FTW 420, one of the brightest stars on our team, was nice enough to let me do an interview with him. This interview was a little more difficult then normal, as I'm really good friends with FTW and already know so much about him. It's always easier when I myself need to learn more about the person I'm interviewing. Anyhow, here is his interview so that maybe our community can get a more personal feel for our friend, teammate, HWbot team Captain, and full time supporter FTW 420!
FTW 420 is an astounding overclocking due to his dedication to the sport. He's always been very modest about his skills and works very hard. He's been #1 on our team for a really long time now and has held down the #1 Canadian spot for a while to.
PIzzaMan FTW, what was your initial inspiration to start benchmarking?
FTW 420 I found OCN when I was looking to upgrade from my old pIII rig, after getting it built I ran some benchies to compare & then started overclocking. OCN had a 3dmark competition running around that time & I gave it a try. I did pretty well at it & that was encouraging, but I really wanted to try to catch up with some of the other guys & kept trying. I was pretty hooked from there, started voltmodding & trying to get things colder & clocked higher from that point on.
PIzzaMan What kind of platforms have you benched with and do you have a favorite platform that you really like?
FTW 420 I haven't benched too many platforms yet, still working on correcting that. x58 would probably be my favorite & most benched to date, it's good for hwbot points & there's some challenge to it. I'm pretty new to AMD & really liking that so far, I love to freeze things & AMD responds so well to it.
PIzzaMan You've been predominately on Intel platforms but you've recently started playing with AMD setups. What are your likes and dislikes between the two?
FTW 420 Intel is great for points, but cold bugs & cold boot issues can be frustrating. Intel is also getting worse for the way the chips respond to cold, like the way cold really doesn't make much difference for 1155, it's so easy to overclock it just isn't very fun, although fantastic for points, & can be handy to have a chip that can do almost 6Ghz with no prep.
AMD is just plain more fun. The colder it gets, the faster it goes. Not as good for hwbot points, but if you want to freeze something for fun, it's AMD.
PIzzaMan A lot of benchmarkers do crazy stuff, like benching on air outside in the cold, but you keep a large tank of LN2, live in Canada and still bench outside majority of the time. Why is that?
FTW 420 I use a 230 liter cylinder of Ln2, it's just too big to go in the house & it is handy to be close by for refilling. Outdoors is also better for keeping memory & gpus cold when running the cards on air or water. Gpus are also fun to freeze, but guzzle the Ln2 like most benchers go through beer. I pretty much have to be beside the dewar to keep the thermos' full.
PIzzaMan You've been the #1 Canadian overclocker for about a year now, do you have new goals you're working towards now?
FTW 420 Still trying to climb the ranks at hwbot, one of these days soon I will break the top 20 in the extreme overclockers league. World record points is another goal I would like to meet, I've held records before but not in benchmarks that are worth the big points. Being among the best in a benchmark that everybody tries to be the best in would be a really big thing for me.
PIzzaMan Do you see Pro League anywhere in your future?
FTW 420 At some point probably, when I meet some of my goals I'm hoping to get more notice & recognition in the overclocking community, that may possibly lead to manufacturer support & entering the pros
PIzzaMan You bench consistently month after month, blasting away at LN2 and ripping apart competitions, how do you keep the motivation going to bench like a mad scientist day in and day out?
FTW 420 Benchmarking is a hobby, it's one of those things where once I sit down & get to it I can forget about the hassles of the real world. For some people it's fishing, building models or gaming, for me it's trying to squeeze every last drop of performance from hardware (although the hardware does get hurt from time to time, all part of the game).
PIzzaMan FTW, you're the one who got me started with extreme cooling when you gave me a CPU pot. I have to say you are consistently a team player and always doing what you can to help the 'little guys'. Does this have anything to do with the way you started out?
FTW 420 That is actually how I got started on extreme cooling, piff james from OCN PM'd me out of the blue & asked me if I wanted a cpu pot, said he noticed I was at the top of the OCN team ranks & was water cooling. He had a pot there he didn't get around to using & didn't want to get paid for it, he just wanted it to go to someone who would use it. Only seemed right to pass it on to someone else who wanted one & could use it.
