4887

14451

49382

12558

Graphics: 10528

Graphics: 4965

Graphics: 14322

GPU Score: 49053

Hardware: 12628

9324

4676

14066

45927

10503

Graphics: 10274

Graphics: 4790

Graphics: 13820

GPU Score: 44687

Hardware: 10143

been shown to go the distance under air and LN2 cooling quite regularly. Not a fair comparison as such but a valid one, because it is typical of what most users would buy when they consider purchasing a GTX 780 as reference cards comparisons are for the most part irrelevant.

At $550 it is significantly more expensive but for that you do get better performance. This was what surprised us, more than anything. As we read through the first batch of reviews for the R9 290, the numbers that we observed were slightly different than those that were reported on several sites.

For instance, there wasn’t a single benchmark that we ran where the R9 290 was faster than the classified.

The PowerColor card was between 4 to 7% slower, Catzilla withstanding, where the NVIDIA GPUs have proved to be particularly adapt. With that said, we have to be mindful of the price difference between these two cards before we come to any conclusion regarding the value of this card. $400 means that if that’s all you have for investing in a graphics card, you’re looking at this card or a GK104 based GPU. Against the R9 290, there is no GK104 GPU that can match it.

It’s just not going to happen and this is where the real value of the R9 290 is. It’s what it offers at the price.

For us as enthusiasts and overclockers who regularly buy GPUs priced above the $500 mark, it is easy to forget that for most people, this is as far as their budgets will allow. Yet this kind of performance at this price was unheard of prior to the R9 290.

Overclocked, the PowerColor card obviously produced even better numbers, exceeding those of the R9 290X (also reviewed in this issue) which retails for as much as the Classified card. Attaining these clock speeds however means turning up the fan speed and thus having to deal with the excessive noise issue, however it isn’t anything that an aftermarket cooler cannot fix (you may for example opt for the Prolimatech MK-26 Black Edition which is reviewed in this issue). However do keep in mind that you’re going to be spending another $90 to $100 on this depending on the cooler you opt for. However, even at $500 you’re still getting some brilliant performance because once again, nothing else will be faster at that price.

In a competitive overclocking context, virtually everyone who has bothered with the Hawaii GPUs has gone with the 290X, so there isn’t much we could report on for the overclockers on the 290, but suffice to say it should scale in exactly the

3105,931

3025,615

2824,9

same way as the 290X and have the same mods as it is identical to the 290X. (So much so that some 290 cards have “unlocked” to 290X cards via a simple BIOS flash).

In closing, the R9 290 OC may not be the fastest graphics card money can buy, but it does offer unquestionable value for money.

Thermals and the rest aside, you’re not going to find better value in any other high end card.

Thus, if the PowerColor R9 290 OC is deserving of any praise from us, it is the Value award. $400 has never delivered this much power before. [ The Overclocker]

Summary PowerColor has given us a reference R9 290 card with a slight overclock but has not charged extra for it. If you’re going to be buying an R9 290 card you may as well purchase this one as there aren’t any others that can claim to be faster. At $400 it’s a steal for the performance that you get.

Would you buy it?

Sure. Its value roposition is phenomenal.

Issue 27 | 2013 The OverClocker 25

The OC Show Your Overclocking talk-show

The OC Show Concept As The Overclocker moved to a new publishing platform, Neo (editor-in-chief) informed us it is now possible to embed videos in the magazine. He suggested to embed an OCTV video in each magazine. The response from OCTV was very positive, and quickly the idea rose to do a bimonthly chit-chat talk about overclocking related topics.

In each episode, 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. "This is long overdue" says Tim, "but now that OCTV and HWBOT are both located in Taiwan, setting up this kind of initiative is much easier."

sense to share our content to the TOC readers first." Of course this video is also hosted on the OCTV YouTube channel, and can be shared and embedded by everyone.

HWBOT and OCTV have collaborated on several productions in the past. The OC Show marks as a first long-term scheduled partnership.

In This Episode

Why TheOverclocker?

