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Overall results and coverage (part 1)

Jeremiah Allen aka “Miahallen” took the top spot in Gigabyte’s Open Overclocking Championship 2009 regional final Apr. 25 at the Pacific Palms Golf Resort in City of Industry, Calif. His efforts earned him a round-trip ticket to represent North America at Gigabyte’s championship finals in Taipei, Taiwan June 3.

 
Jeremiah Allen aka “Miahallen” receives his ticket to Taiwan after winning Gigabyte's open overclocking regional final

Allen took first place in the Super PI 8M benchmark contest with a score of 1:30:969 and placed fourth in the SM3.0/HDR and fifth place in the overall 3DMark06 contest.

 
“Miahallen” gives his processor a little more liquid nitrogen during the Super PI contest

After the Super PI competition, Allen said he’s had good success with overclocking Intel’s i7 core, but working with the Extreme edition processor was a new experience for him.

“I live on a budget and I’ve got a family,” he said. “So, I’ve been playing mostly with the i7-920s, which are a whole different beast. The only other time I’ve played with the extreme chip was in Paris at Tom’s Hardware Overclocking Championship where we won. Me and Team IronMods. The experience there definitely helped out with figuring out what works best with the extreme chip.”

Allen said the components available for the tournament also presented a unique challenge for him. 

“This is my very first time on any Gigabyte board on the 1366 platform,” he said. “I’m pretty impressed with the board and BIOS. Going into it, I was a little bit concerned because it is not their Extreme motherboard. But, the BIOS was really solid. It allowed for fine adjustments at the advanced level where you are tweaking everything down to the hardcore tweaks.”

 
Jeremy Clifton aka "sno.lcn" insulates his motherboard

While Allen had the highest score in the Super PI contest, Jeremy Clifton aka “sno.lcn” had to best overall score in the 3DMark06 portion of the tournament. He scored 10486 in the SM3.0/HDR and 24869 overall. Clifton took second place overall and will join Allen in Taiwan to represent the North American team. 

 

 
Matthew Kinley aka "rdrash" covers his board in vaseline

 

 
William Harmon aka "Buckeye" preps his system for overclocking. Every competitor had different methods they used for preparation, insulation, BIOS tweaks, etc.

 

 
All the overclocking competitors work on their systems before the event starts

 

Each overclocker used the hardware configuration below:

CPU: Intel Core i7 965
Motherboard: GA-EX58-UD4P
Video card: NVidia GTX260 (GV-N26OC-896H-B)
Memory: Kingston KHX16000D3K3/3GX DDR3 Memory
SSD: Intel X25-M SATA SSD 80G
Power supply: Enermax Revolution 85+ 1050W
Monitor: GIGABYTE 19”
Keyboard, Mouse: GIGABYTE brand
Operating System: Microsoft Window XP SP2

Prizes for the top three winners included:

First place 
Flight ticket – Roundtrip to Taipei
CPU: Intel Core i7 965
Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-EX58-Extreme
Graphic card: GIGABYTE GV-N285-1GH-B
Memory: Kingston KHX16000D3K3/3GX DDR3 Memory
Hard drives: Intel X25-M SATA SSD 80G
Power Supply: ENERMAX Revolution85+ 1050W

Second place
Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-EX58-UD5
Graphic card: GIGABYTE GV-N28-1GH-B
Memory: Kingston KHX16000D3K3/3GX DDR3 Memory
Power Supply: ENERMAX Revolution85+ 1050W

Third place
Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-EX58-UD4P
Graphic card: GIGABYTE GV-N26OC-896H-B
Memory: Kingston KHX16000D3K3/3GX DDR3 Memory
Power Supply: ENERMAX Revolution85+ 1050W

 

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