Hi, Giktayms! It is customary to remember about overclocking as a sport only in the news, and only the number of megahertz and “parrots” in the benchmarks. Few people not only know everything , how everything is arranged inside. We talked to the triple world champion in overclocking according to HWBot, Vladimir “Smoke” Georgiev, to learn everything first-hand. How to break into the stars of overclocking, living in Russia, whether they will leave us the opportunity to disperse iron in the future, and what happens to the components that have broken world records - we find out from an enthusiast for whom overclocking has become a way of life.



Overclocking keeps on talents and cool hardware. With the first term in Russia, everything is fine, and the second we are always happy to provide that the names of the guys from Russia thundered to the whole world when it comes to the work of computers at the limit of possibilities. We are glad to announce that Kingston / HyperX is now actively cooperating with the Russian overclocking team Team Russia and the OClab.ru site. Soon our enthusiasts will begin to set new performance records, but for now we talked to the legend of the Russian overclocking, Smoke, about the backstage in the work of enthusiasts and looked at the computer components through the eyes of the pros:

How it all began

When did you come to overclocking and why did you suddenly want to overclock the iron?
')
Overclocking I started to do quite funny. It all started with crookedly optimized computer games. It was strange how the games manage to slow down even on my computer with top-end stuffing, I wanted to make the iron work in full force. At that time, by the way, I was still working in the auto business, that is, still with iron, but not for that.

I was puzzled why the computer slows down, read on the Internet about the overclocking of the processor. I broke up, got a small increase, then my hands reached the video card, and then everything started to spin. I overclocked, as I remember, the Intel Core Quad Q9550, the gain was ridiculous, from 3.6 to 4.1 GHz on a primitive boxed cooler.

Then he began to study how water cooling works, and collected it for himself. When I understood the question - I bought myself a CBO. The system accelerated even better, and after that I could not stop and changed the processor to Intel Core i7 965. And so, my overclocking overclocking began with the architecture of Intel Nehalem.

I walked around the sites and once I read about a certain resource HWBot.org, a kind of database into which people upload results of overclocking. I began to study the tables and saw absolutely cosmic frequencies - 5.2 and 5.4 GHz. Googled, how the enthusiasts achieved this, and wanted to repeat something like that.

All this happened at the beginning of 2009, and then I found out about the X-Memory store, to which the Russian Overs Team overclocking team was involved. I got acquainted with these guys when I found out what level they knew how to disperse the hardware. A little later I bought components for overclocking with the help of nitrogen and set myself the goal of setting records.

When did you start participating in the first tournaments?

Watching what. The world championships (MOA and others) did not come straight away. In 2009, I started posting results on HWBot, first in air and water, then in nitrogen. Soon I was invited to the first bench session, and this was for me the first experience when a group of people of their interests get together to drive iron, who is in that much. First, I drove in the team as a guest, and later became a full member of it.

With the support of Russian Overs, in just a few months I joined the top 20 of the world rankings - all this happened in 2009 and my results were encouraging. A little later I met with colleagues from other teams (especially made friends with overclocker slamms), we started chasing with him and the OCClub team.

I also want to separately remember the guy with the nickname _12_, one of the most experienced Russian overclockers. Anyway, talented guys do not count.

What was Russian overclocking in those days?

When I first came to professional overclock, there were several famous teams: Russian Overs Team, TopMods and ZOT. A little later, all the teams came together under a single Russian flag and became known as Team Russia.

My first away tournament took place when I entered the TOP-20 of the HWBot table and moved from “Russian Overs” to Team Russia - it just so happened that we with slamms began to hold joint bench sessions. At first, records had to be set at home, and a little later a friend from “Heimland” helped us - we were busy with overclocking at their guests almost every weekend. At the same time, it was possible to touch the video cards, which were only available from journalists and were not yet officially sold.

It turns out that when you came to Team Russia, did the guys already chase through the tournaments, and did you join them?

So it was. I had my first tournament in 2011 in the winter - MSI MOA in Turkey, the World Cup semi-final, then we took 3rd place with slamms.

