Theoverclocker issue 35

Issue 35 2015 rev 2.1

THE WORLD’S BEST OVERCLOCKING ONLINE MAGAZINE. EXTREME! REVIEWED

GIGABYTE G1.

GAMING GTX 980 TI GAME TIME

THE WITCHER 3: WILD HUNT REVIEWED!

FEATURE

INTEL CORE i7 6700K SKYLAKE REVEALED!

Random thoughts #35 W

ith the launch of the Z170 chipset, DDR4 is finally here in a way that is easier to access than it was with X99.

Kits are cheaper, the CPUs have better IMCs and frequencies are only bound to rise. Entry to the platform is also cheaper. Overall it’s a great place to be if you’re an enthusiast and overclocker. It does mean letting go of older platforms just yet, but at the very least the focus will be on Z170. After all, we are receiving a more powerful platform, with better efficiency and a slightly better IGP. The Intel 530 Graphics core in the CPUs is a worthwhile update to what was previously available. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were not more overclocking competitions that involved the IGP specifically going forward, especially given how this plays directly into vendor’s marketing and sales needs as opposed to more traditional overclocking events with a discreet GPU and a chipset (At least as far as cost is concerned).

Regarding the platform and where it may lead us in the competitive landscape, Skylake is noteworthy. That the release coincided with the Windows 10 as well has forced us to reevaluate our operating systems as the verdict is still out on the HPET issue as it affectd Windows 8. If Windows 10 proves to be just as fast as Windows 8.1 in the chosen benchmarks, but without the folly of not supporting a real time clock, it could be the way forward. Perhaps even negating the need for Windows 7 if for some reason 3DMark11 performance improves in future.

Past just the operating system, it could be an opportune time to re-evaluate the benchmarks. Personally I don’t believe there could be too many so the number isn’t the issue. The issue may be the points awarded for the number of benchmarks. As overclocking or competitive overclocking goes forward, it will become increasingly impractical to have benchmarks awarded points where new entrants into the hobby have no way of participating. For instance, if there’s a special trick needed to run 3DMark 2001SE and 3DMark03 in Windows XP. Perhaps those are benchmarks that should be relegated to a legacy status where they do not impact the rankings as much as they do. It’s just a thought and of course the ones directly involved with this will figure it out.

Materially, the simple change to DDR4 places many on even footing where there’s no chance of any one person, or team having DDR3 memory that has long since seized

production. We had that issue with BBSE/PSC memory, where if you only started competitive overclocking in the last couple of years. You had no chance of matching those kinds of memory ICs with what was eventually available. That meant regardless of how much you tuned your system and how great your CPU was, there was no possible way you could match the C6 timings of PSC and as such you would always be at a disadvantage. Purely because you happened to get involved in competitive overclocking, later than others.

So I for one look at Z170 despite the teething issues with great enthusiasm. The memory frequencies that were once the domain of LN2 with DDR3 have been surpassed via air cooling as is. Not just for validations but completing benchmark runs as well. This of course, is of particular importance to the point mentioned previously regarding the IGP. That aside, I have to say despite or contrary to all evidence and reason. (I’m being intentionally irrational) I do believe AMD can turn itself around and once again provide viable alternatives to INTEL and NVIDIA products. There’s no denying that the management at AMD has been absolutely appalling for almost a decade if not more. However, there is still valuable IP within the firm, great engineers and at the very least people still willing to compete with the aforementioned companies. It’s not a lost cause just yet even though AMD, from a consumer point of view is in its twilight years.

There is hope in their GPUs still as the company has been competitive or at least more so than they have been with CPUs. The uphill battle that they must undertake for a competitive chance against INTEL is monumental to say the least. Contrary to what they are facing in the GPU arena against their chief rival. It is a situation where a node shift could help keep the firm in the fight somewhat.

Fury and FuryX aside, AMD did itself no favours by re-releasing Hawaii GPUs under a different name. A victory against the reference GTX 980 is hollow as within the target demographic, few purchase reference cards. Most users opt for factory overclocked models. It is these models that have been on the market for nearly a year this month which remain more compelling than the 390X in all measurable ways.

That said, with NANO out soon, perhaps AMD will once again claw back some of the lost market share provided that it can actually supply these GPUs. Hopefully not a FuryX situation which is near impossible to find in many regions around the globe.

Whatever your take on all of this, interesting times ahead. Have an opinion on any of this? Drop us a message on facebook or twitter, until next time, happy overclocking and gaming.

[ Neo Sibeko - Editor ]

Issue 35 | 2015 The OverClocker 3

34

REGULARS 3 - Editor’s note 6 - Q+A with Sofos 1990 12 - OC-TV Season 2 Episode 13

REVIEWS 26 - ASUS Rampage V Extreme 30 - GIGABYTE G1.Gaming GTX 980 Ti

GAME TIME 34 - The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt 38 - Dominator Platinum Revisited The Overclocker is published by OCL-Media (cc).

26

Editor Neo Sibeko Art Director Chris Savides Contributors Dane Remendes Pieter-Jan “Massman” Plaisier Timothée Pineau For editorial and marketing please contact: neo@theoverclocker.com

4 The OverClocker Issue 35 | 2015

QA

Sofoklis “Sofos1990”Oikonomou

Country Name and City: I'm from Athens, Greece.

What language(s) do you speak and how is your Mandarin Chinese so far?

I speak Greek, English and a bit of German. My Mandarin Chinese is not good at all!

Your nick, “Sofos1990”, any special meaning behind it and why that nik?

There's nothing special behind it.

Sofos is my short name and 1990 is the year I was born.

How long have you been overclocking with LN2 and what is it about LN2 that got you hooked?

6 The OverClocker Issue 35 | 2015

I've been overclocking since 2008.

The Greek oc community was pretty strong back in day and I liked the fact that you could get better performance out of it.

Which was your first live overclocking event, where was it and how did you do?

I haven't been to many oc events.

They never got me excited to be honest. The first one I attended took place in Greece at a big internet cafe. It was during the Z77 days and EVGA was sponsoring it. I don't remember the scores achieved there though. As for my first competitive overclocking event, that was during Computex 2014. It was the Intel competition

and one or two days later it was the Kingston event that I took part in for the Gigabyte team. If I remember correctly, we placed first at the Kingston HOT and at Intel's event we won the most stages on LN2.

You’ve been involved with overclocking for some time.

Anything big that you can point to that has changed over the years, from when you started?

I feel that from 2008 until now the level of the overclockers has changed. Now there are more good overclockers than before. As a result of that the competition is much stronger.

Issue 35 | 2015 The OverClocker 7

What about overclocking in general do you think has changed the most over the years, be it for the good or the bad?

Nowadays, normal overclocking has become a mainstream “hobby”. Most of the motherboard vendors have overclocking series motherboards with built-in profiles for overclocking. Extreme overclocking is still the same. As I said before, there are more people in it now than previously, which makes it more interesting.

Prior to your current work, when you were back in Greece, who did you overclock mostly with?

I used to overclock only on the weekends with a friend of mine. His

8 The OverClocker Issue 35 | 2015

name is Antonis.

For those who do not know, when did you join GIGABYTE and what do you do mainly?

I joined Gigabyte just before Computex 2014, so around the April of 2014. I'm working with HiCookie in the OC-Lab for the technical marketing team. Oh yeah, I'm also responsible for the beer fridge in the OC-LAB hahah (:D) How much of overclocking do you think is finding the right hardware (binning) and how much is skill?

Compared to the old days, these days it’s much easier if your hardware is better than someone

else’s, but for sure you still need skill. I would say that right now it’s probably 70% hardware and 30% skill.

What is your single greatest or most memorable overclocking event and/or achievement?

I really don't remember a specific score. I would say it's when I first made it into the extreme league of HWBOT. Overclocking as an eSports. Do you agree that this can be fun to watch live with an audience?

For the overclockers it's fun for sure. For people who aren't involved it's less so, but HWBOT does a good job with that.

Was overclocking ever about points to you or was it just about the fun of it and the gathering of common minds in the pursuit of this hobby?

Well, I think everyone who is in the rankings that says they do not care about points is not being true. It was mainly for the points for me, but now it's less about that than it used to be for sure.

Favourite motherboard and platform of all time for you?

Is that a trick question? Hahah.

Gigabyte X99 SOC Champion!

Other than overclocking what are your other interests and what occupies your days?

10 The OverClocker Issue 35 | 2015

I don't have many other hobbies.

I mostly watch movies and I play some games on PC. Since most of us had our roots in gaming, do you still play any games and if so on what platform?

Of course, I do play games. I'm currently on a Gigabyte Z97 system.

