The fierce MSI MOA (Master Overclocking Arena) 2012 EMEA Qualifier competition has ended successfully on June 14; European overclocking experts from a total of 16 countries competed in the event and have broken world records for 3DMark11 and 3DMark03 eight consecutive times. The top five scores of the winners of EMEA Qualifier competition are Xtreme Addict (Poland), T0lsty (Ukraine), ryba (PurePC.pl) (Poland), Aristidis (Greece) and Smoke (Russian Federation); the winners will team up and advance to the MOA 2012 World Overclocking Finals, and head to Taiwan to compete in the world-class "Steel World" competition.

During this skirmish, the competitors' first choice MSI HD 7970 Lightning graphics card ranked number 1 for both 3DMark11 and 3DMark03; the Polish contestant Xtreme Addict's 3DMark11 P score: 16055 marks and the Ukraine contestant T0lsty's 3DMark03 score: 214000 marks won the competition's first place for each single graphics card event respectively,. Which just goes to show that the contestants are completely fired up to march towards the worldwide Grand Final! After the EMEA Qualifier, another shot at 3DMark11 P score of 16259 marks resulted in a new WR by Polish overclocker: ryba (PurePC.pl).

The latest product from HIS Digital, HIS 7970 X, set a new overclock world record. 4 x HIS 7970 X at 1480/1910MHz achieved 84669 marks on 3Dmark Vantage record. The 4 HIS 7970 X cards performed to its best with HKEPC OC Lab's sophisticated "Tin Shui Wai" System. According to John Lam, the Team Captain as well as a renowned overclocker, "Tin Shui Wai" is a LN2 Chilled Water Cooling System, modified from "Kingpin F1" to provide the most stable Subzero Cooling for 4 Way HIS 7970 X Crossfire".

Besides the sophisticated overclocking equipment, it was the sleek and sophisticated design and vivid LED lighting of the system that captured the attention of industry experts. The System uses green as its main colour, spiced with blue LED light giving it a perfect blend of Extreme OC and Lan Party elements. The unbeatable OC performance and the flashy design of "Tin Shui Wai" System gained much attention from visitors and media during the demonstration at Computex, Taipei. For more information, visit this page.

Round 3 of the MSI MOA (Master Overclocking Arena) qualifiers starts on June 15 and allows the top overclockers in the Asia-Pacific region to battle it out for a ticket to Taiwan. During the qualifiers, which have seen many new records so far, the overclocking experts from the Asia-Pacific region compete for eight tickets to the MOA 2012 grand finals to become the master of the "Steel World" competition!

The annual overclocking competition MOA (Master Overclocking Arena) 2012 held by the world's leading mainboard and graphics card manufacturer MSI, has held regional qualifier competitions since April to select powerhouse overclockers to compete in the annual worldwide Grand Final. After the Americas regional qualifier and the EMEA regional qualifier have successfully ended, the Asia-Pacific regional qualifier battle is about to begin; the competition will go on from June 15 to July 12, overclockers can participate in the competition with any model of MSI mainboard and graphics card, but is limited to a single CPU and GPU.

The first round of the annual MOA (Master Overclocking Arena) 2012 Americas Qualifier, held by the world-renowned mainboard and graphics card manufacturer MSI, ended successfully on May 10. There were overclocking experts from eight countries in the America region who competed in this event; the top three winners were Splave from the U.S., Rbuass and gnidaol from Brazil. The winners will advance into the World Final and are free to pick any member for their team to battle for the master position of the MSI Master Overclocking Arena Grand Final! For complete coverage and results of the event, please visit the MOA 2012 Americas Qualifier website.

Celebrating its 5th anniversary, MSI's Master Overclocking Arena (MOA) joins the most stable Military Class III components with record-breaking overclocking performance. Themed "Steel World", MSI has forged the first evolution starting with the American Regional Qualifiers on the world-class overclocking community website HWBOT.org on April 13, 2012.

The American Regional Qualifiers this year consist of three stages: 3DMark11, 3DMark03 and SuperPI 32M. Each with a different point scheme. There will be no model limitation on MSI mainboards and graphics cards, however entries are limited to single CPU and GPU setups. A cut-off elimination will be applied on May 4th (75% of the contest period) after which the qualifiers will continue with only the best 15 overall participants.