In general, there are two types of overclocking ratings. The first one is HWBot, a chart in the manner of MTV, where I came out on top three times, the first time it was for the whole year. This is an offline championship. That is, the point is that you post the results, get points and grow in the ranking. Someone bypassed you - you fall in the ranking, you need to constantly maintain your level.

Online tournaments are when various manufacturers from time to time hold their cozy championships. The largest of them, perhaps - MSI MOA (Masters of Overclocking Arena).

How do you live when you're overclocker number 1 in the world

How to distinguish prestigious from non-prestigious tournaments? Or for popularity and recognition you need to conquer everyone and everywhere?

The more victories - the better, of course, but on the same HWBot today, literally everything is integrated. All major championships are now held under the auspices of HWBot.org, the qualifying rounds and visiting sessions also oversees this resource. The results that pros get in the championships are also sent to the “bot”. In a word, it became a collection of not only “homegrown records”, but also the overclocking ministry, or something.



What changes in life as soon as you occupy the first line in the HWBot? Except that from this point on your records are trying to beat. Sponsors, popularity, fans? ..

The HWBot rating doesn’t really turn life upside down. Yes, iron manufacturers will recognize you immediately. That is, you come to the company and everyone knows that you are the Smoke that keeps the leadership in the ranking.

It becomes much easier to cooperate with manufacturers than a person who comes with 47 positions in the same table. But it seems to me that swimming in the rays of glory is most often possible for those who are in the TOP-10 in the world, no less.

It's just that today everything has become more complicated, because before the rating was one, and now in HWBot it is divided into 5 categories (from beginners to legends). Sponsors and organizers of tournaments also pay attention to the leaders in each category. There are also funny situations when experienced overclockers do not want to move from the “Medium” category to the more prestigious ones and keep the championship in the junior leagues for years. With such an approach, for example, I could run benchmarks once every six months and not go off the pedestal, but I don’t want to have fun this way. You need to compete with those who are equal to you in skill level.

There are other reasons to stay in the junior category there. _12_, I remember, for a long time I did not want to move into the Pro-category, because impressive records require impressive sponsorship, which does not fall on its head at that very hour. But the creators of HWBot still push experienced overs into the older categories indirectly: for example, in the junior leagues it has been forbidden to use engineering hardware for some time.

In general, an overclocker can occupy the 10th place in the overall rating, but at the same time being the first in their own country, and due to this, the level of sponsorship from him and obviously more steep overseas abroad will be the same.

How many people left overclocking during the financial crisis?
Lots of. Because components, roughly speaking, went up in price twice. The crisis hit not only Russians - abroad, many overclockers also suffered due to currency fluctuations. Taiwanese and Brazilians, for example, started having problems, and not only them.

Records from home and away

Is it difficult to join home overclocking in championships?

My first online championship was rather ridiculous - at the Moscow GOOC (Gigabyte Open Overclocking Championship) tournament, I took the competition lightly and took the last place. But then I already understood what such events are and how you should prepare for them. When our team went to Turkey, and then to the semifinal and final in Taiwan, we were already able to shine. But at the MSI MOA grand finals, I performed three times and took 8th or 7th place, but there is already a slightly different atmosphere.

Among overclockers there are interesting guys who specialize strictly on online championships. For example, there is such a Romanian team, which in the HWBot is not even in the TOP-100 teams, and in online tournaments the same overs have become MOA champions twice.

But such participants who are not registered on the HWBot, and are present online, are almost gone. Everything here is almost like with accounts in social networks or e-mail - it is possible to register on websites without them, but rather troublesome.


From left to right: Slamms, XtremeAddict, Smoke, Atheros

What configuration did you overclock in your first serious online championship?

We had a serious “batch” in the semifinals in Istanbul (MSI MOA 2011) - then we had to overclock the P67 Sandy Bridge chipset and the MSI Lightning GTX 580 video card. The first day we finished 5 positions after two stages, and the second day, taking 1 place in the third stage, remained in third place in the final table and reached the final.

