If you remember, last year just around the same time, we were heading to Shanghai for Galaxy’s GOC 2013. That OC competition form Galaxy dubbed the Galaxy Overclocking Carnival was hold on the side of a Galaxy gaming competition in one of Shanghais’s huge expo halls.
For the second year in a row, the recently rebranded Galaxy into Galax is inviting once more top overclockers selected though and online qualifier to compete for the title of GOC Champion 2014.
GOC 2014 in Wuhan, China
For this 2014 edition of the GOC, Galax changed location. Heading to Wuhan, China – all 12 qualified overclockers will be facing each other in a similar setup as last years with one major difference. Solo benching this time- no teams of two. This should definitely spice up the game and make the competition more vibrant & tense.
In terms of competitors, as you can see, a lot of famous faces here. We do note that we will be having the pleasure seeing for the second time Shimizu a growing new-gen overclocker from Japan!
Competition Hardware
Last year, Galax marketed their 780HOF card via the GOC 2013 competition. This year in a similar fashion Galax selected their best graphics card to be challenged by the competing overclockers (the GTX 980 HOF) + a selection of several other Galax-made parts.
Hardware selection goes as follow:
- Motherboard: BYOH (Bring Your Own Hardware)
- Graphics Card: Galax GTX 980 HOF
- CPU: Intel 4790K (max 6GHx +/-12MHz for 3D stages) (BYOH on day2)
- Memory: Galax DDR3 HOF (DDR4 available on day2)
- PSU: Galax 1200W HOF
- SSD: Galaxy SSDs (Win7, Win8, WinXP installs ready)
As you can see, a lot of Galax products here – which makes it definitely the most “autonomously run” competition so far with very little call to partners in order to supply all the necessary gear to the contestants. Main sponsors for this year” Nvidia & Gelid Solutions
Also, as you can see for the motherboard, this is a BYOH competition. Meaning that overclockers are allowed to bring their own board – both Z87 and Z97 boards are accepted. This should make the competition quite interesting, especially the memory stage…
Competition Benchmarks
The competition is split in two parts. 2D and 3D. For the 2D part, there is only one benchmark: SuperPi 32M. And for the 3D stages, we will have a selection of 3DMark 11 Performance, Fire Strike and Fire Strike Extreme.
Point calculation as follow based on rank: 24, 22, 20, 18, 16, 14, 12, 10, 8, 6, 4, 2.
Quite classic :) These rules extremely similar in terms of stage and point calculation to the the usual competitions shouldn’t raise any questions or objections from the competitors.
Cash prizes for the top ranked will be distributed as such: $3000 / $2000 / $1000
So what happens on the second day?
Last year, the second day had turned into and OC record day in which the earn money for each record was given by Galax to a charity. This year, the rules have changes slightly with a second day call “Galax GPU Party”. As the name states, this will be a 3D heavy day with a selection of five authorized 3D benches + one 2D memory validation:
- 3DMark Fire Strike, Extreme & Ultra
- 3DMark11 Performance & Extreme
- 3DMark Vantage Performance & Extreme
- 3DMark Cloud Gate
- 3DMark Ice Storm
- Memory Frequency
On that day, OCers are allowed to use their own CPU – but can eventually request to get one of the chips from the day before. The aim of this second day, of course records. For each of these broken, $500 USD cash.
OCTV Coverage
We would like to thank Galax for the invitation this year. We will be there the whole time to share with you the latest updates from the competition. Of course, videos , interviews and loads of pictures will be made available so stay tuned!
Sadly, due to the great firewall of China, we won’t be able to secure sufficient bandwidth to stream the competition. Maybe next year ;)
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