Gigabyte GoOC 2008

Again, there were some unconventional approaches to this part, such as the South African’s strategy of placing the whole assembly inside a large foam box, and pouring the LN2 through the top:



As well as this custom-made extra-wide LN2 pot (the fans were spinning in this shot):



We haven’t included all the different configurations, but they are definitely some of the most interesting ones. After this stage was finally done and dusted, and a few quick talks from Gigabyte and other senior officials (as well as an impromptu cheerleading performance), the competition was underway. Four benchmarks were used: Everest Bandwidth, Super Pi, 3DMark 2001 and 3DMark 2006.

And the winner is...
Sweden team 2, with the fastest Super Pi run and 3DMark 06 time. Second place was the Russian team, and the third team was USA team 1. Each won $US5000, $US3000 or $US1000 respectively, as well as a Velociraptor drive. The Australian team unfortunately didn’t fare well, and were plagued by hardware hiccups from the start of the first benchmark.

After the winners were given their giant comical cheques at 4pm, the second stage of the competition was underway, the freestyle comp. This was essentially a chance for the competitors to set up the most powerful rigs (we’re talking LN2 cooled Dual 4870X2s), and overclock to try and break world records. This part of the comp guzzled the most LN2 of the whole day, with most teams running four to six LN2 pots on their tech.

The Liquid Nitrogen finally ran out at 8pm, at which time each of the hardware vendor reps received trophies for their involvement and procurement of tech. A small pile of burnt out, still-smoking dead tech lay to one side, victims of this extremely savage pushing of the speed boundaries. And with the competition finished, that brought the day to a very enthusiastic close.

Check out the gallery for some unrelated pics that didn’t make it into the article (as well as some Gigabyte babes).