"TheOverclocker is today's main go-to magazine-style read for overclockers and hardware enthusiasts" says Tim, "it makes

In the first episode of The OC Show we talk about the upcoming live competitions of Galaxy and Kingston, as well as reflect back on those of ASUS, Corsair, and MSI. We also address what next year will bring for HWBOT, and of course reflect on Shamino leaving the industry.

Discuss this episode:

url.hwbot.org/tosdiscuss

AMD Radeon R9 290X RRP: $599.99 | Website: www.amd.com

Test Machine • •

•

INTEL Core i7 4960X ASUS Rampage IV Extreme Black Edition (0208) CORSAIR Dominator Platinum 4x4GB DDR 2666MHZ CL10 • Corsair Force LS 240GB SSD • Cooler Master Silent Pro M2 1500W • Windows 7 64-bit SP1 (Catalyst 13.9)

N

ot too long after we started on our PowerColor R9 290 OC review, we received AMD’s Radeon R9 290X and thus, ours was a reverse experience when it came to AMD’s new line up. Prior to these two graphics cards, we had received 280 and 270 cards, but given that these are identical to the previous generation offerings we didn’t feature them in the magazine.

Moreover, there are few if any competitive overclockers who were overclocking these on 26 The OverClocker Issue 27 | 2013

LN2 for anything other than hardware points and/or cups.

Fortunately this isn’t the case with the Radeon R9 290X. We’ve seen several scores already from several prominent overclockers or overclocking teams if you will. Thus far, the highest core speed we’ve seen is 1500MHz as shown by Smoke on a couple of runs and submissions on HWBOT. An impressive clock indeed, but one that we suspect will get better with the custom cards that we had seen, just prior to publishing of this issue.

Unlike with the Radeon HD 7970, the reference design on the R9 290X isn’t as solid, but that is understandable because the silicon costs a little bit more than it did with the Tahiti GPU and the cost cutting had to come somewhere else, like the fairly low clocking GDDR5 memory used and 6-phase PWM. Where we do wish AMD had done a better job is with the cooler. As it’s adequate at best

and at every other time, it is ever so underwhelming or just outright incapable of keeping this GPU comfortably cool.

The temperatures are often in the 94’C region which isn’t a problem as such, but the noise is. What happens is that as the GPU heats up and after about 15 minutes of gaming (depending on the title) the card can get quite loud and we are not talking moderate noise levels here, but rather an unbearable acoustics.

Much like with the R9 290 in this issue, this isn’t anything that an aftermarket cooler can’t fix, but we did find that the R9 290X did make more noise than the PowerColor R9 290. This is likely due to fan profile differences rather than mechanical differences. Regardless of what the reason may be, it is something that is an issue and it is better addressed sooner rather than later.

That aside, if you can get past the noise issue then you’ll be presented with a

All results were obtained at 4625MHz on an un-optimized Windows7 64-bit. These are our results, yours may vary so only use these as a guideline for a similarly configured system.

Graphics Card

3DMark Fires Strike

3DMark Fire Strike Extreme

3DMark11

3DMark Vantage

Catzilla: 1080p

HWBOT Heaven Extreme 3502,696

AMD Radeon R9 290X OC

11051

5578

16188

51576

12595

1125/1500

Graphics: 12435

Graphics: 5788

Graphics: 16587

GPU Score: 52189

Hardware: 12147

AMD Radeon R9 290X

EVGA GTX 780 Classified

9867

4935

14837

48990

10700

Graphics: 10959

Graphics: 5079

Graphics: 14803

GPU Score: 48432

Hardware: 10723

3105,931

9703

4887

14451

49382

12558

Graphics: 10528

Graphics: 4965

Graphics: 14322

GPU Score: 49053

Hardware: 12628

very efficient and capable graphics card. The R9 290X is particularly adept at high resolution gaming and it just may be the GPU to go with when you’re looking for 1440p gaming and higher at present. This isn’t because the competition doesn’t offer competitive products but do consider that the only competitive graphics card from the competition is $100 more. Ideally the Radeon R9 290X should be $549.99 but we’ve not found it in stock anywhere for this price and the real price at the time of writing was $600, which does decrease the value aspect of this card especially against the 780Ti. You will however have to decide for yourself if a $100 price premium is warranted by the 4 to 6% performance gain. Regardless of what you decide, what you should know by now regarding AMD GPUs is that, due to the ability to turn off Tessellation it’s very easy to get inflated benchmark scores. It’s a commonly used tweak for competitive benchmarking, but sadly it isn’t one that is used at all in a gaming context. So be mindful of the scores you may see when world records are being broken using the R9 290X.

