We at NordicHardware have been holding the Swedish qualifier for the MSI Overclocking Contest 2008, a Europe-wide overclocking contest with participants from more than 19 countries. The qualifiers have been held locally in each country, and in Sweden NordicHardware was chosen to select the two best suited overclockers to send to Amsterdam to represent Sweden in the finals. We chose to use a couple of limitations to add some more skill elements to the contest. First of all we limited the systems to only one graphics card and just air cooling.
We also decided to go with 3DMark 05 instead of 3DMark 06 or Vantage so that dual-cores would be just as good as quad-cores. Even though the number of participants may have been fewer than during our annual national championship, the quality of the contestants was top notch. Fubar, PreacherMan, Efterlyst, Blossa and a team consisting of Elmor and Kinc were all gunning for the trip to Amsterdam, with more people showing what they’re 24/7 systems can do.
Their systems varied a bit, but they were all pretty consistent with Intel Core 2 processors, both Duo, Quad and Extreme, pushed to 4.6GHz and higher paired with either ATI Radeon HD 3870X2 or GeForce 9800GX2. In the end, the combined efforts of Kinc and Elmor proved too great for the rest and they claimed victory with a score of 32,579 points. Not too shabby with an air-cooled system with only one graphics card.
System specifications
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E8400
CPU cooling: Thermalright Ultra Extreme 120
Motherboard: ASUS P5E64 WS Evolution
Memory: 2x1GB A-data PC3-12800
Graphics card: ASUS EN9800GX2 TOP
Power supply: Silverstone Olympia 1200W
Click to enlarge
Click to enlarge
We’ll meet you in Amsterdam to claim the European title.