As the leading brand in enthusiastic graphics market, Gainward, again, introduces its Phantom series for GeForce GTX 680 - Gainward GeForce GTX 680 Phantom. The Gainward GTX 680 Phantom, continue the elegant design of the first generation, delivers much better performance than the previous design. The most important is the Gainward GeForce GTX 680 Phantom comes with factory over-clocked setting - 1150MHz boost clock (1084MHz base clock) and 3150MHz (DDR6300) memory clock.

It is really a "silent monster", the fastest GTX 680 in the market and extreme cool under gaming environment. Under 3D benchmark, it is 12.6% higher than reference board (3DMark 2011 Xscore). While in gameplay, it is around 10% higher. To compare with the competing GPU in red camp, it performs 27.7% higher in 3DMark 2011 Xscore and exceeds amazingly 32% in hot titles gaming performance.

Later this year, AMD will unveil its second-generation accelerated processing units (APUs) in the FM2 package, based on its brand-new "Piledriver" CPU and "Graphics CoreNext" GPU architectures. Among these, the part that is designed keeping overclockers in mind is the A10-5800K, which features an unlocked base clock multiplier, four x86-64 cores, 3.80 GHz (nominal) and 4.20 GHz Turbo Core clock speed, and AMD Radeon HD 7660D graphics. Find out more about the lineup here.

INPAI got its hands on an A10-5800K APU, and supporting socket FM2 motherboard, and wasted no time in comparing it to the current-generation A8-3850. INPAI put the two chips through SuperPi 1M, to measure single-thread performance, and 3DMark 06, to measure embedded-GPU performance. In SuperPi, A10-5800K crunched SuperPi 1M in 23.775 s, the A8-3850 did the same in 26.039 s. With 3DMark 06, the A10-5800K scored 9396 points, while the A8-3850 scored 6223. The inference that can be drawn out of this little test is that Trinity has significantly faster graphics, not so much CPU (taking into account A10-5800K cores were clocked over 30% higher than those of the A8-3850).

LucidLogix (Lucid), a developer of GPU virtualization software, and Futuremark, the world leader in performance benchmarking software, today announced that Futuremark's range of 3DMark gaming benchmarks is being updated to detect systems using Lucid's HyperFormance and Virtual Vsync performance technologies, which are available in the Virtu MVP virtualization software and other Lucid solutions.

Futuremark's 3DMark benchmark works by measuring the process of rendering frames of 3D graphics. Lucid's Virtu MVP HyperFormance and Virtual Vsync features are designed to improve responsiveness through the intelligent reduction of redundant rendering tasks. While 3DMark scores may increase when turning on Virtu MVP features, scores from systems with and without MVP technology are not directly comparable because of its effect on the rendering process from CPU to GPU to display.

An Expreview community member ran benchmarks comparing the performance of the Intel HD 4000 graphics embedded into its upcoming 22 nm "Ivy Bridge" Core i5-3570K, comparing it to the integrated graphics of Core i5-2500K, and discrete graphics NVIDIA GeForce GT 240. These tests are endorsed by the site. The suite of benchmarks included games that aren't quite known to be very taxing on graphics hardware by today's standards, yet are extremely popular; games such as StarCraft II, Left4Dead 2, DiRT 3, Street Fighter IV. Some of the slightly more graphics-intensive benchmarks included Far Cry 2 and 3DMark Vantage. All benchmarks were run at 1280 x 720 resolution.

The Intel HD 4000 graphics core beats the HD 3000 hands down, with performance leads as high as 122% in a particular test. The chip produces more than playable frame-rates with Left4Dead 2 and Street Fighter IV, both well above 50 FPS, even DiRT 3 and Far Cry 2 run strictly OK, over 30 FPS. StarCraft II is where it produced under 30 FPS, so the chip might get bogged down in intense battles. A mainstream discrete GeForce or Radeon is a must. On average, the graphics core embedded into the Core i5-3570K was found to be 67.25% faster than the one on the Core i5-2500K.

If you thought the overclocking and benchmark feats we reported on a few days ago here and here were impressive, wait until you see what four cards can do. Overclocking champion Shamino over at Kingpin Cooling has set four 3DMark and one Unigene benchmark record:

Welcome to the first TechPowerUp news post of 2012! Read on for a couple of impressive overclocking feats with the HD 7970 graphics card.

