3DMark01

[davidmoore83]

Hi,

Just run 3dmark01 on my new system.....it scored 14500 is this a suitable score for:

- AMD 3200+ (Running at its standard settings)
- Sapphire 9800 Pro with Catalyst 4.something (Not over clocked)
- 1 GB DDR 333 PC2700
- 160GB Maxtor 8MB Cache
- 120GB Maxtor
- Running Win XP Prof

I heard i should be scoring in the 15-16 thousand range.....i ran 3DMark03 aswell and only got 4500 but i guess it is marked differently in that version.

Can anyone give me an idea if i'm in the right benchmark area or do i have a faulty G'card. Sorry to ask so many questions lately it's just i have litterally bought a whole new system in seperate components

David

[iggy]

compare your score on the 3dmark site to similar get ups.

its not a bad score though, for an untweaked system.

[BUFF]

It's low but I'm guessing that your RAM is holding you back or you have FSAA or such enabled.

With an XP3200/9800 Pro/PC3200 I would expect 17000+ in 3DMark01 & 5500 in 3DMark03

[davidmoore83]

whats FSAA Buff? I think i'm gonna find some DDR 400 cos apparently the AMD's were designed to use it

[BUFF]

Originally posted by davidmoore83
whats FSAA Buff? I think i'm gonna find some DDR 400 cos apparently the AMD's were designed to use it

Full scene anti-aliasing - it is a technique used to make images look smoother & better but has a hit on performance, the higher level that you use the bigger the hit.

What mobo do you have & I hope that you've got a good PSU powering all that stuff :)

[TheFallenAngel]

your pc2700 ram shud go to 200fsb pretty easily.
Make sure your display settings are set to performance.

[TheFallenAngel]

you also haven't specified which motherboard you are running

[davidmoore83]

ABIT NF7-S and i have a new 550W PSU on its way though i will admit i don't know of its brand :(

Just bought 2 x 512 DDR 400 and one was faulty so i only have 512 in at the moment but it has increased my score from 14500 to 15605!! So i am guessing when i get my second replaced and have 1GB in dual mode or what ever its called i should hit the 17000 mark :D

[davidmoore83]

oh and before anyone asks it was Corsair mem but not the XMS stuff

[TheFallenAngel]

oh well
I still think it was a bit hasty to get rid of pc2700 so soon, it would have probably clocked nicely. Most do.

[davidmoore83]

yeah but the shop says they will refund me for it tomorrow so nothing lost :)

[DT1]

Originally posted by davidmoore83
Just bought 2 x 512 DDR 400 and one was faulty so i only have 512 in at the moment but it has increased my score from 14500 to 15605!! So i am guessing when i get my second replaced and have 1GB in dual mode or what ever its called i should hit the 17000 mark :D

Uh, no.

The reason that your score went from 14.5K to 15.5K was because of the increase in fsb from 166 to 200, you won't get another 1K from having extra memory (well... you shouldn't).

[RobUK]

I managed to get 17190 from my rig thats almost identical to yours.
Sapphire 9800pro 128MB
AMD 3200XP, 512MB DDR400, Sparkle nForce2 mainboard (I know I Know :( it was cheap) Hard drive etc etc.

That was with everything at stock woith a little tweaking I can improve it but at the moment I cant see the point as it runs everything I want it to.

Does the system play all the games you want etc with no probs? If so I wouldnt worry to mich about a benchmark and instead have a game of UT2004 :D

[davidmoore83]

DT1 what are you on about?????? Thats the only thing i have added since the 14500 bench mark so that mem has given me that increase!

[bleecher]

its not the ram, its the FSB frequency has gone up!

u used 333mhz ram b4, now uve installed ram @ 400mhz its the extra mhz that made the system faster, its not just the ram that benefits from the extra mhz but the whole system including ur gfx card.

when ur a bit more experianced then have a go at DT1 cause he is 100% correct

[davidmoore83]

i do have experience bleecher certified by microsoft thanks! I miss read what DT1 said i thought he was refering to the FSB of my processor as i have recently upgraded that and thought he may have seen another of my posts about my chip.....i read his message in the early hrs of the morn after many beers :D

[Slamdog]

Originally posted by bleecher
its not the ram, its the FSB frequency has gone up!

u used 333mhz ram b4, now uve installed ram @ 400mhz its the extra mhz that made the system faster, its not just the ram that benefits from the extra mhz but the whole system including ur gfx card.

when ur a bit more experianced then have a go at DT1 cause he is 100% correct

the frequency hasnt gone up at all. what will have happened is better ram timings.

I have a celeron system here with pc3200 ram in it. It doesnt meen the fsb is 400mhz, cos it is the mobo that controlls the fsb, not the type of ram in it. the better ram will allow you to increase the fsb, but not do it for you. it will only affect the timings by using spd settings.

oh, and MS qualifications mean diddly squat. I have loads of them but none of them qualify you to overclock. In fact i have yet to find an ms qualification that deals properly with hardware, which is not suprising seeing as they are quals in software.

[BUFF]

But if he has his memory timing set at spd then the mobo would have been running the old memory at 333fsb & the new at 400fsb which is more likely to give that sort of gain than just a slight tightening of the timings.

[JADS]

Do the games you want to play look ok on your hardware at the settings you want to run them? That is the only question you need to ask yourself.

3DMark 2001 and similar synthetic benchmarks are about the most pointless thing to be concerned about. So what if you get a crud score, if the games you want to play look alright then it really doesn't matter. It is somewhat akin to getting stressed because your length of string is 32cm and not 35cm, as long as it will tie what you want it to tie then it really isn't an issue.

Stop wasting your powerful system running pointless benchmarks and use it properly, load up a game and enjoy :)

With regards to everything else well let me illuminate the situation.

Ok firstly switching memory from one speed to another will not magically raise the FSB. The FSB and memory clock are two different things.

If you are running an Athlon XP 3200+ then the FSB is running at 200MHz. PC-2700 RAM is 166MHz DDR memory. As both transfer two bits per clock it is equivalent of a 400MHz FSB and 333MHz DDR memory, but lets not get ahead of ourselves :) Typically FSB and memory clock are designed to run synchronously, i.e. at the same speed. In that situation they are running asynchronously, with the memory running at 4/5th the speed of the FSB. The knock on effect of this is the FSB is starved of data from the memory so performance of the system drops.

Changing the memory to PC-3200 ups the memory speed to 200MHz (400MHz effectively) and the FSB and memory are now running synchronously. The memory is able to supply data to the CPU along the FSB at the maximum capability of the bus. This will yield the highest performance levels.

Decreasing CAS and RAS latency values does not significantly alter performance despite what Geil, OCz, Corsair attempt to tell you and no amount of fiddling will yield huge performance gains. Get these to 2 or 2.5 and you will be fine.

Increasing memory from 512MB to 1GB will also not greatly affect 3DMark as it simply does not make use of 512MB+ of memory. In fact due to higher latencies with larger memory sizes you are likely to see a drop in performance.

[bleecher]

thats exactly what i was sayin buff

[Sharky]

Moved to Benchmarks...

[RobUK]

There right mate as the FSB (front side bus) is the speed that the whole system can communicate together This is usually limited by the CPU but if you ram is slower than the CPU then it will bottleneck the system, Now you have the correct ram everything in the computer can talk to everything else as fast as possible. More ram will probally give you a very small increase but nothing like 1000+.

You have to remeber a graphics card is only as fast as the speed the CPU can tell it what to do and how long it takes the mainboard to get the message accross (if that makes sense :D)

[davidmoore83]

i'm not talking about the same MS quals open to the general public slamdog