Records could not be set then, and the online championships are not always full of them - much depends on the iron used in the tournament. The bar itself is very high, therefore, as a rule, with a successful final you knock out the first place in the category, and sometimes the first place in the world.

But then we had the P67 Sandy Bridge at our disposal, and the disciplines were Super Pi 32M, 3DMark03 and 3DMark11. In the third 3DMark, no one set records, because the processor was far from the best of its kind - it accelerated to 5.6 GHz, and at that time the top one was 5.9 GHz. And for achievements in 3DMark11 would require another platform - Sandy Bridge-E.

With your iron on the championships, therefore, you can never ride in any way?

The championship is the championship that the organizers give out iron. This is different from the bench session. The organizers' samples always bring a considerable share of the random house to the competition, because different instances of iron are accelerated differently. But manufacturers take this problem into account, and today, for example, ASUS selects processors so that they pursue about equally. But at the last MOA, where I participated, we were given cool processors, but far from record-breaking powerful video cards (GeForce GTX 780 Lightning), and my copy was able to work at maximum at 1400 MHz, while other participants had samples more successful and pulled 1600 MHz. The result is a bit predictable.

Why, then, need a selection and selection of chips at home?

This is done for HWBot and, practically, just for the sake of HWBot. If you want to show the top result on it - invest and buy processors and graphics cards. At the championships, the organizers, as they can, equalize the participants, and this is good in its own way.

In this regard, I am sometimes surprised when two people from the whole of Russia go to the championship - after all, you can qualify for the tournament without astronomical costs, and further participation is a matter of technique. In the final, the participant receives a complete set - power supply, keyboard, mouse, processor, memory, video card, etc. Strictly speaking, in all tournaments of their belongings, the overclocker has only “glasses” for cooling, multimeters and thermometers. All the rest is provided by the organizer.

But what about the magical fashion of iron?

Sometimes they help out, but there is almost no time for that. For example, the last time we soldered GeForce GTX Titan for the event, it took us two days to do it, including testing mods. They removed the chokes, installed the chokes, soldered the PWM converters, soldered the PWM converters ...

At the championships there is no time for this and the situation is as follows - you arrive at the event, they give you iron on the same day. Pulling a ticket - you get a set. It remains an average of 4-5 hours before the start of the championship. During this time, it is very difficult to design a mod and test its performance.

Yes, and backups, as in offline competitions, at the championships are prohibited. Knocked the result out of the iron - you submit it immediately, if you did not file it - the result is not counted. Otherwise, the meaning of the online format, as a spectacular event, is lost.

About the best and worst iron of our time

The most successful hardware in your overclocking career?

The processors on the Z77 chipset of the Intel Ivy Bridge platform - the best that was in my overclocking life, I will not be afraid of this word.

What do you think about AMD processors or the legendary Intel Sandy Bridge?

With AMD, we extracted the third result in overclocking in the world - 8656 MHz, although this is not a record, because the record was 8722 MHz and it belongs to the Finnish over The Stilt. But this guy is an expert strictly in AMD-hardware, all his records are executed on the components of the "red camp".

I always accelerated Sandy Bridge so-so, but the Core i7-3770K came across surprisingly successful - we set a record of performance in Moscow with them, and after the world championship we reached about 20 records, that is, we redrew the standings in 2D, and in 3D disciplines. From video cards my favorite is a classic, GeForce GTX 280.

Is the 280th not an archaic "furnace" that degrades under acceleration?

I can say that iron degradation is in most cases a myth. As far as I was intensely chasing iron, but not a single processor has ever degraded under nitrogen. Either the CPU fails immediately, or it works properly.

And I love old video cards for the fact that they did not have GPU Boost technology, but there was an honest fixed, not floating frequency. Today, to achieve the same stability of video cards in overclocking does not work.

Is it possible to overclock, so to speak, leave due to the BIOS modification?

This happens infrequently. NVIDIA, for example, doesn’t like such tricks - sometimes getting the company just the correct BIOS for a particular video card model is difficult, and NVIDIA partners cannot do anything about it.


