The Benchmarks

The competition is based around four quite different benchmarks: Super Pi mod 1.5 (32m), MAXXMEM (Memory, Read MB/s), Pifast, and Wprime 32m. With the 32 million digits Super Pi being the most time consuming benchmarks.

The Setup

The setup chosen for this event consists of GIGABYTE’s X58A-UD7 board paired with the latest and greatest Intel 980X 6-core Gulftown CPU. The GIGABYTE motherboard has proven to be a successful platform for extreme overclocking due to its efficient power handling and versatile BIOS setup. That coupled with the best performing Intel CPU around should make for a fairly interesting combination. In the hands of an experienced overclocker clock speeds in excess of 6 GHz are not unreasonable and during the event some of the setups where PiFast stable at 6.2 GHz!