PIzzaMan LN2 is a a very dangerous liquid to be playing with. It's extremely cold and has an extremely explosive liquid to gas expansion rate. Can you tell us a little bit about LN2 and the dangers you've personally experienced?
FTW 420 It's really only dangerous if you don't take simple precautions, indoors in a small space you will want some ventilation, try not to spill, & especially don't spill on any material you might be wearing. I rent a large cylinder (230L), & one time the phase separator on the end of the hose froze up on me, I didn't notice it & put it into the thermos then opened the valve & some ln2 shot straight up at me. At the time I was wearing gloves, the kind that are all rubber coated, & I hadn't payed attention that the rubber was cracked around the knuckles. Ln2 got onto the material underneath & gave me some numb knuckles & nasty blisters. I don't use gloves anymore after that one (although some real cryogenic gloves should be OK), instead I hold the cold hose with a kitchen potholder, if it gets splashed, just have to let go, but I look at the phase separator now & slowly crack the valve, no incidents since then.
PIzzaMan Over the past couple years, you've become very popular amongst our team and others. Earning you the nick name within our team of "The Paris Hilton of Overclocking" when you won the Gigabyte 3D overclocking challenge. Tell us your story about how you sandbagged the Giga competition.
FTW 420 That was actually the result of a failed 2d benchmarking session, I was working on superpi & failing miserably while trying out a new board (x58 ud7), & looking at the other scores on hwbot as I went. Since the cpu was already frozen I decided to try a different bench & noticed there was a Heaven bench competition coming to a close. I grabbed the gtx480s & had a go at it. That was where I found that the cpu really has little to do with Heaven scores, I did better at 4.5Ghz than at 5.5ghz, so a bit of a waste having the cpu frozen but got the #1 global spots for single, sli & tri sli configurations. Won the competition & won an x58a ud3 while I was at it, so felt better about my pi failure. Didn't accomplish what I set out to do, but at least accomplished something & did well at it. It was really more of a late entry than sandbagging, & I still had to improve my scores to stay on top, SniperOZ was a tough competitor in that one.
PIzzaMan FTW, keep up the hard work! I have faith you'll be meeting your goals and continuing to create new ones.
FTW 420 is an astounding overclocking due to his dedication to the sport. He's always been very modest about his skills and works very hard. He's been #1 on our team for a really long time now and has held down the #1 Canadian spot for a while to.
member
PIzzaMan FTW, what was your initial inspiration to start benchmarking?
FTW 420 I found OCN when I was looking to upgrade from my old pIII rig, after getting it built I ran some benchies to compare & then started overclocking. OCN had a 3dmark competition running around that time & I gave it a try. I did pretty well at it & that was encouraging, but I really wanted to try to catch up with some of the other guys & kept trying. I was pretty hooked from there, started voltmodding & trying to get things colder & clocked higher from that point on.
PIzzaMan What kind of platforms have you benched with and do you have a favorite platform that you really like?
FTW 420 I haven't benched too many platforms yet, still working on correcting that. x58 would probably be my favorite & most benched to date, it's good for hwbot points & there's some challenge to it. I'm pretty new to AMD & really liking that so far, I love to freeze things & AMD responds so well to it.
PIzzaMan You've been predominately on Intel platforms but you've recently started playing with AMD setups. What are your likes and dislikes between the two?
FTW 420 Intel is great for points, but cold bugs & cold boot issues can be frustrating. Intel is also getting worse for the way the chips respond to cold, like the way cold really doesn't make much difference for 1155, it's so easy to overclock it just isn't very fun, although fantastic for points, & can be handy to have a chip that can do almost 6Ghz with no prep.
AMD is just plain more fun. The colder it gets, the faster it goes. Not as good for hwbot points, but if you want to freeze something for fun, it's AMD.
PIzzaMan A lot of benchmarkers do crazy stuff, like benching on air outside in the cold, but you keep a large tank of LN2, live in Canada and still bench outside majority of the time. Why is that?