It looks like the new AMD Radeon HD 7970 could be a bit of a dark horse and a lot more potent than its stock specifications would suggest - excellent for creating a competitive graphics card market. The reviews at stock speeds show the flagship HD 7970 to be around 10-15% faster than NVIDIA's flagship GTX 580, which doesn't seem all that impressive since the GTX 580 has been on the market for over a year now. However, what the reviews haven't really shown, is what kind of an overclocking monster the HD 7970 is. It definitely looks like AMD could have easily beaten the GTX 580 by a much bigger margin than they did, had they wanted to and it makes one wonder why they didn't.

VR-Zone have spent the New Year weekend overclocking this beast, having reached a whopping 1.26 GHz core clock speed with their HD 7970 - and decent benchmark improvements to go with it. Also, with the fan at 100%, the card never got above a very comfortable 68 degrees centigrade while running Furmark, which is amazing considering how this test is specifically designed to heat a graphics card to the max - but please see the update at the bottom of the article. The stock cooler may be noisy, but it's certainly very effective: an excellent result which will prolong the working life of the card.

Not quite two weeks ago, we reported on leaked pictures of AMD's upcoming Radeon HD 7770 mid-range graphics card based on the new Southern Islands architecture and listed its basic specs. Well, the leaks keep coming and bigpao007 of ChipHell has leaked more pictures with some benchmarks to go with them. The test setup consisted of an Ivy Bridge ES CPU - Core i5-3550K at 3.3Ghz and Z77 chipset-based motherboard. The driver used was the AMD Catalyst 8.940 RC2, giving the following 3DMark benchmark results:

An increasing number of people within the industry have access to Intel Ivy Bridge engineering samples. Some of them are generous enough to share performance details with the public. One such kind soul posted 3DMark, Fritz Chess, and Cinebench test results. An Intel Core i7-3770 sample was the test candidate, this chip has all components and features available to Ivy Bridge LGA1155 enabled, including HyperThreading, a faster uncore, and the full 8 MB L3 cache. The chip was put through 3DMark 06 (to test its CPU and iGPU performance), Cinebench 11.5 (both single-thread and multi-threaded), and Fritz Chess Benchmark (again, both single and multiple threads).More screenshots follow.

Previous preliminary reports have suggested that the forthcoming Ivy Bridge CPUs will have single threaded performance on par with the existing Sandy Bridge CPUs and will mainly deliver improvements to power consumption and integrated graphics - nothing for PC enthusiasts to get excited about. However, in leaked documents sent to partners, Intel have now revealed official performance figures for IB and they look rather good. They've produced a raft of benchmarks, which reveal improvements such as 56% in ArcSoft Media Expresso, 25% in Excel 2010 and a 199% gain in the 3D Mark Vantage GPU benchmark. Unfortunately, they haven't released any benchmarks based on high performance 3D games, but it's probably safe to say that they will be similarly improved. Now, on to the benchmarks, which compare their new 3.4 GHz i7-3770 (4 cores + HT) with the current 3.4 GHz i7-2600, also with 4 cores + HT:

"Trinity" is the codename of AMD's next-generation performance accelerated processing unit (APU) family. Based on the new socket FM2 package, these chips will take advantage of AMD's next-generation Piledriver processor core architecture and VLIW4 GPU stream processor architecture. Together, Trinity promises increased general, visual, and parallel compute performance. Some of the slides detailing AMD's own performance estimates were put up by DonanimHaber in their recent video bulletin. We screen-grabbed the performance graphs from the low-resolution video, hence the grainy images.

To begin with, AMD is promising noticeable performance improvements over the current "Llano" APU. It spread its benchmarks across three categories: visual performance (using 3DMark Vantage), general performance (using PCMark Vantage), and parallel compute (GPGPU) performance (calculated CTP SP GFLOPs). With 3DMark Vantage, Trinity A8 (quad-core), A6 (triple-core), and A4 (dual-core) APUs are seeing a roughly 32% improvement over their respective Llano-based counterparts; with general performance, the improvement is a candid 13.8% on average; but with GPGPU performance, the improvement is a massive 56.3% on average. This could be attributed to the VLIW4 architecture. Lastly, there are notable CrossFire dual-graphics performance improvements.

Futuremark, the world leader in performance benchmarking software, today announced development of a new version of 3DMark, the company's flagship benchmark for gamers. 3DMark for Windows 8 (working title) is designed for gaming performance measurement and comparison across all Windows 8 devices from tablets and notebooks to high-end desktop gaming systems. The announcement was accompanied by an atmospheric concept image for the new benchmark showing an elemental rock warrior brandishing two blazing swords.