What are your four favourite games of all time and what are your three favourite benchmarks of all time?

I like the Grand theft Auto series and Battlefield mostly. Other than that I would say Medal of Honour and Far Cry. I hate sci-fi games for some reason :)

For benchmarks I'm ok with most of them but, 3DMark2001se, wPrime and 3DMark05 I like a bit more than the others.

If you could change one single thing in overclocking what would it be?

As an eSport nowadays I think it should be more focused on teams rather than on individual overclockers.

Anything else you’d like to say to everyone reading this?

Have fun and keep pushing it!

[ The Overclocker ]

 

2015 Overclocking Season In every issue of The Overclocker we present you an overview of the Official World Overclocking Ranking, the HWBOT Road to Pro & the HWBOT League rankings. Thumbs up to everyone who made the hall of fame!

Official World Overclocking Ranking 567 pts

529 pts

Topdog

474 pts

Xtreme Addict

Ksateaaa23

HWBOT Road To Pro Gubben

KRONOS PRO OC

Pasatoiutd

2ShEp

GGI78

GENiEBEN

Sebro

Rasparthe

HWBOT OC Leagues The current leaders starting from Elite going to Rookie are Dancop, Hideo, Vadimua, Sn0wMe, SergeR.

Elite

Extreme

Enthusiast

Novice

Rookie

1

Dancop

Hideo

Vadimua

Sn0wMe

SergeR

2

Der8auer

Ikki

Ximi

DJForza

MasterOverclock

3

8 Pack

Michel90

Alexmx

Nexus35

Ziken

4

Smoke

Mtech

Pho5ph0ric

Juanpablo

Bbaxter18

5

Sofos1990

Moose83

NATA 58

Britoflex21

Ogmcvilletc

2

Gumanoid

(standings as of August 10, 2015)

Competition Results The Second quarter 2015 is definitely another active one. With a total of 24 competitions there was plenty of action to follow!

- ASUS ROG -

- GIGABYTE -

ROG OC Showdown Formula Series Round 2

GIGABYTE X99 Chamption Challenge

1 Nvidiaforever2

105 pts

1 Coldest

24 pts

2 [Wanted]

85 pts

2 Rtsurfer

14 pts

3 IvanCupa

74 pts

3 Strunkenbold

14 pts

- HWBOT Road to Pro Pro OC Series - Round 2

HWBOT Challenger Series - Division 1 Round 2

1 Team Pro OC EU

223 pts

1 2ShEp

185 pts

2 KRONOS PRO OC

154 pts

2 Bruno

179 pts

3 KPC Pro OC #2

146 pts

3 DRweEz

148 pts

HWBOT Challenger Series - Division 2 Round 2

HWBOT Challenger Series - Division 3 Round 2

1 Zwitterion93

218 pts

1 Demac

198 pts

2 RULE

182 pts

2 Nikolas61

192 pts

3 Nikolas61

172 pts

3 Sebro

160 pts

HWBOT Challenger Series - Division 4 Round 2

HWBOT Challenger Series - Division 5 Round 2

1 Gubben

250 pts

1 GGI78

212 pts

2 Johan45

205 pts

2 Pasatoiutd

196 pts

3 Topdog

168 pts

3 Bboyjezz

173 pts

HWBOT Challenger Series - Division 6 Round 2

HWBOT Challenger Series - Division 7 Round 2

1 Csunit37

223 pts

1 Rasparthe

223 pts

2 GENiEBEN

191 pts

2 QuickFast

201 pts

3 Willemc700

151 pts

3 Mr.Scott

194 pts

- HWBOT Series Rookie Rumble #18 1 Sn0wMe

Rookie Rumble AMD #15 126 pts

Rookie Rumble #19 1 Saber.rider

124 pts

Rookie Rumble AMD #16 132 pts

Rookie Rumble #20 1 Elvabecerra

1 Niuulh

Novice Nimble #2 and #3

1 Braziliancavemam

1 Niuulh

123 pts

1 Classicplatforms.com

40 pts

Old School is Best School R3 141 pts

2

227/250

Old School is Best School R2

Rookie Rumble AMD #17 117 pts

1 Cowcotland

1 Classicplatforms.com

36 pts

Gumanoid

The OC Show Your overclocking talk-show In each episode of the OC Show, Pieter (Massman - HWBOT) and Tim (Xyala OverClocking-TV) cover the latest news from the overclocking community. This second season of the show introduces a new format - the best way to keep up with the latest from the overclocking scene.

Here are the last episodes of the OC Show Season 2:

The key topics discussed in the last episodes are: • the HWBOT World Tour 2015 • Computex 2015 • Intel Skylake • Microsoft Windows 10 • Overclocking in Indonesia (featuring Alva from jagatoc.com) • and a lot more other crispy news items…

Relax, grab some pop-corn & enjoy the show.

Questions?

If you have questions, you can tune-it for the bi-weekly live Q&A session hosted on the OverClocking-TV Twitch channel.

Ask Us Live

Yeah I said it!

1. I get it, LEDs of various colours are in fashion. In fact knowing how you operate I suspect there may be some suppliers over in the East that has LED’s for cheap. That’s why you have them on everything. Like chrome on cars in around 2002~2004. I’m okay with it, but I think sometimes you go overboard. The 80s are gone. Let them go.

2. If you’re going to call something ambidextrous then it best be symmetrical. If the sides are different, with a different button layout, then that isn’t ambidextrous. I’m talking to you ****** 3. This very magazine has been guilty of the following point as well, but to reviewers. Seriously, don’t have an overclocking section of the review where you just change the CPU multiplier and apply voltage. That is pathetic. Every motherboard can do that and that lemon you call a CPU is not going to do worse or better regardless of which unfortunate motherboard you use it on.

4. While we’re at it, to all offending media. Don’t act like motherboards all work as they should. Some are broken when released and remain so for months if not years on end.

Rather say nothing than outright lie about it. You have made awards and scoring systems meaningless. You do a disservice to both end users, vendors and us media as a whole. This goes to DRAM reviews as well. You’re not keeping a secret from anybody.

We know that DRAM performance has absolutely no impact on game performance. From 2133MHz all the way to 3,666MHz. For some synthetic tests it makes a difference so focus on that. Moreover, a memory kit review with no overclocking is not a memory kit review. Exactly what are you reviewing, the heat spreaders?

5. If you can’t review a PSU, don’t review a PSU. That is very technical and requires plenty of hardware 16 The OverClocker Issue 35 | 2015

which costs much more than many reviewers are capable of purchasing or have access to. Running 4-way SLI with an overclock is not a PSU review.

So don’t do it.

6. To the power-board users out there it’s all good. Do your thing, there’s a handful of you which have the skill, knowhow and gonads to do that.

Celebrate that and pimp it, but do tell your sponsors that they can’t use that as a representation of how well their product is. It’s a reference card with a power-board. I understand this was only for a short period and is likely to never happen again, but it was jarring to see vendor claims based off your work, claiming top scores via a power-board.

7. To the vendors who are obsessed with gaming. Do us all a favour mmkay. Just as with overclocking.

We have been gaming prior to your assistance. So don’t sell me your perception of gaming in any shape way or form. Sticking the word “Gaming” on a product, does not make it any more or less special. In fact I want to get into this a little more.

- I understand LOL, DOTA2 and CS: GO are big, but let me tell you something.

I frankly do not give a damn. The numbers for those three games are phenomenal and they generate billions of dollars for sure. Guess what though. I still don’t give a damn, so stop selling me your wears based on how much better it makes me in games I don’t play.

- Moreover, all three of those games will work on any computer, or graphics card from as far back as 8 years ago.

Where’s the sense in selling somebody a $400 motherboard, a $650 GPU with an $800 monitor under the pretence of delivering a better CS: GO experience? The games will just about play on a calculator at this point but you keep trying to entice me to buy a $5,000 notebook via the argument

of a better CS: GO experience. How exactly would that be? The games work on an 8600M, seriously.

- I’d also like to add that there’s more to games and gamers than these three titles. Gamers are a diverse demographic and not all are 16 years old for instance. There are those who play GTA V, The Witcher 3, Metro Last Light, Dragon Age Inquisition, Total War and a host of other games that may actually require high end hardware. If you’re selling hardware worth thousands of dollars, then at least talk to people about the games that may take advantage of that hardware. For the same reason you won’t find Microsoft or Sony selling their consoles based on how well you can play Wolfenstein 3D, you shouldn’t be selling us expensive gear based on these three games.

8. To motherboard vendors, amongst the many things I can say. I will say this. You need to let go of SATAExpress. It’s not a feature, for there isn’t a single useful SATA-Express drive on the market. This, much like mSATA - is going nowhere on the desktop. It’s ok to let it go.

