1. Split up of rankings based on number of cores for both videocards and processors.
Currently we have single socket and multisocket rankings for videocards, and one ranking for processors. In rev3, we will no longer base the ranking on the amount of sockets, but the total amount of cores. To avoid the problem that you would have to participate in 8 (eg.) 3DMark05 rankings, members will only recieve "global points" once for each benchmark application: only for their highest ranked submission regardless of the amount of cores.
Eg. if a user is 3rd with 2x HD4780, 2nd with HD4780X2, 4th with 1x GTX285 and and 5th with 4x GTX270 in the global ranking of 3DMark01, he will only receive hwboints for being 2nd place in the 2 cores ranking (HD4780X2).(*) All his submissions are applicable for hardware points.
(*) Actually, this would only be true of there would be equal amount of participants in each ranking. If there are a lot less participants in the 2 cores ranking than the 1 core ranking, your 1 core submission might end up receiving global points.
Same logic applies to processors. wPrime would have a 1 core, 2 core, etc ranking, but you will only receive points for the submission that would receive the highest points.
Benefits:
+ very fair and competetive rankings, based on amount of cores (1, 2, 3, ...)
+ no expensive hardware needed if you want to get first in the single/dual core ranking
+ no global points grinding possible as you will only get points for your best submission, regardless of the amount of points
The worldwide records page will still be based on the highest score, unregardless of how many cores where used.
2. More hardware points for extremely competitive hardware
In hwboints rev2 only the top 20 members get points for having the fastest hardware in it's category, even if there are 1000 people using this hardware. This is unrewarding if you managed to get in the top 20 percentile, and still do not recieve any points.
More points will be rewarded to more than 20 people when hardware is used by more than 100 overclockers. Less points will be rewarded if hardware is used by less than 10 people (1 instead of 2 points for first place).
Benefits:
+ If you compete in a very competetive hardware ranking, and you have a great, but not top 20 oc, you will still earn some points for your hard work.
3. Consistency in calculating how many people participate in rankings
The global and hardware points are based on how many people participate in the rankings. Eg. if only 10 people would participate in 3DMark01, you would only get a few points for being first. However, if 1000 people would participate, you would get a lot more. The same counts for hardware points, except we made the mistake of counting the amount of submissions, instead of participants. For hardware points, we also want to change it to how many people participate, instead of how many submissions.
Benefits:
+ consequent behavior, more fair