Tuesday, August 31, 2010

A PC configuration that Neptune would like

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Kingston just posted a youtube video of their new HyperX H20 water-cooled memory kit together in a system using a GIGABYTE X58A-UD5 motherboard. Very cool indeed!

This system and the Kingston HyperX team will be at PAX-West in Seattle this week Friday-Monday, so if you’re in the vicinity be sure to ask about this water-cooled dream machine.

Friday, August 27, 2010

Go OC, Moon festival and BBQs

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Go OC attendees are in for a treat in September as Taiwan celebrates Moon Festival. On September 22nd, just 3 days before the new Go OC champion is announced, millions of people will be enjoying family barbeque dinners around Taiwan (I will be one of them). Moon Festival is a happy time because it calls for a family reunion - much like Thanksgiving or Christmas in other parts of the world. Just looking at the list of overclockers, judges and media who will attend Go OC this year, many are old friends who I’m sure will fully appreciate the spirit of Moon Festival when they are reunited for four exciting days.

Not to lose out on an opportunity to BBQ, GIGABYTE is planning to treat the Go OC attendees to a BBQ dinner on Sunday, September 26th. Stay tuned for more Go OC updates.

… and just when you think you’ve seen it all!

Nickshih comes into the H55 MiniITX competition challenge and casually drops a nuclear bomb with a 6.4GHz 32M SuperPi. What an unbelievable surprise this little pocket rocket has turned out to be in overclockers' eyes!

Keep a close eye on this battle as I don’t think it’s over just yet ;) http://hwbot.org/competition/gbt_h55_mitx

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Wednesday, August 25, 2010

GIGABYTE P55-UD6 scales the new RAM OC heights with CAS8

French overclocking duo, Benji Tshi & marmott, overclocked their Kingston HyperX RAM kit with a GIGABYTE P55-UD6 to a new RAM frequency CAS8 record at GamesCom, Cologne, Germany recently.

Congratulations guys. Very impressive OC!

http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=1355669

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Official Go OC 2010 video advert makes it onto youtube

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Today is August 25th, exactly 1 month before the global final of Go OC 2010 in Taipei and there so no better time to officially launch our Go OC final ad. Here it is,turn your speakers up and be sure to select the 720p HD version.

Lots of familiar faces in this overclocking-TV video with scenes from the country qualifiers, regional finals and last year’s global final.

See you there fellas.

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

GIGABYTE Announces Winner of the “Search for GIGABYTE Motherboard’s #1 Biggest Fan Contest”

GIGABYTE’s #1 biggest fan and winner of the 4 day, 3 night all expenses paid trip to Taipei, Taiwan for the GIGABYTE Open Overclocking Competition 2010 worldwide final is…Marc Bro Beier from Denmark.

Hundreds of fans participated, but there were several standout entries, with fans submitting pictures and videos of their systems, giving advice to other fans about system settings and hardware recommendations and generally creating a very supportive community atmosphere.

This just meant that judging the winner was that much more difficult for GIGABYTE staff. Of course, there could only be one winner, and Marc clearly showed us his love for GIGABYTE motherboards, whether through his series of informative videos (http://www.youtube.com/user/DK12k), his often passionate, yet helpful suggestions to GIGABYTE, as well as his advice to other GIGABYTE motherboard fans. Congrats Marc, and see you in Taipei in September!

Thanks to everyone who participated and to our 3,810 fans! For those still wanting some GIGABYTE loot, continue to visit GIGABYTE Motherboards on facebook, as we will be announcing some other cool contests in the near future!

To read the full press release, please visit HERE

Revitalizing an HP Blackbird 002 from 2007 > 2010 in under $1000

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CTO of HP’s gaming business, Rahul Sood, recently blogged about how he transformed his 3 year old HP Blackbird 002 gaming system into a current (2010) powerhouse! He replaced the motherboard, CPU, memory, power supply, and fans and is amazed at how well his PC is running now because it's way faster, much quieter, and rock solid!

The new motherboard he is using is the GIGABYTE X58A-UD3R, and here’s what he has to say about it:

“Gigabyte GA-X58A-UDR3 (why Gigabyte? ..because it's fanless, it's fast, and it's not overpriced. The Asus republic of gamer motherboard seems way overpriced for what you get, don't waste your money)”.

As the founder of luxury computer designer VoodooPC, and the current CTO of HP’s gaming business, that’s a really nice endorsement from someone who knows!

