Latest Trend: Selling Benchmark Scores. Futuremark Catches Cheaters In MSI OC Contest

jmke · 22nd July 2010, 18:18

Latest Trend: Selling Benchmark Scores. Futuremark Catches Cheaters In MSI OC Contest

After an in-depth search, Futuremark realized that all these results originated from a single setup, this based not only on the same FM registration key but also the PCI devices and more. In practice, this means that one overclocker has produced several benchmark scores and gave it to other overclockers to win the MOA 2010 WW Final ticket. (src. HWbot.org)

It seems one lucky overclocker decided to share the wealth and sold of his top scores to several other benchers. Some sharp minds at HWbot.org collaborated with Futuremark to come to this conclusion

AndreYang produced some killer scores for MSI Lords of Overclocking competition; instead of just being happy by securing a ticket to the finals, he wanted to turn some profit. He found some buyers from all over the world: Hiwa, eXtremetweaker.de, KJ and Skinnee.

Their collective cheating effort didn't last long however as FM has removed their entries from their database and HWbot has officially banned all involved benchers for 1 year.

AndreYang was previously the undisputed overclocking champ at HWbot.org, after beating K|ngp|n he was ruling the roost, posting top benchmark scores. It's sad to see somebody who has the time, patience and skill to push hardware to the limit, fall so low as selling of benchmark scores. While he might find this an acceptable business model, neither HWbot or Futuremark agree and have banned all users involved from participating in online benchmark competitions for the coming months.

With the removal of several top benchers, the ranking have changed quite a bit, make sure to find out who's the new OC King here.

thorgal · 23rd July 2010, 11:45

Serves them right. Doesn't really surprise me from this Yang character.

blind_ripper · 23rd July 2010, 14:33

jmke · 25th July 2010, 16:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skinnee XS
I want to get my side of this whole situation out in the open…

Vapor was in town for some lab projects we have going on and I talked him into benching with me to qualify for MOA. We had a 160L tank of LN2, XPower boards and Ryan’s (GoatEater) untested chip. I setup the OS, drivers and applications and used the 197.75 drivers… I knew FM always lagged behind approving drivers and figured they hadn’t approved the 257.xx drivers yet.

Wednesday and most of Thursday we spent testing a few kits of RAM, how to clock the uncore on the XPower, and so on… Thursday night we went cold. We benched 480’s in SLI with the 197.75 drivers. And as you can see from the ORB links and screenshots (run 1 ORB / run 1 HWbot, run 2 ORB / run 2 HWbot) we did well with the 480’s and Ryan’s chip was pretty good, but the 197.75 drivers were not FM approved and we later validated that FM QA did not even test those drivers.

So, I have the score to be in second, but my driver choice means the entry cannot be used in the contest and the 480’s are pretty much tapped out score wise. I called in a favor to a buddy here in the Twin Cities to borrow his 5970 and 5870 to go higher in score.

Friday night we tossed the ATI cards on and benched for 7+ hours on Ryan’s chip. During the long session we achieved four scores above 43k and ended up having condensation issues and killing Ryan’s chip early Saturday morning as we were pushing for over 44k.

Saturday afternoon I finally uploaded the scores to ORB and did not even try to make them public at first as I wanted to hold out as long as possible to see what other scores were posted on the leaderboard, but I finally caved and tried to make the lowest score public and it would not go. Here are the screen shots and 3dr files from the Friday night session…

43023 SS / 43023 3DR

43474 SS / 43474 3DR

43553 3DR

43912 3DR

I emailed Pasi at FM and posted in the thread on the FM forums regarding the problem of the scores just not wanting to go Public. During the bench session we renamed 3DMark06.exe to 3DMark05.exe. In pretesting, we observed the score was not very consistent and renaming seemed to improve the consistency and therefore improved the average score slightly, by 50-100 points. Peak scores were unchanged, but low scores weren’t cropping up.

Since we were having problems with the results and had not received any word from FM, we switched over to another 980X and started benching again on Sunday night. However, we were still waiting on FM’s reply to see if they could resolve the ‘Make Public’ issue with the four 43+k ATI results I had uploaded. We ran out of LN2 around 2:00AM Central Time and did not beat our previous high score of 43912 from Friday night/Saturday morning.

We decided to wait up for FM’s reply to see if they could resolve the problem with the results. A few hours before the deadline, an offer came in from Andre for a valid score to secure the 2nd place spot… and out of desperation I took it. In the meantime, Pasi emailed back saying he looked at the results I uploaded previously and saw the the .exe was renamed, which made the checksum invalid and according to FM policy you cannot rename files (modifying the .dlls and .exes at all is forbidden). I uploaded the score from Andre, made it public and notified Pasi of the new project ID to be included in the contest.