With the impending release of custom cards with what can only be significantly better coolers, it may be hard to recommend this card outright, but we aren’t sure when these vendor tuned models will be available in retail channels and as such, all we can go on is how this GPU performs in its current guise. For Radeon fans this is an obvious purchase especially if you happen to buy one of the cards that ship with Battlefield 4. For everybody else though, this may be one of those GPUs you just have to wait for to mature. Or at least in this particular case, wait for 3rd party implementations.

Besides the inevitable noise reduction, overclocking under LN2 should improve significantly. It’s a matter of waiting for the Direct CUII, Lightning and perhaps TOXIC cards. These will not only offer some serious overclocks out the box, but they should be able to take this GPU well beyond the 1500MHz we have seen thus far.

Should you need a Hawaii based GPU right now, our money would be on the R9 290.

It really is very close to the 290X in performance and who knows. You may even be lucky enough to find yourself one of

3025,615

the few cards that are capable of unlocking to a full 290X core.

If you can’t wait however and are looking for those 3DMark11 and Unigine Heaven Extreme pre-set records, you’ll be hard pressed to find another GPU that handles those benchmarks as well as the 290X. [The Overclocker]

Summary AMD produced a cracker of a GPU with the Radeon R9 290X. At the given price it makes a good case for itself. The only kink it’s amour surprisingly is its lesser brother the R9 290 which is within spitting distance performance wise but an entire $200 cheaper at the current going price. Still, this is a decent graphics card for a fair price.

Would you buy it?

We would wait for the custom 290X cards instead; as these will make a good product brilliant.

Issue 27 | 2013 The OverClocker 27

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soap box

n i t i d i a s I ! r e k c o l c r e v O The

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34 The OverClocker Issue 27 | 2012

3. OVERCLOCKING COMPETITIONS COST TOO DAMN MUCH!

The cash outlay required for buying the qualifying hardware is very disproportional to the cash prize on offer. Sure, with some recent competitions it’s gotten better. But think about what was the first prize at MOA 2013 and what kind of hardware you needed to make it that far. At most you break even, most of the time it’s a loss even if you do make it to the finals. It makes overclocking competitions look pathetic compared to any other hobby. There are stamp collection competitions that regularly have bigger purses.

4.

OVERHYPING THEIR CPUS!

I hate to harp on these guys but cherry picking completely useless server benchmarks to overhype severely underperforming CPUs is ludicrous. All of a sudden software is written for CPUs and that’s why their CPUs are sucking. I wonder where this argument was when they were ruling the roost prior to mid-2006, all the way from the late 90s. Then to top it all off, the code names for these CPU architectures?

Let’s hope is actually more than hot air as the name suggests.

5.

AND MOTHERBOARDS!

SHOULD STOP MAKING

Yep these two vendors should close ship or focus on something else. It’s ridiculous just how far down they have fallen. It was way back in the P45 days where they seemed to have something going, and then they ruined it by going back to their old ways and making laughable motherboards. More bizarre are their adverts and marketing strategies. Appealing to gamers has nothing to do with insulting them. L33T? Seriously?

6. AMATEUR OVERCLOCKERS QUIT YOUR WHINING!

Enough already. Sure I did say that entry into overclocking competitions is far too high. That’s true, but don’t complain about every single thing there is.