Monday, August 23, 2010

GIGABYTE H55 miniITX contest update from HWBOT

There is a fantastic competition raging on HWBOT.ORG at the moment called GIGABYTE H55 minITX contest. There is a week to go before the competition closes and the points distribution looks very very tight. If you havent joined in yet jump to this webpage.

Check this out, top5 overclockers separated by a single point!

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Friday, August 20, 2010

GIGABYTE Announces First GO OC “Guess the Winner” Winner

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Wanting to let everyone in on the GO OC fever, GIGABYTE has opened up the competition to allow fans to vote on who they think will win GO OC 2010. Not only will the people who guess correctly get a chance to win some loot, but every week, GIGABYTE will choose one lucky person who will win as well.

This week we’ve chosen the first one.

Drum Roll Please…

The first winner is Elisabeth Samson who wins a shiny new GIGABYTE GA-H55N-USB3 motherboard. Congrats Elisabeth!

To enter for your chance to win, please visit: http://gooc2010.gigabyte.com/en/guess-winner.aspx

3DMARK VANTAGE World Record shamed again by hicookie on the X58A-UD9

68K on a single socket board is insane to say the least!

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Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Gaming in tight spaces (MIAHALLEN featuring H55N-USB3)

A famous US overclocker living in Japan, MIAHALLEN, wrote a fantastic article about a gaming machine that packs some serious punch based around GIGABYTE’s H55N-USB3. Check out the full article here.

Gigabyte GA-H55N-USB3

This board has performed so far beyond my expectations I would recommend it to anybody…not just somebody on a budget or for a boring office PC…ANYBODY!  This motherboard is fully featured, stable, polished, and the BIOS is far more mature than you’d expect.  It feels very similar to the P55A-UD7 top of the line LGA1156 motherboard from the same company and all this for a very agreeable price.  If you want a small PC don’t look any further!  I don’t hand out awards in my review, but if I did, this would be a Platinum!  Thank you Gigabyte for providing the two H55N-USB3  motherboards used in this review!

On a side note, I upgraded my HTPC with the new motherboard when my wife wasn’t around.  A couple days later she asked me if I had done something to the system.  I wanted to know why she was asking, and she said “because it hasn’t had a hitch or crashed in days!”  I was laughing out loud and told her about Gigabyte supplying an upgrade for it….she wanted me to make sure you know she is very grateful to be able to watch an entire show on Hulu without a crash, “Thanks Gigabyte!”

The wife likes it too. That’s always a good thing Jeremy lol.

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Monday, August 16, 2010

Hardware Zone Awards GA-X58A-UD3R Best Value and 8.5/10

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Looking for an X58 board that wont break your bank? Hardware Zone recently tested 3 different mid-range X58 boards and was impressed by the GIGABYTE GA-X58A-UD3R, not only in terms of performance, but additional software features such as Cloud OC and Hotkey OC which set it above the competition with a Best Value award and an 8.5/10 overall score

Hardware and performance aside, Gigabyte has impressed us with its latest addition of software utilities, especially with the new Cloud OC feature and we've given the board additional brownie points in the features department. As a whole, the Gigabyte board is perhaps the best equipped board out of the box when all things are considered and it shouldn't be taken lightly.

To read the complete article, please visit:

The X58 Motherboards You Can Afford

 

Friday, August 13, 2010

GIGABYTE Again the No.1 Motherboard Sponsor at Asia’s Largest Gaming Festival ChinaJoy 2010 for 5 Consecutive Years


Gamers as well as game developers were in full force this year at the world’s largest gaming exposition - China Digital Entertainment Expo & Conference, or better known as ChinaJoy. Held in Shanghai from July 29th to August 1st, this year’s ChinaJoy was all about online entertainment, including online gaming, SNS and social gaming. The expo also showcased various gaming platforms including PC gaming, console and the recently developing mobile gaming market, thanks in part to platforms such as Apple’s mobile iOS.


This year, ChinaJoy attracted a public audience of over 150,000 people including fans and gamers, as well as more than 4,000 journalist and photographers from around the globe. In addition, more than 10,000 trade visitors from image018nearly 30 different countries and regions converged here to explore partnership opportunities, scope out the latest gaming and industry trends and to have a bit of fun in the processes.


GIGABYTE was again proud to play a part in this year’s ChinaJoy. In fact, this is the GIGABYTE’s 5th consecutive year as ChinaJoy’s official motherboard sponsor. During the show, more than 800 gaming PC systems were powered by GIGABYTE motherboards, providing game developers the perfect hardware platform to showcase all the latest bells whistles their latest games had to offer, proving once again that GIGABYTE is the No. 1 motherboard brand for delivering the best gaming experience due to superior performance and superior quality with the Ultra Durable 3 design.


