ASUS 1156 Overclocking Championship Concludes

Encourages devoted PC performance users from around the world to push their PCs beyond the limit

Fremont, CA (December 10, 2010) - The global eight week-long ASUS 1156 Overclocking Championship, which commenced September 20, has successfully wrapped up on November 21. Many overclockers from all around the world competed in weekly contests, striving to raise their respective country flags to the top. The championship proved great fun for all participating ASUS users, and many were able to win numerous valuable prizes. Championship Summary — ASUS 1156 Maximum QPI Link Frequency (Week 1) Competitors pushed their setups to reach the highest possible QPI speeds. All top ten contestants were able to reach QPI link frequencies higher than 5.5GHz, with first runner-up serpens13 of Iran achieving the best score with 5.7845GHz, which is also the new world record for this stage. The motherboard used was an ASUS TUF Series SABERTOOTH 55i.

Here are the rankings for week 1:

And a look at competitor karandiru’s CPU cooling setup using liquid nitrogen:

ASUS 1156 Lowest CPU Frequency (Week 2) The second week's competition was very unique, as it was an underclocking contest in which competitors strove for the lowest CPU frequencies attainable. Entrants worked on tweaking rather than pushing their extreme-cooling setups, and the stage ended with new records achieved for the lowest Intel Core architecture frequency. All top ten contestants were able to reach sub-300MHz speeds, while ExtremeOC from Iran achieved an unbeatable 134MHz clock using the ASUS Maximus III Formula motherboard.

These are the rankings for week 2:

Competitors used all kinds of exotic methods to achieve these low speeds. Second place holder Brian used a hair dryer to lower CPU frequencies on his ASUS Maximus III Gene motherboard:

ASUS 1156 Maximum Base Clock Frequency (Week 3) In the third week of competition, the objective was to reach the highest base clock frequency using the ASUS 1156 platform. The 300MHz threshold was easily passed using Intel P55 chipset-based ASUS motherboards starting from a factory default of 133MHz.

Check out the rankings for week 3:

Overclocker886's setup for the third week. He was able to break the Pentium G6950 world record on his ASUS Maximus III Formula motherboard:

ASUS 1156 Maximum Memory Speed (Week 4) In the fourth week, the limits of DDR3 RAM were pushed on the ASUS 1156 platform. The top five overclockers were able to exceed 3.1GHz DDR3 speeds on ASUS Maximus III Formula and Maximus III Extreme motherboards. The winning result was accomplished by mat from Austria. He was able to push his Corsair memory to an amazing 3.26GHz on the ASUS Maximus III Formula motherboard.

Rankings for week 4:

Second place holder Hiwa's 3GHz+ DDR3 system boot screen on the ASUS Maximus III Formula motherboard:

And a video showcasing this achievement: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rO58lIUbK0A&feature=player_embedded Competitor Aerou's setup for maximum memory frequency:

ASUS 1156 Maximum CPU Frequency (Week 5) The fifth week of the championship was lead by Austrian extreme overclocker mat. He was able to push his Intel Core i5 655K processor to 6.8222GHz using the ASUS Maximus III Formula motherboard. Second place performer serpens13 was only 18MHz behind, and by the end of the week all top five overclockers were able to break the 6.7GHz barrier.

Week 5 rankings:

Winner mat's setup for the maximum CPU frequency phase:

ASUS 1156 3DMark 2006 (Week 6) The challenge for the sixth week of the championship was Futuremark's 3DMark 2006. Contestants aimed for the highest score possible with their ASUS 1156 setups. The favorite graphics card during this stage proved to be the ASUS GTX480, and the top runners were able to reach over 1.1GHz GPU core frequencies to help break the 32K marks threshold quite easily. Hondacity from the US finished first for the week with 32346 marks.

Rankings for week 6:

ExtremeOC's iced GPU, cooled by liquid nitrogen:

ASUS 1156 3DMark 2001 Low Score (Week 7) This week was focused on getting the lowest 3DMark 2001 score possible on an ASUS 1156 setup. Competitors tried to lower their graphics performance as much as possible. In the end, Erdem Olkun aka sys_tweaker finished first with a startling 8 marks from the legendary 3DMark 2001 benchmark.

The top rankings for week 7:

Erdem Olkun aka sys_tweaker didn't exactly need a high-end setup to secure the top spot in this stage. He used an ASUS P7H55-M LX motherboard and great tweaking skills to reach the amazingly low score of 8 marks in 3DMark2001:

ASUS 1156 3DMark 2001 Professional Challenger (Week 8) The final week of the ASUS 1156 Championship was perfect for professional overclockers and tweakers. The aim was to reach the highest benchmarks with the greatest amount of overclocking. The only limitation for the week was keeping CPU frequencies below 6GHz. C-timi from Turkey came first this round by breaking the 100K marks milestone with his ASUS P7P55D Premium motherboard.

Rankings for the final week of competition:

First place holder c-timi's single-stage phase cooling on his ASUS ENGTX285 graphics card:

Results and Prizes for the ASUS 1156 Overclocking Championship

For more information and details, please visit www.asus1156.com

About ASUS ASUS, the world's top 3 consumer notebook vendor and the maker of the world's best selling and most award winning motherboards, is a leading enterprise in the new digital era. ASUS designs and manufactures products that perfectly meet the needs of today's digital home, office and person, with a broad portfolio that includes motherboards, graphics cards, displays, desktop PCs, notebooks, netbooks, servers, multimedia, wireless solutions, networking devices and mobile phones. Driven by innovation and committed to quality, ASUS won 3,268 awards in 2009, and is widely credited with revolutionizing the PC industry with the Eee PC™. With a global staff of more than ten thousand people and a world-class R&D team of 3,000 engineers, the company's revenue for 2009 was US$7.5 billion. ASUS Motherboards: No.1 in the World ASUS has attained its industry-leading position through innovation. As the bestselling and most award-winning global motherboard brand, the company has sold more than 420 million motherboards since its founding in 1989, and has pioneered numerous innovations that have become industry standards. Recent examples include the Xtreme Phase power design, Stack Cool 3+ PCB, anti-EMI shielding for safe operations, and the world's first Dual Intelligent Processors, which consists of the TPU (TurboV Processing Unit) performance optimization chip and the EPU (Energy Processing Unit), the industry's first real time PC power saving chip. The Dual Intelligent Processors achieve system-wide performance and energy optimization to increase output and moderate power consumption for a better, more cost-effective computing experience. With its decades of expertise and dedication to pushing the design envelope, ASUS is poised to continue leading the industry in motherboard performance, safety and reliability.