9. To those vendors who make USB flash drives. Don’t make fat USB drives as they don’t’ fit anywhere and they make the ports on either side unusable. On that note. If you’re building a high end USB3.1 motherboard and want to include a USB flash drive with it. Then at least make it USB 3.0 performance.

What is the point of it being an 8GB USB2.0 drive?

10. As for gaming peripherals?

Really? Do we really need more keyboards, mice and headphones of the same quality, making the same claims by the same ODM? If you’re going to do this at least try to make something useful no? Why would you make exactly the same thing dressed in different colours and then call that your product? That’s absurd. You can’t

“Do we really need more keyboards, mice and headphones of the same quality, making the same claims by the same ODM?” sell me mechanical keys anymore, you can’t sell colours either as it’s already been done. So don’t even try it. How about some actual ingenuity?

Here’s a wonderful idea. Go and buy a set of $120 headphones from a reputable company (That is - look outside this industry). Analyse the audio characteristics, examine the build quality, find out where you can improve it and make that. Also try not to make the headphones the size of an Afro. Not cool.

There’s absolutely no need for the headphones to be so large.

11. Back to you board vendors. Could you try not use the word you’re describing in the description? I mean, writing something such as “DRAM Read to Read Delay - sets the Read to Read Delay for DRAM” is to write nothing at all. What is that?

12. I like adventure games, I like adventure period, but not when I’m putting together a new computer.

POST CODE LED please. Don’t save money with this. It’s ridiculous. Let me find out what’s going on before I RMA the motherboard. It will inevitably cost you and me right? Don’t tell me to try a new CPU, memory or graphics card. Most people have one of each. So where exactly should I find these “other” parts? It’s a small but important thing. Don’t save money here. You can do that by offering digital manuals instead of the thesaurus that comes with every motherboard. You may do that by not shipping a DVD with the motherboard but a flash drive (yes this one can be USB 2.0).

13. This goes to notebook vendors. I have an axe to grind with you as well - GTX 860M/960M are the same thing.

You may think we are drinking the Kool-Aid but we aren’t. That tiny clock speed bump is nothing, these are identical GPUs. - You need to quit trying to build SLI notebooks on a budget. Where is the

sense in a GTX 965M SLI option when a single GTX 980M performs better?

You just use up battery power, deprive one of Optimus technology and make a notebook heavier. Where there are games with no SLI profile, you end up with just 965M performance. So again, rather not. Go big or go home 970/980M SLI or no SLI. - I get that you can bring to market 3K (whatever that is) and UHD/4K displays on notebooks. I must say though, pairing that with a GTX 860/960M is useless. Exactly what game would one be playing at the native resolution with such a GPU? (I swear don’t say DOTA2 or LOL, because yes - those would play just fine at 4K with either of those GPUs, but that’s beside the point.)

- Finally, please do not package a driver, utility and restore DVDs with a notebook with no optical drive. How is this not obvious to you?

[ The Overclocker ]

Issue 35 | 2015 The OverClocker 17

TEAM Great Britain

MSI OC ACADEMY 2015

I

t is Thursday morning and the train is running late. Nothing unusual about that anymore if you live here in the UK I guess, but today was different. Today I was meeting up with RawZ from MSI UK at Kings Cross station to head over to Cambridge for a benching meet.

MSI UK and Team Great Britain had teamed up to arrange the first part of the MSI OC Academy UK tour.

Twenty lucky benchers had each been given a ticket to the event, two nights’ accommodation paid for and all the LN2 that you could possible use. Toss into the mix the introduction to LN2 and a sub-zero benching course for first timers, as well as a Team Great Britain awards evening dinner on the Saturday night and you get the full picture. But the train was late, and it would appear that I would not be getting to London in time to make my connection.

Oh, "Who am I?" you may ask. Well,

18 The OverClocker Issue 35 | 2015

my name is Hivizman, a sometimes competitive bencher and the nominal head of Team Great Britain, and I was responsible for hosting this event. An event that had not been without its challenges, but little did I know what was in store for us. Both good and totally devastatingly bad. Let us back up a bit and go back three weeks, back to when I travelled up to Cambridge for a final site inspection of the venue only to find there had been a fire in the building next door. The fire had caused some structural concerns and they were planning to close the venue we originally hired over the event weekend.

Greene King came to the rescue and offered Team Great Britain and MSI OCA the use of their flagship venue in Cambridge, The Grain Store. It had opened early March and was, to my knowledge, the most upmarket venue at which any benching event had ever been held. Some major setbacks and late changes of plan are part of event hosting, but to have your venue pulled out from under you three weeks before the event was hardcore. Huge thanks go to Greene King Breweries for coming through for TeamGB and MSI UK. The gods smiled. With one minute to spare I joined RawZ and off to

Cambridge we went, but that was pretty much the last time fortune smiled on us as organisers. When we got to Cambridge we were told by the venue management that a large party of 170 people had booked the venue we were using for a party that night. No chance to set up, but worse was when we did a count of the boxes that UPS had delivered to the event for TeamGB and MSI, only 31 of 32 boxes had been delivered. One box was missing, whereabouts unknown.

Nothing else to do but have a drink and try to enjoy the calm before the storm that would be Friday.

Early the next morning we got to the venue and started to set up. The tables we needed had not been delivered, but we got on with things. Bench stations were set up and the hard work of setting up a very complex system of cameras and capture cards to bring a whole new level of viewer involvement to the streaming audience was begun. Nine HD cameras, eight AverMedia capture devices, special powered hubs and active cables had been trailed and tested to ensure a streaming experience like never before‌ Except all the cameras, capture devices, special cables and hubs were in the missing box that UPS had not delivered. So had our GSkill DDR3 RAM needed for the singles competition death matches,

and the two trophies that TeamGB was presenting at the awards dinner the next night - all had been in the one box that had been lost.

One word sums this up. Fucked. And we really were. The whole purpose of the meet was to pilot a broadcast method that we had hoped would change how meets in the UK where held in the future, but it was down the toilet. There were a few other odds and sods, mainly high value items that are key for an overclocking event - CPUs for example. Fortunately I had some spare processors in my backpack so the show could at least go on.

Onwards and upwards there was no other option, we just got on with things. We finished the setting up and made frantic phone calls to folks whose generosity made the continuation of the event possible.

Tom of Box.co.uk was incredible and arranged miracles, AVerMedia UK were great and tried their best to help us out too, but it was the benchers themselves who must take the bulk of the credit. They just shrugged shoulders and made stuff happen.

Respect to all you guys.

8pack and de8aur, OverclockerTV, and representatives of HWBOT in the form of Massman joined us all in Cambridge and the event got going at last.

The first day had been divided into two sections. The introductory course for those who were first timers, and the start of the death match singles for the more experienced LN2 benchers. The stream in a very limited format went live and benching happened. The fun started.

Below are the participants at the meet.

Bonnah, HiVizMan, driftingforlife, ObscureParadox, Bramey, Gregster, kimandsally, nickolp1974, Admiral Huddy, kitfit1, 8pack, debauer, massman, topdog, rbby258, Jumper118, Bulldog239, RawZ, gavbon and borandi made up the list of participants. We had the guys from OverclockTV there, and a good representation of the UK based vendors who were supporting the event. Check out the interviews and after event video that Tim and IsaĂŻe have posted up on their website and on YouTube.

The death match competition proved to be a huge hit, and the guys really got into the spirit of the competition.

One hour to compete benching man vs man with no place to hide really showed the guys what it is like to bench under pressure. Some of the big names fell to the wayside in the first round, with two notable causalities being Massman and topdog.

Competition always throws up

Issue 35 | 2015 The OverClocker 19

surprise results, and kimandsally easily winning in this round was a testament to what the event was all about. Here is Andrew, a fellow who had been benching for a while. Nothing serious, just benching for a bit of fun supporting his forum midlifegamers. co.uk, but having never touched LN2 before that morning. Now here he was going head to head only hours after completing the introduction to LN2 course and winning. The tension was ramped up as egos were bruised or inflated. Contests were won and lost by one point differences in scores. Heartbreak at final moment as Jumper118 came from behind not once but twice to pip more fancied competitors at the post.