It is a competition not a fun run. You are going to have to invest time, money and effort into this if you want to get anywhere. Be it you do it for points or not, it’s not supposed to be easy or simple. It’s far easier now to overclock and get somewhere than it was even 6 years ago. Grow a pair and stop whining. Overclock what you have; you are not forced to compete with anyone for anything.

7. MEMORY AGAIN!

A set that is rated at 2400MHz but fails to do 2600MHz is frankly not overclocking memory. Just because the packaging says so or the vendor believes it so, does not make it true. If we were talking PSC here, sure by all means call it overclocking memory but we are talking about high latency 2400MHz memory here. More than that, all publications and websites should be ashamed of awarding kits liked these. Let’s see, 94% for a 2400 set that did just over 2500 at most with rubbish 11-1313-30 timings! That’s crazy.

8. LAB BINNING!

Yeah say what you will but the real test of how good a graphics card overclocks is in what it does in the hands of the people outside of the company’s payroll. To date MSI has been the most consistent graphics card manufacturer despite the stupid Afterburner software policy; I see more LN2 results with those graphics cards than with all others. Those that come from within a company are of little to no use at all.

That’s all there is for this issue. I had a lot more when I started this then I forgot, but trust me I’m generally a sour person so there are more things to whine about in my everyday existence than to be happy about. I did say though that I am feeling festive and Christmas pudding along with other goodies do not go down well when you’re upset. So I have chosen to look at the brighter side for a bit and end 2013 off on a more positive note.

Oh and I do think the cover feature in this issue does too much riding but hey, the man was great and the motherboard is just that much better than everything else.

Issue 27 | 2012 The OverClocker 35

Battlefield 4 RRP: $59.99 (PC) | Website: http://www.battlefield.com/battlefield-4

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nyone who’s played a Battlefield title before knows that they’re something special. Even if you despise Battlefield’s particular brand of multiplayer action, it’s impossible not to appreciate the overwhelming spectacle of it. Since the original Battlefield 1942 and its World War II theme, there’s been nothing that’s come close to this series’ penchant for multiplayer battles of a ridiculous scale. Some game’s attempts to mimic it – like Star Wars: Battlefront and Enemy Territory: Quake Wars – have more successfully followed the series’ formula than others. But there has always only been one Battlefield.

With Battlefield 4 arriving just two years after Battlefield 3, you would be forgiven for seeing BF4 as more of a glorified expansion pack than a truly new entry in this series. It’s definitely 36 The OverClocker Issue 27 | 2013

more of an iteration than a true advancement of BF3 and its expansion packs – but DICE has crammed in enough new content to make it a necessary upgrade.

Before I get into the multiplayer side of things, we should discuss the single-player component a bit.

Like its predecessor, BF4 has felt the need to include a solo campaign.

And as with its predecessor, it’s a pretty hollow addition. It’s more of the same modern military malarkey, overbearingly scripted to the point that you spend as much time mindlessly watching events unfold (with zero control over what’s happening) as you do actually playing the game. Which is fine if you’ve not yet had enough of these meaningless shooting galleries, but after playing so many single-player campaigns like

it, personally I’ve had enough.

Sadly, it actually seems as though there may be a half-decent storyline in there too. Yet the game is so obsessed with holding your hand as it shows you things it thinks are cool that there’s really no opportunity to appreciate the story it contains. It doesn’t help that the narrative unfolds so garishly that it ultimately comes across as complete garbage anyway. There are impressive, visually dramatic moments, sure. But there’s no substance to them.

The multiplayer, however, is as much of an absolute blast as it’s ever been. Really, DICE needs to remember that there’s no need to shoehorn in misplaced single-player modes when the multiplayer is this good. If you’ve played BF3, you know exactly what to expect from much of it: but

Issue 27 | 2013 The OverClocker 37

new features like the much-touted Levolution send the intensity level soaring to impressive new heights.

