HWBOT Country Cup 2012 - 3DMark Vantage - Performance

Yeap, it's that time of the year again. Getting colder up in the north and warmer down south, everyone -well, not really everyone- getting ready for Christmas and celebrating the end of the year and - if the world doesn't end - the beginning of a brand new one. As every year, HWBOT is hosting its Country Cup, an intense overclocking competition between countries. This year, we've deliberately kept the limitations to ourselves for a long time, in an attempt to make it more challenging to find the right tools and toys needed for the competition. In other words: if you're up for the competition, find and engage fellow countrymen!

The Country Cup 2012 will be running from November 22 12:00 GMT+0 until December 30 23:59 GMT+0 and features five different stages:

• Stage 1 - 3DMark11 Trinity Full out: set the highest possible score with an AMD Trinity platform. Discrete graphics cards are allowed. Hyper crossfire is allowed too. Only one score required.
• Stage 2 - 3DMark03 Nvidia SLI Challenge: set the best average SLI'ing three different Nvidia GeForce generations: GeForce 7, GeForce 8 and GeForce 9. Single GPU cards only, one score per generation.
• Stage 3 - 1155/2011 BCLK: an easy one. Set the best average BCLK with three different CPU core types on LGA1155 and LGA2011.
• Stage 4 - AMD SuperPI 1M: ramping up the difficulty level now. For this stage, you need five countrymen to submit a SuperPI 1M submission using an AMD CPU, but on different sockets.
• Stage 5 - Low-end NVantage: in this stage, you need to get the best possible average out of 5 scores with low-end Nvidia graphics cards in 3DMark Vantage Performance. The designated cards for this stage are: GeForce GT 220 GDDR3, GeForce GT 320, GeForce GT 430, GeForce GT 530, GeForce GT 630 DDR3.
• Stage 6 - S775 SuperPI 32M: Last but not least, form the best possible SuperPI 32M average using five different S775 CPUs. Again, five different people need to contribute to the country average

The point distribution for each stage is the same: 25-18-16-15-14-13-12-11-10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1. Every country that completes the requirement for each stage gets at least one point. All stages start at the same time, but have a different end time. The stages end at the following times:

• 26/12, 11:59PM GMT+0: Stage 1.
• 28/12, 11:59PM GMT+0: Stage 2 and 3.
• 30/12, 11:59PM GMT+0: Stage 4, 5 and 6.

Just as a reminder: just like previous editions one overclocker can only contribute to a stage once. In other words, in order to complete a stage that requires three different scores, you need three overclockers to contribute to the country average. For a stage that requires 5 scores you need 5 overclockers, evidently.

In the end, the country with the most points wins the title of "OC Country of the year"!

Good luck all!