The day flew past, and all too soon the landlord was demanding that we pack up for the day as customers were needing the upper floor venue that we had spilled into. The Team Great Britain awards dinner was being held at 7.30PM that evening, and the guys and girls who had been invited relaxed with a drink or two before making their way to the tables.

goes by the handle topdog, received a trophy for UK number 1 extreme bencher for 2014. A big thank you NOT to UPS for losing the trophies forcing us to use a photo of each trophy in place of the actual trophies. One box ruined months of planning and made UPS’s TV advert a lie. They caused problems and did not solve one. The food was good, the drinks were very good at The Grain Store and the night went well. Some of the stories that emerged after the guys got back to the hotel cannot be repeated, I am pleased to say. Needless to say benchers get very out of hand and this lot were most certainly not the stereotypical PC nerd. They're great party guys, but please promise me you will never let

Pieter from HWBOT (AKA Massman) was our guest of honour and very kindly presented a TeamGB trophy to Ian 8pack for achieving the overall number 1 ranking in the world at HWBOT in 2014. Dewi Jones, who

All images are courtesy of OverClocking-TV

20 The OverClocker Issue 35 | 2015

my wife see those photos.

While the folks were eating and drinking the night away, viewers had been given the opportunity to head over to overclocker.net and vote who the lucky losers should be.

Two first round losers would get the opportunity to have another crack at the death match crown. Gavbon and topdog were clear fan favourites and were included in the next round. Sadly, the OCN representative who would have handled the social media side of things for our broadcast partner overclock.net and the stream upload to the OCN twitch channel was forced to pull out of the event at 10:00PM on Friday. Once more events had conspired to dash the events plans,

but we managed.

Having started slow, toptog brought his A game to the event on Sunday and he needed it. Team midlifegamer. co.uk's very own nickolp1974, who had dismissed Massman from the competition in the first round, continued to pile on the pressure and blow all away who dared to stand before him. Narrow defeats by one point seemed to be Gavbon’s destiny as he was beaten once more by a single point and eliminated. Kitfit1, an old school bencher from BenchTec. uk and a good friend, carried the fight to the young guns and only fell in the semi-final. As was the hope, new talent in the UK was certainly identified. ObscureParadox, a young student from Wales, and Jumper118 showed that they had what it takes in the heat of battle, and that they are ones to keep an eye on for the future. However, it was experience in the form of topdog against the rising force in UK benching nickolp1974 who fought out the final.

From the get-go it was Nick who took the lead with a solid first score in Cinebench R15 and did not look back. Dewi fought hard and got close, but it was not meant to be on the day. nickolp1974 was a very popular winner, benching in front of many of his team mates from midlifegamers. co.uk. The team has recently taken the

UK number one slot from benchtech. uk and are now looking at a global top twenty place. Well done to Nick and to all the guys who participated. MSI UK very kindly presented the winner with a Z97 MPower motherboard in recognition of his achievement.

The one aspect of the event that stood out was apart from all the issues that we just could not legislate for, the UK guys just got on with things and enjoyed themselves. 8pack and de8auer did not participate in the head to head for their own reasons and seemed to enjoy themselves doing their own thing while the competition was running. Maybe next time the world’s best will join in with the rest.

I think these kind words that one

of the benchers sent to me after the event sum up the entire experience, and tell me that the MSI OC Academy UK tour event in Cambridge was a huge success.

“I never thought the competition part would get me so bad, it put a feeling of excitement into me that I cannot describe, it has left me wanting more. One thing that was really nice was even though we were competing against each other help was given and offered, a really nice team spirit.

We can’t wait for the next one. You have created something magical here, thank you.”

The UK benching scene is strong, and with MSI’s continued support it will only get stronger.

[ HiVizMan ]

Issue 35 | 2015 The OverClocker 21

INTEL Core i7 6700K –

SKYLAKE Revealed

I

t’s finally here. INTEL’s Skylake-S family of CPUs. To be specific, only two CPUs have shown up thus far, with the rest expected to arrive later.

Those CPUs though, are of little to no concern to us. What we want to know is how these CPUs stack up to the presently available options. After all, DDR4 isn’t new (X99 saw to introduce it nearly a year ago), but for most of us it’ll be the first time we get to use the new DRAM standard.

If you’ve not read all the technical details regarding the CPU, more specifically the Core i7 6700K, then head on over to AnandTech for an insightful and detailed run down of the CPU. I’ll not be covering that here, but what I do want to bring you are my impressions of the CPU. The assumption is most of you reading this are technically minded, but even more so you want to know how this stacks up against what INTEL has in the form of the Core i7 5820K. This is an important CPU and comparison because the price difference between these CPUs is $53. That is about

22 The OverClocker Issue 35 | 2015

the price of a triple-A gaming title these days. As such, the question of value plays an important role in the analysis of this CPU and more so the platform as a whole.

Right now, a high end Z170 gaming motherboard (I swear vendors need to let this verb go) will set you back around $300 . Consider that this is about the same price for a mid-range gaming motherboard for the X99 chipset and you have an uphill battle for the 6700K even before we consider performance, overclocking, etc.

Mind you this isn’t to say this CPU is disappointing. It is to the contrary , but be aware that there just may be an alternative CPU for you within the INTEL Family should the 6700K prove underwhelming for your needs.

What should also be consdiered is that, the way games and perhaps even 3D benchmarks are these days.

It’s rather difficult to find a generational change that increases performance in leaps and bounds.

This is simply because the settings at which most high end gaming takes place; the

bottleneck is the GPU and not the CPU. As such, regardless of how great the IPC improvements, there’s no way that would translate into better game performance. One may be hoping that the games written for DirectX12 and Windows 10 may break free from this, but even then. The API and driver model embrace parallelism more than they do extracting additional performance out of a single thread. As such, one must be weary of framing the analysis of the 6700K around game benchmarks.

For overclocking, more specifically competitive overclocking, the CPU brings forth some great changes with a few caveats of course. Compared to all previous CPUs since SandyBridge, Skylake-S CPUs (specifically the K SKUs of course) break free from the stepped reference clock restrictions. No longer are we bound to 100/125/166 and on X99 250MHz (The last one didn’t work anyway) reference clock dividers. We can finally overclock via the base clock purely to dial in the exact DRAM frequencies we desire. If you’re

not a believer or more importantly remain unconvinced. Do examine the 552.2MHz base clock by DrWeez. Not since the old P35/ X48 days have we seen such high frequencies. In addition to this, the Z170 chipset and Skylake-S CPUs not only have an improved memory controller, but a 100/133MHz DRAM reference clock as opposed to the 200/266MHz we have previously seen. All these changes mean we are not only seeing incredibly high memory frequencies for validations, but it is well and truly possible to run 3,600MHz memory for daily use. Not with high voltages either, but with regular 1.35V DIMMs. During testing, G.Skill happened to release a 3,600MHz kit, making the vendor the first to have such high speed memory on offer at retail level. Inevitably others will follow and it will not be unsual in six to eight months for all vendors to have some 3800MHz or perhaps even higher frequency kit. The race has begun.

These are likely the two most

important aspects to the 6700K CPU concerning the tuning element. All too often we are fixated on the highest CPU frequency and not the performance per clock. The 6700K via better IPC has thus far claimed a number of Global top scores displacing the 4770K/4790K in the benchmark rankings. For instance in CineBench R11.5 where DER8AUER, scored an impressive 15.83 points.

This was at a clock frequency of 6,377MHz. Compare that with the previous top score by 8 Pack of 14.34 points at 6,452MHz. You can clearly see that IPC has gone up respectably where a lower clock results in a higher score. CineBench R15, GeekBench3, wPrime 32M, 1024M, XTU and oddly enough 3DMark2001SE saw new WR scoring over 5,000 points higher than the previous score. Best of all this is just the beginning. It is these kinds of achievments which certainly excite the competitive crowd.

These achievements mean that overclockers will be making their way to the new platform with haste.

In light of all this, there is a caveat which is simply that to really get the high clock speeds, one is obligated to remove the IHS from the CPU and apply either better thermal compound or simply overclock without any IHS completely. A risky proposition given just how much thinner in profile this CPU is compared to the previous Haswell chips. The profile is about a third in size and if you take a razor to it, you absolutely must exercise caution.

The reason for this apparently stems from the thermal interface material which INTEL has chosen to use for these CPUs. It is at best similar to what we had from Devil’s Canyon but most likely inferior especially when operating the CPU at sub-zero degree temperatures. For air cooling it means that the limit is actually around 4.6 to 4.8GHz. Some select CPUs are reaching the magical 5GHz mark but these are far and few between. Such overclocking behaviour is contrary to what may have been “leaked” on the internet where a certain 5.2GHz

Issue 35 | 2015 The OverClocker 23

was shown operating at 1.35V. That is either one very special CPU or one that was showing immense promise which then had its IHS removed to increase the overclocking headroom.