Having maps that evolve as you wage war on them has been a Battlefield staple since Bad Company, but the scale of the destructibility has never been quite so imposing as it is here. Siege of Shanghai’s crumbling skyscraper that was so heavily featured in BF4’s marketing push is obviously a particularly memorable exercise in Levolution, but other maps feature everything from a collapsing dam wall to an aircraft carrier that ploughs into an island. It’s not only the physical destruction that’s pertinent either – environmental effects dramatically alter the nature of maps as well. Flood Zone’s waters rise as the map progresses, forcing the use of boats, while Paracel Storm’s calm seas become violent when a powerful storm rolls in.

Even without the spectacle of Levolution, most of the maps are masterfully designed (with a few painful exceptions, as with any game), offering up a pleasing mix of opportunity for everything from the large-scale warfare of the 64-player matches that have become synonymous with Battlefield, to more intimate skirmishes between much

38 The OverClocker Issue 27 | 2013

smaller numbers of players. Maps are also once again destructible on a less significant scale, many of them littered with smaller buildings and foliage that can be torn to pieces.

As usual, there’s a wide variety of vehicles with which to toy around on both land and sea, as well as in the air.

There’s a definite focus on improving water-borne vehicular combat, with all-new heavily armed boats to use to pummel the enemy along with small, nippy craft useful for zipping around more water-centric maps. And while we’re on the subject, for the first time players are now able to draw their secondary weapon while swimming so that they’re not completely defenseless in the water. You’re also able to dive below the surface of the water to hide from enemies.

There are a couple of new game modes to enjoy in BF4, and Obliteration is the standout mode.

Obliteration sees a single bomb spawn between the two opposing teams, and each team must vie for control of it in order to deliver the bomb to key enemy points to destroy them. It’s a heavily mobile mode and the frontline is constantly shifting, keeping the fighting strongly concentrated around the bomb. The intensity of it suits Battlefield perfectly.

Previous games in the series have always had a strong focus on teamwork, encouraging players to work together to overcome the enemy rather than facing the enemy solo. That’s still very much the same case here, but that doesn’t mean you can’t play the game as a lone wolf.

For those who’d rather work with others, teams are again divided into smaller squads. This time around, squads gain small bonuses when they perform particularly well together.

Commander Mode returns from Battlefield 2, putting certain players in charge of directing their team’s efforts from an RTS-style aerial view.

Commanders can call in support powers like supply drops and gunships that circle the sky and rain down fire on enemies. It’s a worthwhile addition to the game and a nice change of pace for when the fighting on the ground gets too stressful.

As we’ve come to expect from DICE, the game’s an absolute technological powerhouse throughout. Not only are its Frostbite 3-powered visuals absolutely breathtaking, but the audio deserves a mention as well.

The immersive sounds of the battle

really empower the visuals, bringing this digital battleground to life in a highly effective way. Unfortunately, it’s got its problems as well. By now you’ve probably heard that, at launch, Battlefield 4 is a bit of a mess. It’s pretty shocking really. Audio randomly cuts out. Battlelog is still no fun to work with. Crashes to desktop are commonplace. Still, its teething problems don’t change the fact that this is a brilliant, utterly absorbing multiplayer game.

[Dane Remendes]

Would you buy it?

Yes. There’s nothing else out there that can match the large-scale multiplayer devastation of Battlefield 4.

The Score

8.5/10 Issue 27 | 2013 The OverClocker 39

Prolimatech MK-26 Black Edition RRP: $89.99 | Website: www.prolimatech.com

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ftermarket coolers for graphics cards have always been a market that saw fewer competitors than it should have. For the most part, only water blocks were an alternative especially over the last half decade or so. Part of it perhaps is as a result of vendor supplied heatsinks having improved to the point where I think aftermarket coolers became unnecessary. At least that’s what I thought until I came across the Prolimatech MK-26 Black Edition. The cooler is relatively slim, but with the fans mounted and installed on the graphics card.

It makes any graphics card look monstrous. It will certainly turn it into a three slot installation so you should forget about three way graphics when using such a cooler.

