GIGABYTE X99 SOC Champion breaks XTU world record and highest DDR4 memory frequency

HWBOT lit up today with some more scores from GIGABYTE X99 SOC Champion coupled with DDR4 and 5960X CPU. First score was the highest DDR4 memory frequency done by hicookie. New DDR4 frequency top score was set with Corsair DDR4 memory and it stands at DDR4-4326 (2163.3MHz).

HWBOT score link: http://hwbot.org/submission/2745882_hicookie_memory_clock_ddr4_sdram_2163.3_mhz

It comes with a video validation showing oscilloscope measurements confirming the frequency.

The latest XTU world record was also broken by dinos22 on GIGABYTE X99 SOC Champion motherboard. New world record XTU score is at 3039 points running 5920MHz CPU frequency on Intel 5960X CPU powered by a 1500W Corsair PSU.

HWBOT score link: http://hwbot.org/submission/2746285_dinos22_xtu_core_i7_5960x_3039_marks

Top 10 Best-Selling Games of 2014

As spotted on Forbes.com today, the NPD Group came out with the top 10 video games of 2014. Arguably, someone’s best game is entirely a subjective matter, looking at the sales number of each games is not a clear indicator that the game is awesome. But at least it gives us a good look at how well the main players such as Activision, Rockstar, Ubisoft and the likes are doing… So here is the USA’s Best Selling line-up for 2014.

1. Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare
2. Madden NFL 15 (Not available for PC… boooooo!)
3. Destiny (Not available for PC… damn damn?)
4. Minecraft
5. Super Smash Bros (for 3DS and Wii U…)
6. NBA 2K15
7. Watch Dogs
8. FIFA 15
9. Call of Duty Ghosts

How about you, are you a COD fan? What were you favorite games for 2014? Which one do you think will make the list for 2015?

CES 2015 Coverage

Not all of us have the opportunity to go to the Consumer Electronic Show held every year in Las Vegas. But luckily for us, the internet is overloaded with coverage  giving us an insider look at what was presented during the show and teases us whit the future technology that is about to hit our (online) store shelves.

That is not different for GIGABYTE. The Neopolitan ballroom of the Caesars Palace where GIGABYTE was located received a lot of focus from the media. The show is not over and YouTube is now filled with coverage. Here are a few:

New Egg on GIGABYTE press event

New Egg on GIGABYTE at CES

LinusTechTips

Paul's Hardware (GIGABYTE  coverage starts at 3:38)

PC Perspective on the X99-SOC Champion

Pc Perspective on the BRIX

And a bonus cool video from The Verge

Steam Daily Deal: 3DMARK 80% OFF

Congrats, you built yourself a gaming computer. As this provides you with hours of great high quality gaming fun, you jealous friend decided to do the same. Then follow that inevitable “My computer is better than yours”. Arguments flow, your CPU has more core, his system has more and faster memory, you have two graphics card in SLI, his system is overclocked…  stop it. There is only one way to settle this argument. If you want to measure all of that power that’s enclosed in this awesome mighty gaming rig of yours, 3D Mark is one of the best benchmark out there to give a go at it. And yes, as it is mentioned in the title of the post, it is at 80% off!!! But hurry up, at the moment of writing, only 40 hours were left to this deal…

http://store.steampowered.com/app/223850/

http://www.futuremark.com/support/downloads

“We designed 3DMark for gamers, overclockers and system builders who want to get the most out of their hardware. 3DMark is a complete PC benchmarking tool kit for those who are serious about performance. And it's no longer just for Windows. With the new 3DMark, you can compare your scores with Android, iOS and Windows RT devices too.

• The latest version of the world's most popular benchmark.
• Includes eight stunning tests for DirectX 11, DirectX 10 and DirectX 9 hardware.
• Test everything from tablets to desktop gaming PCs.
• Compare scores with other Windows, Android and iOS devices.
• Compete for the fastest PC on Steam with Steam leaderboards.
• Easy to use, no technical know-how needed.”

Wish you all some happy benching time!

GIGABYTE X99 SOC Champion Debuts at CES 2015 with One More WR Under its Belt

Today, Jan. 5th 2015, GIGABYTE held it’s pre-CES Press Event in the Caesar’s Palace Neopolitan ballroom. One of the main focus of that event was the launch of a new overclocking board, the GIGABYTE X99-SOC Champion.
 

 http://www.gigabyte.us/press-center/news-page.aspx?nid=1342
One of the main feature of the X99 SOC Champion is the SMT mounted DIMMs for improved signal quality and their location which is closer to the CPU socket. The DIMM’s shorter trace path enables the DDR4 memory to communicate faster with the CPU, enabling the overclockers to reach higher DDR4 memory frequencies. Additionally, the motherboard includes a CPU Mode Switch; this switch allows the overclockers to switch between CPU default socket mode and OC socket mode.
The Press Event was crown by a live overclocking demonstration held by GIGABYTE famous overclockers Dinos22, Sofos1990 and HiCookie. The skilled trio managed to impress the crowd with a 1 World Record, 3 Global First and 3 Hardware First on the X99-SOC Champion! Nice going guys! Here are the submissions:

 

3004 Marks on XTU with Intel Core i7 5960X

http://hwbot.org/submission/2722703

2317 Marks on XTU with Intel Core i7 5820K

http://hwbot.org/submission/2722904

84470 Marks on 3D Mark Vintage with x1 GPU

http://hwbot.org/submission/2722892

Ian from Anandtech already had a look at the X99-SOC Champion. Although he couldn’t test the board on its true intent, LN2 overclocking, Ian gave the Champion a good thorough testing. You can read the results and his opinion here:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8804/gigabyte-x99-soc-champion-motherboard-review-low-cost-x99-overclocking

Here are a few pictures of the event:
 

DDR4 Memory Clock Reaches New High, GIGABYTE X99-SOC Champion rocks!