So no, the 5GHz CPU overclocking days are not back unfortunately. It doesn’t mean however that if you are still on a Sandy-Bridge platform with a 5GHz CPU - that an upgrade is pointless. Purely from a connectivity point of view it is likely worth your effort to look into the Z170 motherboards and the 6700K CPU. Most high end motherboards, feature two M.2 ports, some USB 3.1, newer and better INTEL network controller chips and better audio, NVMe support and many more native USB 3.0 ports.

These are likely not available on your present platform and even though you have the 5GHz CPU clock, your memory clock, is significantly lower and so is the CPU IPC. Thus you’re probably due for an upgrade and the Core i7 6700K and Z170 motherboard are perhaps the ideal time to make the switch.

24 The OverClocker Issue 35 | 2015

For the ones that were using Haswell systems, odds are you already have a short upgrade cycle and you’ll sooner, rather than later upgrade in which case as stated previously. Don’t expect a fundamentally different experience at all. Your performance will not be rewarded in proportion to your investment. This is perhaps what leads us back to the 5820K and the performance data.

As you can see, for the most part in gaming, a standard 5820K is a little behind what the 6700K delivers.

Mind you that the difference in operating frequencies is quite high in the region of 700MHz. You’d not think so given that the normal operating frequency for each CPU is 3.3GHz and 4GHz respectively. That is very true, but as we have seen for several generations. All major motherboard vendors have extended TURBO functionality which does not limit the upper limit of maximum speed bins to a single CPU core. That

is, instead of the 6700K boosting up to 4.2GHz at most for single threaded workloads. All the CPU cores are when loaded will operate at 4.2GHz. The same applies to the 5820K CPU, some vendors have this feature as “Enhanced Turbo” and GIGABYTE for instance calls it "K-OC". Regardless of the name, it is essentially the same feature. It boosts all the operating cores to the maximum Turbo frequency which in the case of the 5820K is 3600MHz. With that said, the 6700K operating at 4.2GHz (note that this extended TURBO is always enabled in the testing) is faster than the 3.6GHz 5820K in games that are still CPU bound to some degree. In other workloads as you can see from the results, the 6700K is slower. That is media encoding and general multithreaded workloads. Not unexpected by anyone. The game tests were done at a very low resolution of 1280x720 to eliminate the GPU bottleneck. At higher resolutions from FHD to UHD

it is unlikely that there is a difference at all between the CPUs. Interestingly enough, when you overclock the 5820K to the same 4.2GHz, but disable Hyper-threading.

You end up with the 5820K matching the 6700K in all the game tests but one, then proceeding to assert its dominance in the multi-threaded benchmarks. Even though only six threads are available, it looks as if real cores are still better than virtualized cores. This is actually a direct comparison between the CPUs per clock performance. There’s no questioning that the 6700K is the fastest INTEL CPU thus far clock for clock. However the IPC difference between the Haswell-E and Skylake-S CPU are smaller than you may think.

This could be for several reasons including the quad channel memory controller, and larger cache size, giving the performance edge to the 5820K in some instances. The differences in performance efficiency between the two generations

of CPUs in fact becomes none existent for the most part or may swing the opposite direction.

Of course if you go even higher with the clock speeds, then the 6700K will likely attain CPU clocks are not feasible for the 5820K. In which case the 5820K in the game results at 4.5GHz is a hair slower than the 6700K at 4.6GHz. In only a single game did the 5820K come out ahead, but that title (Tomb Raider) in particular seems to be GPU bound even at 1280x720.

The numbers are from this point of view very interesting because they speak to precisely what was the main concern coming into this review. As stated in the beginning, the 4790K and the 6700K cost about same. The Z97 motherboards however are in general a little cheaper along with DDR3 which is extremely cheap. There was a case to be made for the value aspect of the Z97 platform which can't be . made for the Z170 platform. DDR4 kits by and large cost the same and enthusiasts

along with power users are buying 4x4GiB DDR4 kits. The motherboards again are many times matched in features and price, thus it is purely down to the $53 price difference between the two CPUs. It’s a tough choice to make really, especially because both these CPUs are K-SKUs thus overclocking is very much a real and important part of the debate between them. As a step up from Z97 and the 4790K, I’m generally content with what INTEL has provided.

The overclocking flexibility alone is what sold the platform for me over the performance improvements.

I have great expectations of what overclocking results will come with this CPU and there’s a level of excitement that is undeniable.

Admittedly that is not the case for everyone and for those purely interested in gaming and some multithreaded productivity applications you may want to take a closer look at X99 as an alternative. [ The Overclocker ] Issue 35 | 2015 The OverClocker 25

ASUS RAMPAGE V EXTREME RRP: $479.99 | Website: www.asus.com

Test Machine • INTEL Core i7 5820K • CORSAIR Dominator Platinum •DDR4 3400 C16 • SAMSUNG PX941 512GB • CORSAIR AX1500i • Windows 10 x64 (1501 BIOS)

H

ere it is, the motherboard that started it all. What do I mean by that? Well, it’s simple really. This is the motherboard that hit the ground running. Many moons ago, almost a year ago, When others couldn’t make heads or tails of the X99 chipset and DDR4. This was the motherboard that seemed to get it right. It set that standard by which all other motherboards would be measured.

After all, not only did it have the best DRAM compatibility at launch, it had one crucial performance enhancement that was unavailable to others at the time. This feature or 26 The OverClocker Issue 35 | 2015

functionality if you prefer would remain exclusive to ASUS for several months before the competition caught on and could reproduce boards resembling what ASUS had from day one.

One must admit however, that competitors have come to the party and are at present offering competitive motherboards, in some cases perhaps even better motherboards. However, that is neither here nor there. One could point to any number of HWBOT scores and submissions to prove the point. As such, one has to be careful with that kind of analysis when it comes to high end overclocking gear. Before you say this isn’t a motherboard catering exclusively or primarily for extreme overclocking, consider that just about every worthwhile feature on this motherboard is concerned with competitive overclocking. From the ROG OC-Panel, LN2 mode, Slow Mode, Mem OK, Retry button, overclocking profiles and the exhaustive but detailed BIOS settings. Everything with this motherboard points to

competitive or at the very least extreme LN2/ DICE overclocking.

Much like the Rampage V Black Edition before and so on. These are thoroughbred overclocking motherboards that happen to have “gaming features”.

Going back to the point made earlier about HWBOT scores. The structured and competitive overclocking landscape has evolved in such a way that it is possible for any one vendor, with enough resources dedicated to the endeavor, solicit a number of overclockers over any period of time and produce amazing results. In fact, in the space of two weeks, one has little to no doubt that any of the competing motherboards could produce an equal number of the “records”

that are separated by an academic margin or purely down to the CPU selection process - luck.

It is because of such practices, that finding out what a motherboard such as this is truly capable off proves challenging. Especially if one focuses exclusively on the submitted scores, which do not tell you much other than what is possible with time, knowledge, effort and dedication. Thus the true analysis of what the RVE is capable of becomes a convoluted & daunting task. One that necessitates that you at some point resort to LN2 cooling even if it is for the sake of just verifying that scores produced and submitted are remotely possible. More importantly the question becomes how much effort it takes to produce such results.

What you see tabled in the results are not the LN2 results, but regular air overclocking results. They show if anything

that tuning the memory, UCNORE and other settings it really what determines perfomance between vendors .

Simply picking a winner without delving into more detail is a futile exercise. It has come to a point where, if you’re looking solely to use a motherboard for gaming and will not dabble in any overclocking whatsoever.

Then it makes no difference which motherboard you choose to go with regarding performance. They will be the same for the most part and any difference that there is will be negligible, especially since one who purchases a $480 USD motherboard is likely to have a GPU costing just as much if not more and possibly more than one. So take the results for what they are. They are a general representation of what the motherboard is capable off but not necessarily of how different or more efficient it may or may not be over any other board.

In the time that was spent with the Rampage V and some

LN2. It became very clear that this is a fantastic board. I can’t speak for the state it was in when it was initially released, but now a good 10 months later it is sublime and gets better as you get better or perhaps your other hardware improves. Even without the ROG OC-Panel, there is little that you may not be able to control and in conjunction with the incredible guide written by coolice . You pretty much have someone to guide you with the motherboard even if you’ve never overclocked the X99 CPUs or DDR4 before. Should you be impatient or just have no interest in reading the lengthy but highly valuable guide, then you may simply resort to the overclocking profiles within the motherboard UEFI/BIOS. The profiles are labelled as memory frequencies for some reason and with the memory kit I used, didn’t work as well at frequencies past 3,200MHz. However, they were more than enough to start with. From there, dialing in the right settings that were specific to my CPU and memory was much simpler. One can imagine how much longer this would take given all the options that are made available to you within the motherboard UEFI. Again, this is not to say that every other motherboard should have overclocking profiles, in fact some are simple enough that there aren’t as many settings to get caught up on. In the case of the Rampage V Extreme it matters and these prove to be of immense value as you could spend weeks on end just trying out every single voltage, clock frequency setting and a host of other tuning options that are to my knowledge exclusive to the Rampage V Extreme. If not for the guide or the profiles, one would simply be bludgeoned with options and have little to no sense as to where to start.