FTW 420 I use a 230 liter cylinder of Ln2, it's just too big to go in the house & it is handy to be close by for refilling. Outdoors is also better for keeping memory & gpus cold when running the cards on air or water. Gpus are also fun to freeze, but guzzle the Ln2 like most benchers go through beer. I pretty much have to be beside the dewar to keep the thermos' full.
PIzzaMan You've been the #1 Canadian overclocker for about a year now, do you have new goals you're working towards now?
FTW 420 Still trying to climb the ranks at hwbot, one of these days soon I will break the top 20 in the extreme overclockers league. World record points is another goal I would like to meet, I've held records before but not in benchmarks that are worth the big points. Being among the best in a benchmark that everybody tries to be the best in would be a really big thing for me.
PIzzaMan Do you see Pro League anywhere in your future?
FTW 420 At some point probably, when I meet some of my goals I'm hoping to get more notice & recognition in the overclocking community, that may possibly lead to manufacturer support & entering the pros
PIzzaMan You bench consistently month after month, blasting away at LN2 and ripping apart competitions, how do you keep the motivation going to bench like a mad scientist day in and day out?
FTW 420 Benchmarking is a hobby, it's one of those things where once I sit down & get to it I can forget about the hassles of the real world. For some people it's fishing, building models or gaming, for me it's trying to squeeze every last drop of performance from hardware (although the hardware does get hurt from time to time, all part of the game).
PIzzaMan FTW, you're the one who got me started with extreme cooling when you gave me a CPU pot. I have to say you are consistently a team player and always doing what you can to help the 'little guys'. Does this have anything to do with the way you started out?
FTW 420 That is actually how I got started on extreme cooling, piff james from OCN PM'd me out of the blue & asked me if I wanted a cpu pot, said he noticed I was at the top of the OCN team ranks & was water cooling. He had a pot there he didn't get around to using & didn't want to get paid for it, he just wanted it to go to someone who would use it. Only seemed right to pass it on to someone else who wanted one & could use it.
PIzzaMan LN2 is a a very dangerous liquid to be playing with. It's extremely cold and has an extremely explosive liquid to gas expansion rate. Can you tell us a little bit about LN2 and the dangers you've personally experienced?
FTW 420 It's really only dangerous if you don't take simple precautions, indoors in a small space you will want some ventilation, try not to spill, & especially don't spill on any material you might be wearing. I rent a large cylinder (230L), & one time the phase separator on the end of the hose froze up on me, I didn't notice it & put it into the thermos then opened the valve & some ln2 shot straight up at me. At the time I was wearing gloves, the kind that are all rubber coated, & I hadn't payed attention that the rubber was cracked around the knuckles. Ln2 got onto the material underneath & gave me some numb knuckles & nasty blisters. I don't use gloves anymore after that one (although some real cryogenic gloves should be OK), instead I hold the cold hose with a kitchen potholder, if it gets splashed, just have to let go, but I look at the phase separator now & slowly crack the valve, no incidents since then.
PIzzaMan Over the past couple years, you've become very popular amongst our team and others. Earning you the nick name within our team of "The Paris Hilton of Overclocking" when you won the Gigabyte 3D overclocking challenge. Tell us your story about how you sandbagged the Giga competition.
FTW 420 That was actually the result of a failed 2d benchmarking session, I was working on superpi & failing miserably while trying out a new board (x58 ud7), & looking at the other scores on hwbot as I went. Since the cpu was already frozen I decided to try a different bench & noticed there was a Heaven bench competition coming to a close. I grabbed the gtx480s & had a go at it. That was where I found that the cpu really has little to do with Heaven scores, I did better at 4.5Ghz than at 5.5ghz, so a bit of a waste having the cpu frozen but got the #1 global spots for single, sli & tri sli configurations. Won the competition & won an x58a ud3 while I was at it, so felt better about my pi failure. Didn't accomplish what I set out to do, but at least accomplished something & did well at it. It was really more of a late entry than sandbagging, & I still had to improve my scores to stay on top, SniperOZ was a tough competitor in that one.
PIzzaMan FTW, keep up the hard work! I have faith you'll be meeting your goals and continuing to create new ones.