At the event, CCTV held an exclusive interview with GIGABYTE Technology President, Mr. Dandy Yeh, who provided GIGABYTE’s GIGABYTE Technology President - Mr. Dandy Yehhardware perspective on the gaming industry. “In today’s gaming development, PC games are designed with more sophisticated 3D animations and visual effects, for which gaming PCs requires greater performance and richer features for delivering the best gaming experience. GIGABYTE, as the leading manufacturer of motherboards and graphics cards, has always provided the very best gaming solutions and services to gamers.”


In addition, GIGABYTE, together with PCgames.com.cn, hosted the “Play and Win at ChinaJoy” event. Attendees to ChinaJoy had the chance to win some great prizes, including a huge teddy bear stuff toy. Last but certainly not least, during the show period there were a bevy of GIGABYTE showgirls demonstrating the latest games at each gaming production company’s booth.

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GIGABYTE Showgirls



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Gamers trying out the latest games


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Happy audiences photographing with showgirls

Thursday, August 12, 2010

Go OC update: golden tickets and more…

Now that all the regional finals are finished and Hicookie’s back from the US, we got to sit down and finalize the golden tickets, judges and a few other details.

Golden Tickets

The purpose of having golden tickets is so that we have the option to invite leading overclockers who may not have been able to join country or regional events, and who will benefit Go OC with their caliber of OC expertise. We also have a rule preventing anyone who has been eliminated in a Go OC 2010 country or regional event from competing in the global final. After evaluating the list of qualifiers and those who were knocked out along the way, we decided that there will be no golden tickets this year. So one of the fifteen who qualified for the final will be this year’s Go OC Champion! They are:

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Judges

Go OC 2010 is the biggest and most expensive overclocking event that we’ve ever put on and we have tried to keep it interesting with new rules and benchmarks that were suggested to us after last year’s final (FYI, we’ll probably have 3D benchmarks again in Go OC 2011). With the new benchmarks come new challenges in preventing what we like to call ‘creative benching’, so we want the judges to be seasoned overclockers who are qualified to adjudicate. And so the judges are Hicookie (head judge), Dinos22, Benny Lodewijk Nitolo Lase (4th time Go OC judge), Deanzo, T_M (3rd time Go OC judge), Rockson (GIGABYTE technical marketing manager), Janus (GIGABYTE technical marketing engineer), and two GIGABYTE R&D engineers who overclock as part of their new product debugging and testing. Some basic mathematics will tell you that there is a judge for every two overclockers. This list may change due to unforeseen issues, and we are announcing it now because we want everyone to know what our intentions are at present – none of these judges have been eliminated in previous Go OC 2010 events.

Details about the global final are available on the Go OC website, including two spectator competitions where we give away OC gear (see below): a guess the winner competition and a weekly lucky draw for guess the winner entrants.

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Stay tuned for our GIGABYTE’s Biggest Fan competition announcement next week when we’ll announce who gets a free ticket to Go OC as a spectator. So if you’re hoping to visit Taiwan together with our 15 finalists, ‘like’ the GIGABYTE Motherboard Tech Column on facebook and tell us why you deserve to win!

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Mini-ITX madness – bringing on the freeze!

I found some time today to check out the really weird and wonderful extreme cooling setups in our GIGABYTE H55 Mini-ITX contest on hwbot. The motherboard being terrorized in these shots is our beloved little H55N-USB3. Keep in mind that this little board is intended for tiny media centers and portable LAN gaming systems – not exactly extreme overclocking. However, by all accounts it seems to be holding it’s own as a mid-range overclocking platform with CPU speeds of just under 6GHz. Check out these rigs that show just how small the little board that can really is.

Pro’s rig:

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Chew’s rig:

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Lucky_n00b’s rig (yes,the H55N-USB3 is under that monstrous CPU cooler):

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Zolkorn’s rigs:

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SuperOZ’s rig:

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StrategosSan’s rig (check out the ice bucket):

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Stay tuned for more as the competition progresses or visit the hwbot competition page.

6.6GHz overclock with the MiniITX monster H55N-USB3!

HWBOT H55 MiniITX competition is well under way. SamOCX just chimed in the competition thread with a monster overclock on his i5 670 reaching 6.6GHz WOOOOOOOOOOW!

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Sam’s cat is a fan of the motherboard (box) too hahahah!

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Sunday, August 8, 2010

Sno.lcn wins the North American Go OC 2010 final!