A quirk that I found with the motherboard, tespecially when not employing LN2 was that setting memory past 3,200MHz as mentioned earlier would prove challenging. This isn’t because the RVE would not Issue 35 | 2015 The OverClocker 27

POST, but simply because one could lose memory channels.

That is, even if you have four sticks of memory installed, POSTING 3400MHz would work, but only with two or sometimes three of the channels showing up for a total of 8 or 12GiB of memory.

This was an issue that I never managed to figure out, but I was informed that there is a way around this which would require tuning of very specific settings.

I was never able to find out the details to this, but I do believe it possible as I have seen plenty of screenshots which depict as much. In fact, it is in the very guide which one speaks of where frequencies north of 3,400MHz are shown. So once again it is possible, it is just a matter of how simple it is to do so.

That should not be a major issue for most people especially as I have found that memory frequencies at 3,000 to 3,2000MHz seem to be the sweet spot for this motherboard and others in fact. It is here where you can maximize 28 The OverClocker Issue 35 | 2015

memory timings and frequency along with the UNCORE. The perfect harmony is in this range where the memory bandwidth figures are high and the latency low. Higher than that seems to cause a loss in some efficiency and lower lacks the raw memory bandwidth to match. Thus I don’t think one should be too concerned with this, especially from a performance perspective.

Ultimately, using the CPU I had on hand the highest frequency I could validate was roughly 5.8GHz with all 12 threads active. I do believe however that more can be attained, but specifically 3D benchmarks can be run at around 5.6 or perhaps even 5.7GHz. The reason I may not have achieved this is time related.

Due to time constraints I only had a couple of hours in total to max out the CPU and run a few tests, but 5.57GHz was very easy to attain and in fact the motherboard allowed this CPU to go from POST to Windows and through the benchmarks

at this speed with no tuning in Windows or via the OC-Panel.

The voltage required for this was relatively low as well at only 1.55V. Thus with more juice, better temperature control and perhaps a different CPU container or mounting, the frequency would be higher.

Having said that, the hours spent with the motherboard under cold were more than enough to confirm just how capable the Rampage is. It is the original X99 that catered properly and completely to overclockers and it is easy to understand why. It simply worked in a way that no other motherboard at the time could. Right now it is still producing amazing results and I do know that there are many overclockers that swear by the Rampage V Extreme as their motherboard of choice for the platform.

So you may be wondering then if it is worth the $480 USD price.

Well, the simple answer is that there isn’t a simple answer. On the one hand you have a cheap

and extremely capable X99 SOCChampion at $200 less and then on the other there’s the MSI X99A X-POWER AC at just over $400 USD. Given there isn't much of a difference in performance, maximum OC and such. Is the RVE worth the price premium which it commands? To some maybe not.

However, you should realize that none of the other motherboards are built like the Rampage V Extreme. Vendors can argue about component selection, quality and the like, but you have to admit that just the ROG OCPanel alone is worth a whole lot.

Especially since it can act as a thermometer for your CPU and GPU as well. That is something you’d otherwise have to pay additionally for with any other motherboard. Not only that, but via this same control panel you may gain access to GPU control if you have the right ASUS GPU of course.

Then you also have the SupremeFX 2014 audio with Sonic Radar which is for the most part better than what the others offer on their overclocking motherboards.

There’s the 3x3 Dual band Wi-Fi with an aggregated 1300mbps bandwidth. Thermal sensors, an LN2 back plate, a USB3.1 riser card and just so much more which comes packaged with the motherboard. These are the “gaming” features if you will and when you reevaluate the pricing with all these in mind it doesn’t seem so ridiculous to spend this much on a motherboard. It is an amalgamation of an overclocking and gaming

motherboard at its finest.

In light of this, it is up to you to decide what value you may attach to the Rampage and if it’s worth the spend. Given that this will likely support the next generation LGA 2011-v3 CPUs over and above the current Haswell-E generation. I would wager that it is a worthwhile investment especially if the Rampage IV Extreme is anything to go by. It remained relevant for years on end up until the last CPU generation for the platform. If viewed in such a manner, as potentially the last X99 motherboard you may buy then it is certainly worth the money. Treat it well during the LN2 cooled overclocking sessions and perhaps retire it into an ultra-high end gaming machine. In both instances it will work well and within that context has a justifiable price.

Overall, I’m thoroughly impressed with this motherboard. I may have waited a good 10 months to test it, but the wait was worthwhile. All too often, motherboards release into the market and they are less than reliable. In fact for the most part, editorial processes do not report issues that are teething issues, but instead focus solely on what is right about the motherboard instead of all of it. The wait here was worthwhile and with the tested 1502 BIOS, it is smooth with no overt problems or anything out of the ordinary. Be it memory tuning, CPU clocking, efficiency or UNCORE overclocking, it all works as it should. Even better is how it all comes together in a

predictable and reliable manner.

This is a wonderful motherboard and definitely worth adding to your overclocking arsenal. Easily my favorite ASUS motherboard to date next to the Rampage IV Black Edition and the original X48 Rampage Extreme. [ The Overclocker ]

Summary You’ve probably seen this motherboard all over by now and are well versed with the features and its overclocking pedigree.

It is all true and this is a great prodcut. It’s likely even better now with the USB 3.1 option and several BIOS updates later. If you’re buying into this platform at this time and price is of no concern, you should definitely start here as there isn’t any other motherboard that has this balance between overclocking capacity and gaming orientated features.

Would you buy it?

Yes this is a buy, most certainly.

Issue 35 | 2015 The OverClocker 29

GAMING GEAR AWARD

Value Award

GIGABYTE G1.

GAMING GTX 980 Ti RRP: $689.99 | Website: www.gigabyte.com

Test Machine • INTEL Core i7 5960X • CORSAIR Dominator Platinum • DDR4 3400 C16 • GIGABYTE X99 SOCChampion (F4j) • SAMSUNG PX941 512GB • CORSAIR AX1500i • Windows 8.1 x64

I

n June, during Computex or perhaps just after, NVIDIA released the cut down GM200 chip in the form of the GTX 980 Ti. This was the GPU that was supposed to sit just under the TITAN-X as the gaming GPU of choice. However, as you are aware, the opposite ended up happening. As it stands the standard GTX 980 Ti more often than not has better performance than the TITAN-X. This is largely due to the

30 The OverClocker Issue 35 | 2015

fact that, cards such as the GIGABYTE G1.Gaming GTX 980 Ti carry monster overclocks that leave everything else in the dust. This particular sample for instance would regularly hit boost clocks above 1394MHz during gaming.

Now as we all know, the GM204 and GM200 GPUs are all limited to around this clock speed or at least with air or liquid cooling. As such, GIGABYTE effectively took the hassle of discovering the maximum overclock and presented it to us in a neat and guaranteed package. Not only did they provide the fastest gaming card at the time (barring any dual GPU solutions), but they also happened to manage to sell it at a very attractive price.

Naturally $650 USD for the standard model is a lot of money, but for an additional $30 GIGABYTE managed to add

not only copious amounts of performance, but proceeded to cool the card better and outfit it with the Flex Display Technology. If you’re not familiar with what this display technology does, it basically allows you to use up to five displays simultaneously at resolutions as high as 4K per supporting display. Not many gamers are likely to make use of that many displays, but for the flight and racing sim fans this may come in very handy. More importantly the G1.Gaming just may have the grunt to push out that may pixels in any one of the racing or sim games on the market.

Memory on the GIGABYTE card is as you’d expect is courtesy of Hynix. At present, except for one GTX 980 Ti, all vendors make use of the same Hynix memory. As such, your mileage in memory overclocking will

vary and there isn’t a hard and fast rule about how far you should be able to push. With that said, I have yet to come across any G1.Gaming card that isn’t capable of reaching at least 1900MHz which translates into 364GiB/s of memory bandwidth.

Impressive by any measure especially when it comes to playing games at QHD resolutions with 4xAA or simply gaming at 4K resolutions. Out the box, this graphics card is already faster than the single fastest offering from NVIDIA, so if there’s any game that you are not able to max out at whatever resolution. It isn’t because the G1.Gaming isn’t capable, it’s simply because there just doesn’t exist any graphics card which can deal with the game at said resolution and settings. In no uncertain terms, the G1.Gaming is the pinnacle of PC

gaming and a fine example of what after markets cards should be as well.