Absolute Zero 2015 tournament.
Top row row, from left to right: coolice, BarboneNet, Dancop, Elmor
Bottom row: Smoke, dRweEz, Shamino, der8auer, Fredyama

Overclockers "court" against independent

From the outside, it seems that the "corporate" overclockers have a lot of advantages in comparison with independent overclockers. That is, for example, there is no sense in overclocking the GeForce with the same K | ngp | n?

Kingpin works with EVGA, he has become one of NVIDIA’s main partners, so yes, he has the resources of a powerful company at his disposal, and the company’s employees do not have a shortage of test iron. In Russia, things are harder to support - our team, for example, is now supported by ASUS and HyperX. We had attempts to work together with other companies, and one motherboard developer even invited me to work for Taiwan in RnD, but I didn’t want to sacrifice independence and freedom in the selection of components.

Yes, and K | ngp | n, even working in EVGA, not all-powerful and often depends on the decisions of the head office of NVIDIA. Not so long ago, he complained that he had to buy GeForce Titan X for his money. The fact is that the new Titan is positioned as a “purebred-nvidievskaya” video card and chips with printed circuit boards did not even reach the partners. About how much time and effort you need to then invest in Titan so that it can be overclocked, I will keep silence. Just know that the Titan X is assembled from completely civilian components and for a sporty overclocking it will have to be redrawn on the vine, and the performance increase after rework will still be hilariously low.

Do you build a new training stand for your home every time? Or do you have a peace-loving home PC at home?

I rarely exercise at home, and I don’t even have a home computer as I have a disassembled stand with an ASUS Maximum VIII Extreme motherboard and HyperX DDR4 Predator series memory. I regret a bit that it was not possible to drive the HyperX memory on Samsung chips in due time, which set a world record among all the varieties of DDR3.

What equipment do you train now? What samples are selected?

This is a situational question. It all depends on the event for which we are preparing. Now we are working overclocking for the event Kingston. From time to time we buy selected samples from trusted suppliers. In the old days, all this had to be done on the “black market”, but now a lot of people are doing it and getting iron with good overclocking potential can be much easier.

Your biggest mistake in overclocking?

Overclocking Intel Core i7-990X. The processor died instantly, did not even have time to get scared (laughs). A bit harder was the select Intel Haswell CPU, which I unsuccessfully scalped.

And on the online championship?

In 2011, we miscalculated with Vlad in Turkey, when the cover was removed from the GTX 580 - the video card started to catch the early bug, and we had to use another instance, which, alas, accelerated much worse. But the next day we figured out the problem and made up for lost time.

That is, in the championship you can say "give me another processor / video card, otherwise I broke the last?"

If you come across a defective copy - you have the right to one replacement. If you broke yourself, you sit and grieve.

Why modern iron is unsuitable for overclocking

What is the main problem of overclocking today?

The main problem, if we are talking about overclocking in general, is sluggish overclocking of components under liquid nitrogen. If earlier it turned out to “quench TDP” and achieve high results, now the technical processes have become very thin, you can put a glass with nitrogen and get a gain of less than 10%. Again, I give an example of Titan X - on the water, it picks up 2100 MHz, and on nitrogen - 2200 MHz. Then it does not chase - immediately jumps out either a koldbut bug, or a koldbag, or friezes. And in many AMD video accelerators, when the negative temperature is reached, textures start to “fly out”. Finita la comedy.

If we talk about RAM, then extreme overclocking is difficult today. Modern RAM is badly scaled from minus. If the new HyperX DDR4 memory on Hynix chips makes sense to drive on nitrogen, then here the chips that Samsung uses, for example, “under the hood” work only worse.

How do you feel about modern iron architectures?

In my opinion, Skylake is much more interesting than Haswell, but it has much more problems. Too much depends on how the stone responds to the Termination Voltage. If you come across a processor that needs 1.8-1.9 V, then it will not last long in this mode. It turns out that for the sake of the result one has to acquire a “corpse”.