Jukka Mäkinen, CEO of Futuremark said, "With Windows 8 gamers will be able to enjoy their games on a wide range of devices from lightweight tablets to heavy-duty desktop rigs. Faced with so much choice it will be hard to work out which devices offer the best value for money. Fortunately 3DMark for Windows 8 will be our most wide-reaching 3DMark ever, able to accurately measure and compare gaming performance across all devices and graphical feature sets available with Windows 8."

Leading global graphics card and motherboard brand and manufacturer MSI officially announced the Z68MA-G43 (G3) motherboard today. The new motherboard will be the first in the industry to adopt the next-generation PCI Express Gen 3 high-speed data transfer standard to deliver unprecedented levels of performance with a staggering 32GB/s of bandwidth. The motherboard will also feature MSI's proprietary ClickBIOS II that will allow enthusiasts to use the mouse or even touch control panel to adjust the system and overclocking settings through UEFI BIOS or Windows applications.

In addition, OC Genie II is included and can be used to optimize the CPU, memory, integrated graphics card, and storage devices for maximum stability and performance in just one second. When combined with Intel Smart Response Technology the performance of conventional HDDs can be increased by as much as 457%. With support for all solid capacitors, USB 3.0, SATA 6G, HDMI / DVI / D-Sub video-out, and multiple CrossFireX graphics cards, the new motherboard meets enthusiasts' demands for system stability, expandability, and extreme game graphics.

Well, this is good news for PC enthusiasts. PC overclocking has become a competitive sport in recent years with various brands hosting the competitions and others also chipping in with sponsorship money. This year's event was the fourth annual MSI Master Overclocking Arena competition held in Taipei, Taiwan, with sponsorship money coming from the likes of Intel and Kingston among others. Basic competition info: sixteen teams worldwide; benchmarks used were Super PI 32M, 3DMark 11 and surprisingly, the ancient 3DMark 2001SE but it's not clear why such an old benchmark is being used; the components used are given to contestants based on a lottery system, the team picking a number corresponding to either a CPU or a complete rig. This prevents contestants from having an unfair advantage by bringing in their own heavily modified kit to press home an advantage. Imagine how much more potent a modded motherboard with beefed up voltage regulators could be? Turned out that the favourites, previous winners Romania, won the competition. The prize money was only $3000, which is paltry compared to mainstream sports, but remember that this overclocking "sport" is still very new and is very niche in nature, so isn't so unreasonable when viewed in that light. Head on over to VR-Zone for more competition details and photos.

Announcing the winners of PowerColor and TechPowerUp Pimp My Rig Contest. Over September, we ran an interesting contest open to GPU-Z users, in which the one with the lowest valid 3DMark 03 score gets to win an exotic new PowerColor HD 6970 X2 dual-GPU graphics card, and one lucky participant with any valid score, is given a PowerColor HD 6870 X2 graphics card.

And the winners are:

• Sheng from South Africa, wins the PowerColor HD 6970 X2 for the lowest valid score
• Max from Brazil, wins the PowerColor HD 6870 X2, for getting lucky big time

TechPowerUp and pals will return with more awesome contests.

MSI is unveiling its new generation top-of-the-line GT683DX gaming computer, featuring the ultimate in performance and hardware. It packs Intel's second generation Core i7-2630QM quad core processor, nVidia's latest and greatest GeForce GTX 570M discrete graphics card, four DDR3 memory slots, accelerated dual hard disk architecture, as well as Dynaudio and THX TruStudio Pro smart wrap around sound. Taipei-MSI just introduced the GT683DX gaming laptop with powerful hardware, including Intel's 2nd generation Core i7-2630QM quad core processor and nVidia's newest GeForce GTX 570M discrete graphics card (1.5GB GDDR5 display memory), representing a 20% improvement in performance over other discrete graphics cards currently on the market to deliver hiccup-free graphics even when you play the latest high-resolution games. It received a record 12,475 points when it was tested in the performance mode on 3DMark Vantage.