Fortunately, most people do not use such configuration and as a result the size becomes immaterial for the most part. Once installed, the MK-26 should more than make up for its asking price as it does a great job at cooling your GPU. This is particularly true when installed on the latest Radeon R9 290 or 290X graphics cards. These make for a particularly interesting test

41 The OverClocker Issue 27 | 2013

case, because the cooler that AMD provides is extra ordinarily loud even with the fan speed tuned to 60%.

This also happens to be the graphics card we chose to test the MK-26 with, so we could see just how well it would do when put through its paces by a particularly hot GPU. While I was installing this cooler, I came across a potential problem with supposed compatibility of the MK-26 and Hawaii GPUs. The core, unlike with the Tahiti GPUs, isn’t rotated by 45 degrees which means that the provided copper heat spreader doesn’t cover the entire core. The opposite edges of the GPU will be exposed as a result.

Over and above that, you’ll also find that the provided number of heatsinks are not enough to cool all the components that is needed on the R9 290/290X. So you should be aware of this before deciding to spend money on this cooler and consider buying some more heat sinks.

That aside, installing the MK-26 was pretty straight forward and once I started putting it through its paces; the MK-26 was very impressive. The load temperature decreased from 94’C with the stock

cooler, to a more acceptable 76’C. That’s an 18’C drop in temperatures which is nothing short of incredible.

Consider as well, that the MK-26 is virtually inaudible.

In comparison; for me to keep temperatures that low using the stock cooler, I had to set the reference cooler’s fan to 70% of its maximum rotation speed. This isn’t really an option as the noise levels become unbearable. So installing the MK-26 isn’t, in this case, about reducing temperature exclusively, but delivering a significant drop in noise levels as well. As a result of the temperature reduction, I was able to overclock the graphics card comfortably for extended gaming sessions. The throttling wouldn’t kick in and as such, performance increased. Short of the two issues I highlighted above regarding the MK26, there isn’t anything to fault the MK-26 on. $90 for the performance improvements and noise reduction is more than fair and I for one will never part with the MK-26 Black Edition. I would seriously urge you to look at investing in this cooler as it’s the best I’ve ever used. [ The Overclcoker ]

OCZ Vertex 450 256GB SSD RRP: $219.99 | Website: www.ocztechnology.com

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hen I wrote this review, OCZ Technology was facing some serious financial troubles. In fact, I was unsure of what the future held for OCZ and perhaps this review was not worth it at all. However as it stands the drives are still selling and they so happen to be amongst the best drives money can buy currently.

(Eventually Toshiba will acquire all of OCZ’s assets) Prior to this, my favorite SDD was the OCZ Vector. It was released half a year ago or a little bit more.

Since then, OCZ has given us the Vertex 450 and the Vector 150.

When I received this drive from OCZ, I was unsure of where exactly it would place itself in the OCZ family. The Vector was clearly the fastest drive to come from the firm and the Vertex 4 was perhaps just below that. Presented with the Vertex 450 and testing it, I found it to be relatively close to the Vector in performance so as to make the differences academic more than anything else.

They both use the Barefoot 3 controller, but the Vertex 450 uses the M10 version which along with

42 The OverClocker Issue 27 | 2013

the use of the larger 25nm NAND would account for the performance differences between the two drives.

I measured sequential read and write performance at 480 and 511 MB/s respectively. The only other drive that I’d measured better numbers on is the Vector which delivered 524Mb/s for both reads and writes. IOPS performance though was there, the drives separated themselves with the vector delivering 66,937.34 IOPS while the Vertex 4 managed 10K less at 56,975.82. IOPS in the practical sense or at least in the context of gaming machine or overclocking makes no difference at all. So you’ll have to decide for yourself if these differences are worth paying the price premium for when it comes to the Vector drive.

Warranty differences aside (3-years for the Vertex 450 and 5-years for the Vector) the Vertex 450 represents to the mid to high end performance segment of SSDs on the market. At this price, there aren’t’ many drives that can claim to be better, in fact in my humble opinion, this drive may be a little on the cheap side, especially given just

how well it performs.

As with all modern day SSDs, OCZ includes in the package, Acronis True Image software which you can use to migrate your current OS installation to the new drive. The value of this software is debatable especially when there are less convoluted ways to go about this, however it doesn’t hurt having the software, if only to create even more value to the drive.