The problem also lies in NVP Manager, which for all Skylake should be set to maximum performance. Because in the processors on this architecture at minus 165 degrees (PCI-E is now adaptive), PCI-Express drops to 1.0 and the monitor goes out. But on many trimmed operating systems (prepared for the championships), NVP-Manager is turned off. Forget about such settings - and you catch coldbag at -165 degrees. And in general, to get high frequencies on Skylake, it needs to be driven on a “full glass”, that is, almost at the maximum cooling that liquid nitrogen can provide.

Isn't it easier in this case to crack out-of-date iron on somewhat outdated architectures?

In fact, no. Ultimately, the performance gain justifies itself, therefore, overclockers have to change from old age and put up with the problems of a new generation of hardware anyway.

How do you like NVIDIA Pascal and AMD Polaris graphics?

GTX 1080? Not impressive, because both the chip and the process are weak. The video card is scaled from nitrogen to ridiculous values, the difference is about 10%. Polaris is much more interesting, although I am not engaged in overclocking AMD video cards yet. But _12_ praised the overclocking potential of the new “red” graphics, I see no reason not to believe him.

How do you think it is right to overclock the hardware to “play” and just to enjoy a fast computer?

Without claims for professional overclocking, it makes no sense to spend on nitrogen - water cooling and a good waterchiller are enough (this is such a SVO in the manner of an aquarium).

If you mark in professional overclocking, there is nowhere without nitrogen. B / aural tools for acceleration with nitrogen can be bought for 5 thousand rubles. And in Moscow, three or four companies deliver nitrogen to the house for reasonable money.

Is it worth looking straight into liquid helium in search of hardcore and records?

Helium is a completely different material, a different approach to overclocking, an experimental topic. I spent acceleration on helium twice in my life - once successfully, the second - not very. This is expensive, incredibly expensive; only a very rich company can afford liquid helium.

As I remember now, in 2012 we come to Taiwan and they let us into a room in which a special temperature is maintained (so that there is no condensate, when working with helium it always turns out a lot). The stand was assembled and initially cooled with nitrogen, and a 200-liter helium balloon costing 20 thousand dollars stands next to it. So - this helium is enough for half an hour of benchmark.

The scheme of acceleration is as follows: you freeze the iron with nitrogen to minus 156 degrees, then lower the capillary from the helium balloon, supply oxygen there. Oxygen pushes out helium and the whole room immediately covers the white precipitate. One team member holds a capillary so that it falls clearly into the glass, another controls the software, and the third helps the first two hard workers. Alone with helium to disperse is extremely difficult, but with nitrogen - please.

How much does nitrogen cost for the same half hour of the benchmark?

About $ 10-20, no more. A liter of nitrogen in Moscow with home delivery costs 40 rubles. To drive benchmarks a couple of hours, it will take about 25 liters. And in Moscow there are plenty of factories that sell nitrogen on site for 15 rubles per liter.

Why, then, pros who participate in tournaments, according to rumors, go into a deep minus?

Strange rumors. Yes, in order to qualify, sometimes you have to spend money on iron from a specific manufacturer and squeeze the maximum out of the components. But after the championship at the disposal of the participant are the prizes + tournament components, so the initiative pays for itself.

How to win championships if everyone is equal

What tricks have to turn on the championships, since all participants are more or less equal in terms of iron level?

Sometimes mods come to the rescue, although in some championships they don’t allow, for example, even to solder external power to video cards.

That is, to win, just enough good luck and flair?

Not only. It is important to use the correct thermal interface, apply it correctly, select the “glass” correctly, install it correctly. For some video cards you need a “glass” with thick walls, for others with thin ones. In some models, fashion gives a strong increase, in some - they are not worth the time spent at all. It is very hard to say unequivocally, due to which the overclocker “leaves”, but one thing I know for sure - theorists do not take root in serious overclocking, only practitioners. What is important is the so-called "run-up", like that of racers: it all depends on how many times you accelerated the iron, how much iron it was, how many times you assembled and disassembled the stand, and so on.

Do professional overclockers have secrets from each other?

No, all information in overclocking is publicly available. The main rule in professional overclocking is if someone finds any tweak in the software that allows you to get an advantage and does not share this achievement with the public, its result is considered fraud and is canceled.