Yes, the GIGABYTE X99-SOC Champion is really making a strong debut. With it’s unique design, the new board is already building itself quite the resume. A few weeks ago, a Secret OC session took place at the GIGABYTE HQ where a total of 9 World Records, 22 Global Firsts and 25 Hardware Firsts were accomplished by 7 of the world’s finest overclockers, all using the X99-SOC Champion. Within these achievements, an impressive performance was submitted by HiCookie with the Highest DDR4 Memory Clock at 4014.6 MHz!!

Well ladies and gentlemen, our famous overclocker just can’t be stopped! Yesterday, HiCookie with the help of Jake and Sofos1990 managed to push this limit to an incredible 4184MHz using Corsair’s Dominator Platinum memory modules.  Now THAT'’s a performance!

http://hwbot.org/submission/2715533

Since Z97-Force LN2’s memory record, a new standard has been establish to claim top memory scores. So we took out the big hardware, a very expensive oscilloscope, to  prove that no cheating took place. Here is the video:

And to top it off, today HWBOT.org published their December achievement review. Taking the first place for this month's most used Motherboards for WR and GFP at HWBOT (… drum roll …) The GIGABYTE X99-SOC Champion!! Here is the press release: http://hwbot.org/news/11725

I don’t know for you guys, but I’m looking forward to 2015 to see what the overclocking world and the GIGABYTE X99-SOC Champion has to surprise us!

HWBOT Country Cup is over, Australia wins again!

HWBOT held another crazy Country Cup tournament or “World Cup of overclocking” as they refer to it and it another stunner in 2014. Australia has successfully defended their title this year in a convincing style, winning all 5 stages. France, Indonesia and Romania made sure that at least some of the stages went down to the wire and no doubt will set precedent for another huge clash in 2015.

Let’s talk about this competition a little for those of you who were not aware there was “an overclocking World Cup” on and how you could get involved next year.

First of all for any of you unfamiliar with the biggest and best known overclocking competition website in the world, make sure you visit HWBOT.ORG. For overclockers, this is a familiar website but perhaps for non-overclockers you may remember the recent articles on ban of Windows 8 for competitive purposes which was largely the result of the HWBOT admin team finding some loopholes in the latest Microsoft OS which have since been patched in most cases. Yes, that’s right, this is the gathering place of some of the world’s biggest and best geeks AND nerds who share a passion for overclocking. It’s become a big community in the last 10 years so definitely something to check out in your free time!

Here is a little more about what County Cup is about from HWBOT Country Cup competition page. The most important thing to remember here is that it is a country wide competition and it is practically impossible to compete without a large community contributing to the results. Overclockers with little experience as well as pro clockers combined efforts to represent their countries and it is important to note that it really is for everyone.

The stages were reduced and somewhat simplified this year. There was an interesting stage only reserved for rookies which were limited in cooling to normal cooling (air and water cooling). Another new addition was the surprise stage which was announced in the last 24 hours. Last stage was awarded a lot of points and could have really made a big impact on final results but didn’t to the relief of all the top runners.

Prizes were pretty generous even though overclockers’ primary motivation was to represent their nations. Australia and France battled it out on majority of stages. It was a test of skills, dedication, organisation and perseverance which a more experienced Australian team was able to triumph with a strong lineup of pro overclockers and rookies combined. Indonesia was also showing some great fighting spirit in later rounds as was the unlucky Romania which lost its third place in the final stage with Indonesia shooting past them with their final Stage 5 submission.

Congratulations to all and all the best to Australia on an emphatic win!

Here are some of our score highlights this year. Considering Australians really did such a great overall job we’ve pulled out some of their best scores to show you!

• Stage 1: SniperOZ from Australia topped the Futuremark 3DMARK Firestrike Ultra score with a GIGABYTE X99 SOC Force and a heavily modified and LN2 cooled GIGABYTE G1 Gaming GTX980 graphics card.

Score link: http://hwbot.org/submission/2700364_sniperoz_3dmark___fire_strike_ultra_geforce_gtx_980_5127_marks

• Stage 2: Robbo2 from Australia with a monster XTU score with GIGABYTE Z97X-SOC Force and 4770K. CPU was clocked to 6GHz+!

Score link: http://hwbot.org/submission/2701218_robbo2_xtu_core_i7_4770k_1505_marks

• Stage 3: PHO5PHORIC from Australia with a freak 3DMARK ICE STORM score to help Australia top the charts. He overclocked his GIGABYTE Z97X-SOC Force and 4790K CPU to a crazy 5148MHz

Score link: http://hwbot.org/submission/2703275_pho5ph0ric_3dmark___ice_storm_geforce_gtx_760_242891_marks

• Stage 4: Zeropluszero with the fastest AMD SuperPI PC with a huge score on a little Gigabyte F2A88XN-WIFI and A10-7850K CPU

Score link: http://hwbot.org/submission/2705502_zeropluszero_superpi___32m_a10_7850k_12min_17sec_437ms