The score I uploaded from Andre was pulled as you already know. Taking the 3dr file and uploading it as my own was a complete dumbass move. I exchanged several emails with FM this morning regarding the matter, to which I openly admitted to using Andre’s score as my own.

Regardless of my own stupidity, I want to congratulate the winners and wish them the best of luck in Taipei for the finals.

^^^^^

27th July 2010, 05:52

Unfortunate that some of those decisions were made, but glad to hear Skinee's side of things.

At least isn't as bad as what some people practice regularly... http://techdirt.com/articles/20100723/09061610340.shtml

jmke · 27th July 2010, 07:54

big storm in a glass of water here

http://wosblog.bluefirestorm.net/201...iews-update-5/

27th July 2010, 08:53

Perhaps. But I worked for the website that first hired Olin, and anyone else that worked for the site at the time would know Olin before things got nasty. Knowing him before he "created" BMR, this was just a matter of time in coming...

jmke · 27th July 2010, 09:22

he tried to cover up something which doesn't really need that much of work to begin with , a simple disclaimer added at the beginning of the article and an email answer to the guy requesting for more info would have resolved it all

27th July 2010, 09:32

It's a symptom of a much larger issue.

Massman · 27th July 2010, 12:14

The larger issue being 'the internet' combined with the shortkeys 'ctrl-c' and 'ctrl-v'?

22nd July 2010, 18:18	#1
jmke Madshrimp Join Date: May 2002 Location: 7090/Belgium Posts: 79,022	Latest Trend: Selling Benchmark Scores. Futuremark Catches Cheaters In MSI OC Contest Latest Trend: Selling Benchmark Scores. Futuremark Catches Cheaters In MSI OC Contest After an in-depth search, Futuremark realized that all these results originated from a single setup, this based not only on the same FM registration key but also the PCI devices and more. In practice, this means that one overclocker has produced several benchmark scores and gave it to other overclockers to win the MOA 2010 WW Final ticket. (src. HWbot.org) It seems one lucky overclocker decided to share the wealth and sold of his top scores to several other benchers. Some sharp minds at HWbot.org collaborated with Futuremark to come to this conclusion AndreYang produced some killer scores for MSI Lords of Overclocking competition; instead of just being happy by securing a ticket to the finals, he wanted to turn some profit. He found some buyers from all over the world: Hiwa, eXtremetweaker.de, KJ and Skinnee. Their collective cheating effort didn't last long however as FM has removed their entries from their database and HWbot has officially banned all involved benchers for 1 year. AndreYang was previously the undisputed overclocking champ at HWbot.org, after beating K\|ngp\|n he was ruling the roost, posting top benchmark scores. It's sad to see somebody who has the time, patience and skill to push hardware to the limit, fall so low as selling of benchmark scores. While he might find this an acceptable business model, neither HWbot or Futuremark agree and have banned all users involved from participating in online benchmark competitions for the coming months. With the removal of several top benchers, the ranking have changed quite a bit, make sure to find out who's the new OC King here. __________________ Last edited by jmke : 22nd July 2010 at 18:21.

23rd July 2010, 11:45	#2
thorgal [M] Reviewer Join Date: Sep 2005 Posts: 1,887	Serves them right. Doesn't really surprise me from this Yang character. __________________

23rd July 2010, 14:33	#3
blind_ripper Member Join Date: Apr 2005 Posts: 1,338	:-). __________________ http://www.hwbot.org/signature/u5776.png

27th July 2010, 07:54	#6
jmke Madshrimp Join Date: May 2002 Location: 7090/Belgium Posts: 79,022	big storm in a glass of water here http://wosblog.bluefirestorm.net/201...iews-update-5/ __________________

27th July 2010, 08:53	#7
Kougar Posts: n/a	Perhaps. But I worked for the website that first hired Olin, and anyone else that worked for the site at the time would know Olin before things got nasty. Knowing him before he "created" BMR, this was just a matter of time in coming... Last edited by Kougar : 27th July 2010 at 08:59.

27th July 2010, 05:52	#5
Kougar Posts: n/a	Unfortunate that some of those decisions were made, but glad to hear Skinee's side of things. At least isn't as bad as what some people practice regularly... http://techdirt.com/articles/20100723/09061610340.shtml

27th July 2010, 09:22	#8
jmke Madshrimp Join Date: May 2002 Location: 7090/Belgium Posts: 79,022	he tried to cover up something which doesn't really need that much of work to begin with , a simple disclaimer added at the beginning of the article and an email answer to the guy requesting for more info would have resolved it all __________________

27th July 2010, 09:32	#9
Kougar Posts: n/a	It's a symptom of a much larger issue.

27th July 2010, 12:14	#10
Massman [M] Reviewer Join Date: Nov 2004 Location: Waregem Posts: 6,466	The larger issue being 'the internet' combined with the shortkeys 'ctrl-c' and 'ctrl-v'? __________________

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