At the time, there was a scandal when Korean overclockers picked up the driver with the help of the NVIDIA Inspector utility and found a parameter that affects the pre-vendor. So, in 3DMark01, as long as the corresponding check mark is in the driver, the result doesn’t stand out, and if this option is deleted, there are an incredible number of “parrots”. And these same guys from South Korea have rolled out a suspicious record, at a low frequency of the processor and video card. Their result is blocked.

At one time, Australians "scratched" Direct3D and there was a so-called "window tweak" when the benchmark was not working normally and the result was higher. Now there is no such expanse - now the main cheat is used when in the benchmark of the category “Single” (single GPU) they use SLI and turn it off so that the driver does not notice this. But most of the results are validated and such entertainment has become irrelevant today.

There was also a case when Chinese enthusiasts cracked CPU-Z, but overdid it with numbers, the record turned out to be immodest, to say the least. After that, the utility received double protection against hacking, and the fabricated results did not get anywhere.

The main kind of offline cheating has been and remains, sorry, the insolent “photoshop” - there are still a lot of people who like to apply photo montage to the screenshots of the results on HWBot. But after all, the team of moderators who check the accuracy of overclocking, the resource is extensive, so the "trash" does not go into the general table. For the first time in a cheat, the account is banned for a year, the second - for life.

Are there any signs in the overclocking party?

Contrary to all the fads of iron, overclockers are absolutely not superstitious people.

What do you think about all sorts of how-to overclocking on YouTube and other resources?

I am sure that there are many useful overclocking lessons on the net, but I am not familiar with them, because they are unlikely to teach me something new. More often I read technical manuals that are sent to us by the official representative offices of iron producers. Such instructions pages on 50 for the subtleties of acceleration for a particular model.

That is, documents for overclockers classified as "secret"?

. , «» . ASUS OC Socket, ASUS , . «» Foxconn , pin ( ), .

, , ?

. , . (-30, -40 ). , Intel : Core 2 Duo -140 , Nehalem — -140, Gulftown — « », Sandy Bridge — -50 . Ivy Bridge — , Haswell – -140. Skylake – (-196 , , ).

( ) , , . , , 8000 GeForce, .

, . . , , ePower . . - .

« »? , Pentium G3258 - Intel…

AMD (). FX, , 8320 9590 — , . (, ) .

Intel Skylake Core i7-6700 ( 6700K) — , , . , Skylake .

, , ( , , ). , . , , .

— . — . — , . , -100 HWBot, , .

— ,

/ ? « -»?

, — iPhone, . — , .

«» ?

I do not see the point. — . - , , - , , Core i7-3770K, «» . ?

, ?

. , . - Computex ASUS, , . .

, ?

— , . . , Wargaming Kingston 700 fps. .


, . - STALKER « » Intel Gulftown 6 — , «» «» .

, , — , .




Smoke , , HyperX ( «-2016»)

, -?

! , , , , — «», .

, « ». -, -, , -, , -, .

— «» ?

, ?

, . . , , , - 2006 2008 .

?

. , HWBot , -10 . $2000-3000, 4. «» «», -, , , .

?

— . , «» , . , , , , , «», , , «» -.

, , . , . — .

?

, , , , . , - — «».

Kingston ?

HyperX — Savage Predator. , SSD DDR4 . . HWBot .

Thank you for your attention and stay with Kingston on Hiktatimes! We send the rays of good and every kind of respect to the readers and again reinforce it with the distribution of the brutally tough iron Kingston! At the end of October, we will hand over 3 cool RAM sets to our blog subscribers:

- DDR4 Fury - HX426C15FBK2 / 16
- DDR4 Savage - HX428C14SBK2 / 16
- The newly minted DDR4 Predator - HX433C16PB3K2 / 16

Subscribe, maybe you will smile good luck;)

And so that no one leaves offended, we give a discount of 12% on all available DDR4 Predator models on the Yulmart network. Arm with a promotional code GEEKPR16 and have time to buy high-speed memory until December 31, 2016.

For more information about Kingston and HyperX products, visit the company's official website . In choosing your kit HyperX help page with visual aids .