As with the last SSD I looked at in Issue 26 of the magazine, SSDs for the most part have reached a point where it’s only in the synthetic numbers where they differ. The Vector 450 could deliver exactly half its performance as measured and it would be hard to tell in everyday usage. As such, despite the impressive performance, I can’t help but feel this performance will mostly go unrealized. With that said, you’re paying 85c a GB which obviously isn’t magnetic disk pricing, but its fantastic none the less. Add that to the great performance and you have a very capable driver here.

Certainly one of the best money can buy currently. [ The Overclocker ]

Hardware Award

Cooler Master Nepton 280L RRP: TBA | Website: www.coolermaster.com

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n this day of All-In-One coolers, virtually all enthusiasts have embraced these cooling solutions over the more traditional heat sink and fan combinations. There are very few vendors that do not have such a solution or at least aren’t planning on having one. Not surprising though, because not only do these by and large offer quieter operation, but they do offer better cooling performance under load, especially with the CPU overclocked.

If you look at the popularity of K and Extreme SKU CPUs, you can appreciate why liquid cooling has become the standard for performance thermal solutions. So much so that both AMD and INTEL offered the same liquid cooler for their high end CPUs. In this crowded market, it would seem that we have every corner covered as there’s a plethora of options to choose from to fit almost every budget. So what purpose would the new Cooler Master Neptron 280L serve other than to further saturate the market? Cooler Master may give you a myriad of answers to this, but I primarily think the Nepton series is Cooler Master trying their hand at efficient and more notable cooling

solutions than their previous efforts.

Having had experience with the Seidon series in particular, the Nepton 280L is a notable improvement on everything that line of AIO Liquid coolers offered.

I knew this from the minute I unboxed the Nepton 280L. It was not only built better, it looked like what I had always expected Cooler Master would come up with, rather than what they had previously shown us. There are a few changes to this cooler that automatically make it a better one than what the Seidon offered before.

For instance the flow rate is increased thanks to the longer tubing and increased diameter. The effects of these two changes are not as obvious as one would imagine, especially at idle loads. However, if you load the system under Prime 95 for instance, you’ll definitely appreciate the changes as the 4770K I used to test the system showed a 4 to 5’C drop in temperature at the low end. This isn’t much for sure, but keep in mind that we are talking temperatures dropping from 78’C to 73’C. Will this allow a higher overclock, not likely but it does give you some piece of mind, knowing that your CPU isn’t operating at unnecessarily warmer temperatures.

Mostly what I liked about this cooler was how much easier it is to install than Cooler Master’s previous efforts.

The parts are also not susceptible to wear like the plastic back plate and metal grommet system used on many other systems. Not an issue if you’ll be installing this once into a system, but if you like I change motherboards very often for testing, you’ll appreciate this newer system. It could be even simpler, but it’s definitely workable. Not all is perfect with the Nepton 280L though, the included JetFlo fans do a great job at moving air, but they - along with the new pump - are sources of great noise.

The pump has an annoying whine that you can hear even inside a system if you listen out for it. When the system is up and operating though, the noise will likely get drowned out by other fans, but it is audible nonetheless which is a stain on an otherwise impeccable cooling system.

In closing, Cooler Master has improved on their previous systems greatly. It’s not perfect but it’s certainly useable and the cooling performance is definitely amongst the best money can buy in this market. [ The Overclcoker ] Issue 27 | 2013 The OverClocker 43

Issue 20 2012 rev 2.0

The WorLd’s besT overcLocKing onLine magazine. aLWays.

Computex

2012

We cover the most prestigious hardware event in our massive eight page feature!

Feature

Kingpin’s z77 Ln2 guide Reviewed

asus maximus v exTreme Reviewed

gigabyTe’s z77 ud3 Worth rapping about?

rev 2.1 THE WORLD’S BEST OVERCLOCKING ONLINE MAGAZINE. SERIOUSLY.

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