Visually, GIGABYTE has been conservative about the designs of their graphics cards. In fact I would wager that out of all the major vendors, they have not veered too much from their roots and have instead, chosen to make subtle changes to their coolers over the years. What you see with the G1.Gaming is exactly that. The Graphics card features the powerful and quite possibly best air cooler in the business. It’s the 600W behemoth that we first saw with the TITAN Black GHz Edition.

Not many were exposed to this awesome graphics card and its cooler, but it helped transform the TITAN Black edition into an entirely different animal. In fact, to this day, the TITAN Black GHZ Edition is the fastest GK110 graphics card I have ever tested,

eclipsing all other GTX 780 Ti models on the market. The price was steep, but for a while it really was the fastest single GPU solution money could buy.

That very same cooler has returned but with a different colour scheme. Depending on whom you ask, it could be said to be silver, white or frost white. Whichever combination of colors it may be, it is fairly toned down and only has the customizable LED lighting as the main wow factor. The back plate as always is appreciated and GIGABYTE should not abandon this, however it does seem a little weak. Perhaps not lending itself well to the structural rigidity it supposedly provides.

During operation, it did warm up, especially around the GPU die area, but it was never the kind of heat that would sear your skin off. It is once again a testament to just how Issue 35 | 2015 The OverClocker 31

impressive the cooling solution is from the 600Watt cooler.

During gaming in a closed case with mediocre air flow, the G1.Gaming never reached the critical temperature of 80’C. Which meant that as far as boost clocks were concerned it was always operating at or near 1394MHz. Even when overclocking, whatever stable clock speed I set, the graphics card pretty much remained there. This is very important because one may test a graphics card outside a case and find temperatures hardly reaching the 70’C mark. Thus the overclock that one believes to be stable is actually not and this would only be evident when the card is installed into a closed system. This was not the case with the G1.Gaming

32 The OverClocker Issue 35 | 2015

and despite dumping hot air into the chassis, it did not adversely affect temperatures of any other component, at least not to the extent to which it would cause crashes or instability.

Of course if you’re are planning on operating two of these cards in tandem you’ll have to remove the back plate depending on the spacing between the graphics card. For the most part however, there is absolutely nothing to complain about when it comes to the cooler. Aesthetically, I do feel the other vendors may have one up on GIGABYTE. We will have to see if this changes in future (PASCAL, NANO etc.) as new graphics cards are released.

Looking at the results, you can pretty much see that

the G1.Gaming dominates everything, showing incredible performance even at the toughest of resolutions. When compared to the GTX 980 directly, it may seem as if it’s underwhelming, but that is until you turn up the graphics settings or switch to UHD resolutions. Where the GTX 980 was barely capable of playing most modern triple-A titles at these settings, the G1.Gaming handled these with finesse. Not represented in the graphs but it was the minimum frame rates which were truly impressive. Where a game would dip into the low twenties on the GTX 980 and perhaps on some rare occasion the late teens. The GTX 980Ti maintained frame rates around 10FPs faster, which meant that

gaming was always smooth even if the average frame rate didn’t show a massive difference between the 980 and the 980 Ti. For those who are looking for supreme overclocking. Well you will be slightly disappointed, because as mentioned before, the limit for most Maxwell GPUs is around 1500MHz. some rare samples may reach 1600MHz with air cooling, but for the most part the clock speeds are around 1500MHz. since GIGABYTE is selling you a relatively high clock speed already, there isn’t much more you may extract from the GPU. Sure you may resort to voltage control, but keep in mind that this graphics card uses the same NCP8114 voltage controller that you’re familiar with. The GPU VDDC settings are stepped and once you get to 1.21V there isn’t much more you can extract from the graphics card. If you want better or higher frequencies rather, you’ll have to resort to better cooling methods at which point the graphics card may respond positively and reward you with the appropriate clocks. With that said, the

overclock achieved was just over 1501MHz for game stable and artifact free operation. Not the best at all, but do keep in mind that this was within a closed chassis.

For the veteran and competitive overclocker, you’ll have to use a power board for this graphics card and that has its own complications. It isn’t impossible but you should keep in mind that there may be other GPUs on the market that will cater to this very specific need in a more direct manner.

They will however also cost you a lot more. Instead, what GIGABYTE has created here is a graphics card that is purely for gaming at the highest detail levels possible. GIGABYTE has not attempted to do too much, but rather settled on what are practical and readily applicable tweaks for the graphics card such as clock speeds and better cooling. For most people this should be more than enough and once again, with only a $30 price premium over the standard model, the G1.Gaming presents excellent value.

Until the next generation

of graphics cards comes around, it is unlikely that you’ll find any single GPU that offers measurably better performance. This is certainly the fastest graphics card we have tested to date.

[ The Overclocker ]

Summary The GIGABYTE GTX 980 Ti was one of the first, if not the first custom PCB and cooler GTX 980Ti. By all means this graphics card set the GPU clock speed bar and for a while secured itself as the fastest GTX 980 Ti on the market.

Today, it still mixes it up with the best of them, but more importantly is that it does it at a stellar price. For your gaming needs, there’s little to no reason not to pick this GPU. This one is a sure winner.

Would you buy it?

Yes

Issue 35 | 2015 The OverClocker 33

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt RRP: $59.99 | Website: www.thewitcher.com/ | Developer: CD Projekt RED

I

’ve loved The Witcher from the very beginning. These days it’s difficult to imagine this franchise as anything less than the outrageously popular role-playing juggernaut that it’s become, capable of shifting millions of copies in the blink of an eye. I mean, Geralt of Rivia is practically a household name in the gaming world.

But it wasn’t always this way. The original Witcher was a magnificently quirky, hugely interesting, but also hilariously clumsy role-playing game that was very nearly crushed under the weight of its own ambition, and famously needed an almost complete overhaul in order for its original vision to be realised. But it had heart, and experimented with things that very few (if any) games were willing to attempt at the time.

daughter Ciri, who’s on the run from a group of horrible bastards collectively called the Wild Hunt. I’ll leave it at that to avoid any spoilers, but I will say that it’s an impressively compelling narrative, full of the sorts of twists and turns and terrible choices that you’d expect from this series. As I’ve said, it’s also unexpectedly personal, far more so than any other core storyline in the series. There may be grand, world-altering plots unfolding in the background, but this is really a story about a guy desperately fighting to protect the ones he loves. The writing is generally outstanding, and it’s often surprisingly funny as well, providing flashes of amusing reprieve from the many horrible situations you’ll frequently encounter in The Witcher 3.

The Witcher 2 proved to be significantly more refined and showed true growth on the part of its developers, showcasing more of this series’ enormous potential, but still stumbling in a few key areas.

Now, with Wild Hunt, The Witcher has evolved into something truly spectacular, able to not only match but often completely surpass its bigbudget, open-world RPG competitors.

And, importantly, it’s lost none of its heart along the way.

Its narrative picks up where The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings left off. The world is in a state of violent transformation after the events of the second game, and the precarious balance of power between its various factions is surrounded by great big question marks. But that’s merely the backdrop for a far more personal story, which opens with Geralt searching for his long-lost lover Yennefer and eventually leads to him hunting down his long-lost adopted

Even if you don’t engage with the vast array of tertiary distractions and side-quests on offer in the game, the main quest will keep you occupied for many, many happy hours. But stray off the prescribed path and you’ll discover one of the richest, most brilliantly realised open-world environments ever crafted. There’s potentially hundreds of hours of exploring, questing and giddy adventuring to be had, and it’s packed with a variety of characters to meet: some of them friendly, some of them frighteningly eager to use your intestines as Christmas decorations, but almost all of them fascinating.

34 The OverClocker Issue 35 | 2015

There’s the usual mix of timekilling undertakings to discover throughout the world, with stuff like horse racing, hostile bandit camps to attack and a collectible card game to play, but they’re mostly meaningless diversions. It’s the meatier sidequests and mini-stories that you encounter on your journey that prove

“The world is in a state of violent transformation after the events of the second game...�

Issue 35 | 2015 The OverClocker 35

to be the real source of joy as you uncover everything The Witcher 3 has to offer. Along the way, you’ll make many choices. Sometimes these choices are openly harsh, with immediately awful consequences. But sometimes even the most seemingly insignificant of decisions will only show their true magnitude many hours down the line, when it’s much too late to cowardly reverse your choice by loading from a previous save. The Witcher has always presented a very cruel, very mature fantasy universe, one that’s rife with prejudice, suffering and intensely foul happenings, and the third game is no different.