Here is a tasty scoop of benchmark results purported to be those of the AMD FX-8130P, the next high-end processor from the green team. The FX-8130P was paired with Gigabyte 990FXA-UD5 motherboard and 4 GB of dual-channel Kingston HyperX DDR3-2000 MHz memory running at DDR3-1866 MHz. A GeForce GTX 580 handled the graphics department. The chip was clocked at 3.20 GHz (16 x 200 MHz). Testing began with benchmarks that aren't very multi-core intensive, such as Super Pi 1M, where the chip clocked in at 19.5 seconds; AIDA64 Cache and Memory benchmark, where L1 cache seems to be extremely fast, while L2, L3, and memory performance is a slight improvement over the last generation of Phenom II processors.

MSI, the world-renowned mainboard and graphics card manufacturer, officially launches the Z68A-GD80 (G3), featuring world's first large bandwidth PCI Express Gen 3 mainboard, and the latest UEFI technology: Click BIOS II which features a homogenous interface both under Windows and the UEFI interface. Conforming to Intel's latest design standard, the MSI Z68A-GD80 (G3) with PCI Express Gen 3 provides a data transfer rate that is 200% faster than PCI Express Gen 2, enhancing the performance of graphics cards without bandwidth limitations.

Click BIOS II, allows simple and intuitive system adjustments in both Windows and the UEFI interface! In addition, Z68A-GD80 (G3) utilizes MIL-810STD Certified Military Class II components and are equipped with OC Genie II technology which increases the performance of hard drive up to 457%. The MSI Z68A-GD80 (G3) enables next generation superior performance with PCI Express Gen 3 and OC Genie II, ultimate stability with certified Military Class II components and an extreme user-friendly Click BIOS II interface both in Windows and in the UEFI BIOS.

Armed with a Radeon HD 6550D graphics core that has 400 stream processors, 8 ROPs, and full DirectX 11 support, AMD A-Series "Llano" accelerated processing unit (APU) was tested to be the fastest integrated graphics solution to date. The tests was run by a forum-member of TweakTown community with early access to engineering samples. On the test-bed was AMD A8-3850 APU, which has four x86-64 cores clocked at 2.90 GHz, and the Radeon HD 6550D IGP with engine clock of 600 MHz. Standard dual-channel DDR3-1333 MHz memory was used, even though the APU supports faster DDR3-1866 MHz. To seat the test bed, Gigabyte A75M-UD2H was used. It's important to note here that the CPU cores were overclocked to 3.773 GHz (145.13 MHz x 26.0), with an insane core voltage of 1.52V.

The setup was put though three generations of 3DMark benchmark, covering DirectX 9.0c, DirectX 10, and DirectX 11 performance. In 3DMark 06, the setup scores 10,492 points. In 3DMark Vantage, it scored P6160 (performance preset, validation). In 3DMark 11, it scored P1591 (performance preset, validation). More details can be read in the screenshots.

Slated for Tuesday, 19th April, AMD new mainstream DirectX 11 compliant graphics cards, the Radeon HD 6670, and HD 6570, have been drawing some attention as two of the last products to launch in the HD 6000 series. It will probably only be with the HD 7000 series slated for who knows when, that AMD will release new GPUs. DonanimHaber put a HD 6670 and two HD 6570 graphics cards, along with a GeForce GT 440 (NVIDIA's fastest card in the segment), through 3DMark Vantage and 3DMark 11, in performance and extreme presets. The Radeons emerged faster overall. The HD 6670 and HD 6570 are designed for price points below $100.

SPARKLE Computer Co., Ltd., the professional VGA card manufacturer and supplier, today released SPARKLE GeForce GTS 450 1GB/2GB DDR3 Graphics Card, providing unparalleled levels of price/performance to a ideal product for mainstream users.

SPARKLE GeForce GTS 450 1GB/2GB DDR3 Graphics Card features SPARKLE exclusive designed Sun Flower Cooling Fan, which replaces NVIDIA reference cooling fans on ordinary GeForce GTS 450 graphics cards. This exclusively designed Sun Flower Cooling Fan uses SPARKLE patented technology known as "aluminum extrusion production processing", transferring heat from the bottom of the radiator to the cooling fin efficiently and fast. It also uses a "pressure casting" process, to make the entire cooling radiator at once, this process can not only brings sufficient cooling fins, but also bring heat from the bottom to the fins rapidly and efficiently, thereby improving the overall thermal efficiency, coupled with the design of solid thermal conductivity, heat from centre bottom can be brought even quickly to fins.