News Archive

Taipei, Taiwan (8 March 2019) – G.SKILL International Enterprise Co., Ltd., the world’s leading manufacturer of extreme performance memory and gaming peripherals, is excited to announce the 6^th Annual OC World Cup 2019. The online qualifier competition stage will be held from March 13, 2019 until April 16, 2019 on hwbot.org.The top 9 winners of the online qualifier will be qualified to join the live competition at the G.SKILL booth during Computex 2019 week from May 29^th to 31^st and compete for a chunk of the $25,000 USD cash prize pool.

Thanks for all reporting issues through our github bug tracker, as it makes sure your issue is not lost in a mailbox or buried deep in the forums.

Wonder what we have been doing since HWBOT v8.0 went live last week?

Found an issue and want to have it fixed, or at least be able to point out our lazy devs that the issue has been open for a very long time? Now is your time to shine! We have made a public repo on github so everyone with a github account can create and track issues.

The 8th revision of HWBOT has gone live, but the discussion whether competition points should be included or not in your career ranking remains unsettled. The seasonal league includes the points gained from the best 10 competitions entries. Should we do the same for career?

The database migration will start in 20 minutes, and will take a few hours to complete. I will edit this message once complete.

The 8th revision of HWBOT is currently doing a test run on UAT and will go live this Saturday. Thanks all from the crew and community for useful feedback during the development of this new revision!

As revision 8 of the HWBOT rankings are being finalized, please take some time to leave feedback on how many of your submissions you want to have impact on your yearly seasonal ranking, and all time career ranking. Too many and grinding rankings will be needed, too few and there is no distinction between members having a lot of records and those with just a few.

HWBOT Prime has been given a long overdue update today. Fetch version 1.0.1 while it's hot here.

We have been working hard the past few months on the 8th HWBOT revision, dubbed 'classic', in order to launch it early 2019. It is a mix between nostalgia for the early HWBOT revisions, having a seasonal ranking next to the existing career ranking and enabling/disabling points for a lot of benchmarks voted on by the community.

As 2019 is coming near, we are currently holding a poll over at the forums to see which benchmarks should still be applicable for points in 2019 and which not. The consensus is less benchmarks should have global points, but which exactly do you want to see removed or added? Cast your vote in the forums!

Here's a thread to have your chance to vote on which 2D benchmarks you feel should have global points in 2019!

The GOC 2018 Online Qualification Contest has ended this weekend, and the top 12 competitors which are invited to the finals are known.

The GALAX GOC 2018 Qualification ended today, and the submissions made are being scrutinized the next 24 hours. Some submissions where rejected incorrectly due to a mixup the the GPUPI version restrictions, and might be allowed to enter the competition if they were initially submitted - but rejected by the engine - before the competition deadline.

This week the GPU Flashback Archive sets its sights on the GeForce 500 series from NVIDIA. Arriving in late 2010, the 500 Series was the second round of graphics cards based on the Fermi architecture which had limped over the line in the previous generation, ostensibly due to fabrication and yield issues. The new flagship GTX 580 arrived with a more polished take on the Fermi design that help NVIDIA combat the threat from AMD and their popular Radeon 5000 and 6000 series cards. As ever, let’s take a look at the new GPU, the new flagship card and a few of the outstanding scores that have been submitted to HWBOT.

This week’s trip down GPU memory lane is all about the NVIDIA 8 series of graphics cards, a series that marks the arrival of DirectX 10 and a wholly new GPU architecture. Arriving in late 2006, the NVIDIA 8 series remains a fondly remembered era for many enthusiasts and of course overclockers, especially the GeForce 8800 GTX a card that is still a topic of conversation with some retro-minded HWBOT members today. Let’s take a look at the hardware associated with the GeForce 8 series era, the technology and features that arrived at that time, and some of the scores and submissions that were made using popular GeForce 8800 GTX card.

Today’s trip down GPU memory lane is all about the NVIDIA 7 series that arrived on the scene in June 2005. Where previous GPU designs had heralded major innovations and the introduction of entirely new technologies, the 7 series was more of an update by comparison. The new GPU arrived with a change in nomenclature and notably a change in the way that NVIDIA graphics cards were actually launched - NVIDIA and AIB partners had products shelves on the very same day that the press embargo was lifted. Let’s look at the GPUs and cards that arrived as part of the new 7 series launch, the cards that have since proved to be popular with overclockers on HWBOT and of course, the notable scores that grace our database to this day.

Welcome back to another episode in our GPU Flashback Archive series. Following on from last week’s look at the GeForce FX series, we turn our attention to its successor, the NVIDIA GeForce 6 series. After rising to a position of relative dominance in the early years of GPU design, the GeForce 4 and subsequent FX series had seen NVIDIA lose ground to ATI who had stolen a march with their highly popular Radeon 9000 series. The stage was set for a return with the launch of a new GPU design and a series of cards that required more space in your rig and additional power to deliver a truly next generation gaming experience. Let turn our minds back to 2004 and check out the technologies and features that debuted with the GeForce 6 series, plus the most popular cards of the era and the most notable scores that have been submitted here on HWBOT.

This week’s GPU Flashback Archive article is all about the GeForce 3 series of graphics cards from NVIDIA, a company that by this stage in history was recognized as industry leader in GPU development and innovation. The third iteration of its GeForce brand launched with a hiccup or two in early 2001 and enjoyed status as the company’s top tier offering for around a year before it was usurped by its successor, the mighty GeForce 4 series. Let’s take a peek at the new technologies and innovations that arrived with GeForce 3, the cards that proved to be most popular with overclockers on HWBOT and of course, the notable scores and benchmarks that it spawned.

We return for our next episode of the GPU Flashback Archive with another classic graphics platform from NVIDIA, the GeForce2 series. It was unleashed on the scene in early 2000 and proved conclusively that NVIDIA had become the number one graphics company on the planet. Let’s take a look at the GeForce2 series as a whole, the cards that were popular at the time and of course a few of the scores that have been submitted to the HWBOT database using GeForce2 cards.

The Nvidia RIVA 128 graphics chip (codenamed the NV3) was the first version of the RIVA GPU series. It arrived on the scene in April of 1997 and was arguably the company’s first ever commercially successful graphics processing unit. The RIVA 128 was actually a departure from the very first Nvidia GPU series, the ST-G-2000 (NV1) being the first GPU on the market from Nvidia that could manage both 2D and 3D video acceleration. Unlike its predecessor the Nvidia RIVA was designed specifically to accelerate rendering of Direct3D 5.0 and OpenGL 1.0 API workloads.

We continue our Motherboard Memory Lane series today with a look at the AMD FM2+ platform, the follow up to the FM2 Socket and its Trinity-based APUs that we considered in last week’s article. Socket FM2+ represents AMD’s third attempt to trying to gain traction in the budget to mid-range desktop PC segment, arriving with a refreshed series of Kaveri-based APUs and an updated FCH (or chipset if you prefer). Let’s push on and take a look at the new platform, the motherboards that were popular in this era and some of the more impressive scores that were submitted to HWBOT.

This week’s trip down Motherboard Memory Lane brings us to the AMD AM3+ platform. Arriving in 2011 with a new enthusiast chipset and new range of FX branded CPUs, the new platform was AMD’s reinvigorated drive into the high performance PC space where Intel had long ago stolen a march. Let’s take a look at the most popular motherboards and processors of that era, the technologies involved and some of the more impressive scores submitted on HWBOT.