The third season of the Old School is Best School contest gets underway today. In case you’re new to the contest, it’s basically a contest series created specifically for overclockers that enjoy benching on very old, classic hardware. To the old timers it represents a walk down memory lane, but for more youthful members of the community it is also a chance to discover and explore hardware from a bygone era.

Round 1 of the OSiBS contest kicks off today and in terms of CPUs, features the long lost Intel Socket 771. In fact you are also allowed to use a modded Socket 775 chip if that’s what you have. In terms of GPU all contestants are limited to using Nvidia’s G96-based Quadro cards. Single GPU configurations only. As well as hardware, the contest also requires knowledge of older benchmarks (and indeed older operating systems). Benchmarks in Round 1 include Maxmen Read Bandwidth in Stage 1, 3DMark06 in Stage 2 and 3DMark Vantage for Stage 3.

Round 1 of the Old School is best School starts today and runs until January 15th. Click here to find a full and detailed write up of all five rounds that we have lined up, including all the hardware limitations, benchmarks and rules setup for each stage of each round.

If you’re an old timer with a loft or a garage full of old but functional hardware, what are you waiting for? You can find the OSiBS Round 1 contest page here.