Go OC North America 2010 just finished and sno.lcn who took it out this year. For those of you that followed last year’s global final will, you will remember sno.lcn teaming up with miahallen after 2009 victory in NA.

Second place went to mikeguava and third place to ROSS. Sno.lcn and mikeguava qualified for the global Go OC final which will be held in Taipei at the end of September. Congratulations guys and see you in Taipei!

For more information on North American Go OC 2010 visit the official website. If you would like to find out more about the global final go to the following website.

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Jeremy celebrating in style…

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Thursday, August 5, 2010

GIGABYTE H55 miniITX contest in full flight at HWBOT.ORG

HWBOT is hosting a very exciting competition this month based around the H55N-USB3 motherboard and one of everyone’s favourite benchmarks around, 32M SuperPi.

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With the recent upheavals in the overclocking community, GIGABYTE and HWBOT thought it would be a good time to host a competition centered around the basics of overclocking. So, during the month of August, show us how far you can push your GA-H55N-USB3 motherboard and submit your Super PI 32m scores on HWBOT. Since not everyone has access to LN2, we’ve split the competition into two categories; Stage 1 we’ve limited the CPU speed to 4000 MHz, and Stage 2 has no CPU speed limit.

Since most of you are in this sport for the love of overclocking, and not for the love of prizes, we’ve decided not to announce any. That’s not to say there won’t be any at the end of the competition for the winners, but for the true overclocking purists out there, it gives you the chance to show the community you are doing this for fun (and maybe just a little for the bragging rights). We are also looking to see who is the fan favorite, so make sure to vote using HWBOT’s voting system (there might just be a lucky draw prize in it for those of you who vote). Good luck everyone and have fun!

GIGABYTE H55 miniITX contest is open for submissions until 31 Aug. This competition is between members. You can submit benchmark results before 31 Aug.

LET THE CRAZINESS BEGIN… http://hwbot.org/competition/gbt_h55_mitx

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Winner of the GIGABYTE X58A-UD9 Motherboard Announced

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We are very glad to announce Hz Nehalem as the winner for this week's UD9 motherboard. Congrats Hz! He posted a really gracious response to winning:

Thanks, Thanks, Thank you very much GIGABYTE, to have made this dream became true. I really can´t to believe that this is already happening. I´m literaly on shock. The first time just when I read the congratulations of friends that I've made here in Gigabyte Motherboard Tech Column I can´t to believe what my eyes was watching in that moment. Then I began to trembler all over. I why don't say that I began to be on the verge of tears for happiness.


I can´t to believe I have won the most powerfull, amazing, durable, beatiful motherboard in this planet. I'm really excite about it.


At this time I have headache, caused of the great happines.


And also, I feel sad, because some of friends who I have made during this time of contest; are a little sad for not win.


Many of they would deserve to win the same as me. They have prove to be very good persons all this time. And I'm very gratefull for their support.


I wish the best to all them for the last part of this contest, and this is the travel to Taipei, the place where Gigabyte dreams are born.
Many of you, who has participate in this contest during all that weeks deserved to win too.


Thank you so much for all and good luck in the travel.


Best regards from Seville. Spain!
THANKS GIGABYTE.


Thanks to everyone who participated in the contest. In the next few weeks we will be announcing the winner for the trip to Taiwan. It's going to be a really tough decision since there are so many awesome GIGABYTE fans. We really have our work cut out for us on this one.


There were a lot of really deserving fans who didn't win a board this time (we've read every post, so we know who you guys are), but stick with us, we've got lots more good stuff to give away in the next coming months. If there is a contest idea you would like us to have, let us know. We are always open to suggestions!
Thanks again everyone!


GIGABYTE Motherboard Team

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

GIGABYTE H55N-USB3 Gets a 5/5 at NijaLane.com

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Ninjalane.com  recently took the H55N-USB3 out for a spin not only at stock speeds, but overclocked as well with an Intel Core i5 661 processor. Normally, Mini-ITX boards sacrifice features and performance in order to maintain the 17cm x 17cm form factor. But, as Dennis found out, the GIGABYTE H55N-USB3 is easily overclocked, allowing performance benefits that push the board beyond using it as just a HTPC device.

In this review we looked at some of the enthusiast aspects of the Gigabyte GA-H55N-USB3 in terms of performance and features, while this may not be the intended purpose it does open up this motherboard to a variety of new roles such as multifunction HTPC or low cost general purpose machine for the family.

Overall performance was exceptional using the Clarkdale Core i5-661 processor.

To check out the full review for yourself, please visit Ninjalane.com Here