Wild Hunt’s combat system is the most forgiving and accessible in the series. The Witcher 2 was notorious at launch for making combat incredibly punishing and volatile, and even the tutorial was hellishly difficult. In contrast, The Witcher 3 introduces its combat in a far calmer, more manageable fashion. That said, it’s anything but easy. On the higher difficulties, charging into skirmishes

36 The OverClocker Issue 35 | 2015

without first having made the proper preparations is a guaranteed way to suddenly find your entrails splattered on the ground beside you. Brewing potions, crafting bombs and coating your blades with the oils suggested in Geralt’s bestiary is pretty much mandatory if you hope to survive brawls, particularly against rarer, more dangerous enemies. The general flow of combat is as satisfying as ever, and there’s an excellent sense of momentum underlining Geralt’s attacks. It’s not all roses though; Wild Hunt’s finicky, oversensitive controls have an annoying habit of tripping you up during (and even outside of) combat. And while the vast majority of my in-game deaths can be attributed to my own ineptitude, there were more than a few times when the controls were to blame.

Character progression is handled via a new skill system, wherein you can only have a handful of your unlocked skills and attributes active at any given time, which encourages you to customise your skill loadout to match your present needs. I

“There’s potential hours of exploring giddy adventuring

lly hundreds of g, questing and g to be had...”

honestly can’t decide if I’m a fan of this revamped system, but it works well enough that I can’t find any legitimate reason to complain about it. Elsewhere, there’s everything you’d expect from a Witcher game. Alchemy returns, but has been streamlined to make it so you’re not constantly foraging for herbs and hacking up monster organs to keep your precious cache of bombs and potions stocked.

Again, I’m not sure I prefer this new way of doing things, but it works well nonetheless. There’s weapon and armour crafting available at various merchants scattered around each of the game’s enormous areas. It’s full to bursting with horrific monsters to slay and people to punch in the face. And they’ve even thrown in a horse to keep you company on your travels.

Wild Hunt’s an imperfect game. The menu UI is kind of a mess, cluttered to the point where navigating its menus and submenus can become a bit of a chore. The threshold for fall damage is ridiculously low, and Geralt loses a significant chunk of his health bar every time he steps off anything barely above chest height. It’s riddled

with bugs; some of them are just hilarious, like floating horses, and some of them are more serious, like broken quests. Thankfully, CD Projekt is constantly releasing updates to iron out such kinks. The swimming is just… it’s just dreadful. But beyond its many flaws lies a true masterpiece, a magnificent, thoroughly captivating role-playing game. If you’re even remotely interested in the genre, you’ve got to play it.

[ Dane Remendes ]

Would you buy it?

Yes. And then I’d buy it again, just to be sure. It’s one of the finest RPGs in existence, and the perfect way to bring an end to this incredible trilogy.

The Score

9.5/10 Issue 35 | 2015 The OverClocker 37

AFTER-DARK

CORSAIR DOMINATOR PLATINUM LIMITED EDITION Re-visited T

he following editorial is a revisit to the dominator set of memory we reviewed in issue 34 of TheOverclocker magazine.

The reason for this is that I recently had to explain to an individual why I would award such an expensive memory kit the “editor’s choice” award. Their position was that, given what was shown in the results, nothing about the memory suggested or warranted such high praise. In fact they went on to state that as a publication, we had done no better than the many websites which review such high performance kits by merely performing pedestrian level tests, showing no meaningful overclocking results, if any at all.

Naturally, this was of concern, but it did echo true because upon examining that review, one has to admit that the content was rather passible, perhaps even vacuous. In the four pages, the only thing we had brought forth was our fascination with the frequency and a working X.M.P profile. Sure enough, there were some scaling results that showed how tight the memory could be configured via the primary settings, but truth be told that was expected since these are binned Hynix MFR ICs and once again it was a $1,000 kit at the time.

In light of this I decided to reexamine the memory and bring fourth the results and notes I had initially gathered for the kit prior it to being filtered and pacified via the editorial process. As such, there is no need to go back to the ordinary aspect of the kit and re-

38 The OverClocker Issue 35 | 2015

hash it. You may, at any point read the initial review and gather my impressions about those elements.

This is strictly, what happens with the memory when you tune it down as far as it will go, outside of the primary timings. Indeed there is re-evaluation of what happens with primary timings, but focus mostly on what the memory reveals as the ideal performance setting. I used voltage from 1.35 to 1.45V. This is safe and there should be no degradation at even 1.5V or slightly above. Obviously if you’re looking to tune for 24/7 settings you’ll want to stick to 1.35V, but 0.1V higher is unlikely to cause harm to your memory.

For the individual who straddles the line between being a high level competitive overclocking and an enthusiast, this is of importance because it highlights what most reviews, including the one we did in issue 34, often miss about performance kits. There is a lot more than just CAS latency to memory. In fact, the performance of any kit may even be in the secondary and tertiary timings. As often the case, tuning of these settings takes an immense amount of time and when dealing with a $1,000 kit, you should always take the time to label the memory as stated in the other review. Find out which stick order works best and make sure to document it all. Some orders will allow you higher frequency while others will allow you tighter timings. It is worth investigation as it will make a sizeable difference

EDITOR’S CHOICE AWARD

as to the level of performance you should expect. You will see in the results that there is more to gain with just tuning the secondary and tertiary timings (in the very odd way this motherboard allows) than you could possibly find with the primaries when dealing with memory. Especially when you’re looking at sticking to the regular operating voltage or when you have IC’s that just do not lend themselves well to your particular motherboard and CPU combination. These are the things, which make the largest difference and it is worth noting all of this in an effort to make the best out of your purchase.

Again tuning memory is a lengthy process, which may take anywhere from tens of hours to days on end.

Even with just testing a single stick at a time in the various channels, it will take a while, considering you must for each setting (within reason), test for stability with Hyper Pi 32M at the very least and other benchmarks which will make use of all the available memory without error. Days on end can be spent on a single stick even when you’re well aware of what ICs are used for the memory. This is a second look at what the CORSAIR DOMINATOR PLATINUM Limited Edition 3400MHz kit is capable of with just some

time and tuning. When cooled it will perform and scale even better, but all of what follows is achieved via regular air cooling and certainly numbers most systems are capable of achieving, especially where SuperPi 32M is concerned. It only dawned on me far after having done the days of testing that the windows 7 operating system used was much slower than Windows 8.1 that I would normally use. Yes, Super Pi is best run on Windows XP/2000 and the like, but this exercise isn’t an attempt at showing the 7minute 18seconds or less experts in Super Pi 32M can achieve at 4GHz. It’s to show that there is more to this kit

Issue 35 | 2015 The OverClocker 39

“You will see in the results that there is more to gain with just tuning the secondary and tertiary timings.” than the primary timings and to extract the best out of your memory performance you will need to spend time tuning it all.

As you have seen in the graphs, the results speak for themselves.

It is evident that when you tune the memory right down as far as possible at least with this combination of motherboard and CPU. 2,666MHz tuned will match what you can achieve at 3,400MHz if you only rely only on the X.M.P. That is noteworthy because it is not something you’d expect, as there’s a massive frequency difference between the two settings. Loading an X.M.P profile gets you to a safe place to start tuning from, however that is far from where the optimum performance for the kit is. In fact, a great place to start would be the “AUTO” settings at 2,666 or perhaps even 2,400MHz. Record the timings 40 The OverClocker Issue 35 | 2015

of the kit at the low speed. Then compare them with the timings you have when you’ve set X.M.P. You may then begin matching the lower values. Should you succeed, you will notice a massive boost in performance and it often will not require any additional voltage.

Sometimes sacrificing the primary timings holds merit because what you stand to gain is significantly more meaningful. Adherence to the dogma, which states the lowest CAS Latency trumps all is to miss the point entirely.

The experts will tell, you that tuning memory RTL and IOL voltage is important. This cannot be overstated. It matters on every motherboard and it is where you should look to capitalize possibly before all other settings. If you are able to keep these settings low, then you will gain some

meaningful performance. Again, this is very board dependent and some motherboards will allow this adjustment far better than others will, however you should make the most of what is at your disposal.

It is a timely exercise but one that is rewarding in many ways and certainly worth investing in.

So there you have it, this is what the memory can do and that is why it was worthy of the praise it initially received. A verdict I stand by today. It is that lack of transparency in performance and detailed sharing of data which may have put our judgement in question. Here’s hoping the results illustrate to you the kind of performance and flexibility that this kit allows, ultimately making it still the best DDR4 set of memory I’ve tested thus far.

[ The Overclocker ]

T h r o wB a c k P a g e