After the first stage that went well, we started feeling the pressure for this second part of the day. This time overclockers have to choose between three 3D Benchmarks to score points : 3DMark11 Performance, 3DMark 03 and 3DMark Firestrike Extreme.

After the first Stage based on 2D benching, the teams had to bench 3D to push the graphic card in the last possible Mhz. Stage 2 and 3 were being run at the same time but with different approach :

• Stage 2 was composed of 3DMark 03 and 3DMark 11 benchmarks, like the first stage, only the best ranking will count for the points in the Final ranking.
• Stage 3 was based only on 3DMark Firestrike Extreme to make it a mandatory benchmarks, that was even more true at the end of the day, more on that later.

All the teams had two operating systems provided, Windows XP and Windows 7, the 2D bench part as well as the 3Dmark 03 run were taking advantage of Windows XP while for 3DMark 11 and Firestrike you had to run Windows 7.

All the teams have 3 hours to go throught Stage 2 and 3.

Stage 2

Interesting enough, the first 3D score arrived more than one hour after the stage start, some of the teams choose to not even run 3DMark 03 and aim straight at the other 3D benchmark.

Some score were getting updated, and the battle started, teams benched 3Dmark 11 first then when they didn’t saw any possible gain they switched to Firestrike, but the ranking systeme made it clear : there is NO one strategy that will be pre-defined.

As the ranking give you the point, anything that impact the ranking will influence your choice to either continue pushing the hardware on the same benchmark or switch for another one and secure a spot.

3Dmark03

Six out of the 3 teams submitted a score in this benchmark. Team Germany sgot the maximum of point for stage 2 with a nice 204384 score (#39 on hwbot ranking worldwide). Followed by Team Kazakhstan with 198797 marks contributing them 28 point in the overall point ranking. On the third spot we have Team Russia (1) with 192299 marks.

3Dmark11 Performance Preset

Team Ukraine 1 and team France had a nice battle to reach and keep the first place, turned out Ukraine (1) secured the top place with 18939marks and France with 18818marks. This last Ukraine score was submitted in the last minute of the competition.

In third place the guy from Team Greece (2) with 18710. Despite Team France and Greece (2) first appearance in a live competition they managed the pull out some really nice ranking.

Stage 3: 3Dmark Firestrike Extreme

Team Germany show off their 3D skills and scores 35 points for the best score of 7187marks followed by Greece (2) and Ukraine (1) with 7106 and 7102marks. Once again we can see this scores are extremely tight !

As an example of an impressive last minute bench and come-back, the French Team did put out a last-chance run on 3DMark Firestrike to secure their position, 15minutes before the end, switching the hardware and securing their position.

Looking at the teams there was different approach, some kept the backup hardware as backup, some semi-prepared it to be able to change a defective part if the something goes wrong and some teams (like France) had basically the backup setup completely ready to be benched or almost. That strategy was a good move as said above, they managed to plug the rig, run the benchmark and submit the score in the very last minute.

Turned out that on the 3D stage, France, Germany, Team Europe and Ukraine were all fighting with each others on a tight spot while Team Greece (1) didn’t submit any core in that two stages.

An hour before the end of the stage, there was only a score above 7K Point in 3DMark Firestrike Extreme, while at the end, about 6 scores were above this step.

Stage 1 was really mixed in terms of ranking point between the teams, the 3D stage was similar and this allow a good representation in the final ranking.

Final results

See the news about the final result and total score ranking on OverClocking-TV.