3350 marks on 3DMark03 !?

[lordtyranus2]

3k in 3dm03 is what you should expect. Your CPU is the bottleneck. When I OC'ed my P4 to 3Ghz and ran 3dm03 with my 9600 Pro, I got the same score I did at 2.4Ghz

That would make the CPU not the bottleneck, wouldn't it? Increasing the bottleneck increases system performance. The GPU is what I'd guess is the bottleneck.

 

[lordtyranus2]

Run PCMark 2002. It's a much better CPU evaluator. Compare those scores.

 

[silencerius]

thanks for the tip lordtyranus2, i run the PCmark2002 benchmark and i got 6417 marks. I've compared it with other P4@2,6 and it's 400-300 low.. that can't be good, but is it bad? btw PCMark2002 recognizes my CPU speed as 2540Mhz not 2600.. that shouldn't be a prob right?

 

[fredtam]

The only thing I can think of is that you have a heat problem and the CPU is throttling when you run the benchmark.
I think maybe a cpu reseat/new thermal compound is in order.

 

[Blastman]

Exactly what type of 9600pro do you have?

EDIT: Also, what resolution are you running 3DMark3 in?

I guessing you're running a Sapphire 9600 pro as your Pixel Shader 2.0 score seems low.

 

[silencerius]

you guessed correctly Blastman!
why are you asking though? i'm running 3dmark @ 1024x768 (can't change it either).

also, i have overclocked my CPU @ 3Ghz and I have no stallings or crashes or signs of instability but Prime95 keeps showing Hardware Failure after 1 or 2 minutes of torture testing.. Is that bad?

 

[Blastman]

Sapphire makes 3 models ?

Sapphire 9600pro ?Fireblade ? 2.8ns Samsung ?(same as ATI reference design)
Sapphire 9600pro ? retail box ? 2.8ns Etrontech ? (different)
Sapphire 9600pro ? OEM/bulk ? 3.3ns Samsung ? (different)


In the original reviews of the Sapphire 9600pro I was seeing a 7-10% performance drop in a lot of the benchmarks on both the 2.8 Etrontech and 3.3Samsung models. The 3Dmark2003 scores on those 2 cards were also 10% lower than normal. There was a thread about it at Beyond3D. It was noticed that the 3Dmark2003 Pixel Shader 2.0 performance was down from the usual 28fps to about ~ 20fps (a 30% drop). As soon as I saw your PS 2.0 score I figured you had one of these cards.

I don?t know if it?s a manufacturing glitch or Sapphire bungled their 9600pro design when they strayed from the ATI reference. Or it could be that they lowered the memory CAS latency in the BIOS or something. The tests were months ago and I emailed SapphireTech about it as did other people. The newer Sapphire 9600pro?s seem better as I?ve seen newer reviews where the PS 2.0 scores were good -- so it looks like Sapphire have fixed whatever was lowering those scores.

Review with one of the slower Sapphire 9600pro?s (3.3ns Samsung)
? http://www.clubic.com/ar/2144-4.html

Athlon 2700+ ?. 3Dmark2003 ?

Hercules 9600pro ? ?3418
Sapphire 9600pro ?? 3070

 

[silencerius]

thanks a lot for the information Blastman.. i guess i will be more careful next time i buy something huh?
does this mean that there's nothing wrong with my system? (it's just slow?)
cpu marks are oddly off though..

 

[Blastman]

Ya, to bad you got one of the slower models. I used to recommend Sapphire but twice they have really messed up this year. First they changed their 9100 64MB card to 64bit memory bus. Real dumb idea as it slows the card down 30%. I ended up buying one a week after they changed the spec. (yuk). Then they screwed up their 9600pro?s. So, I?ve stopped recommending Sapphire and posted warnings about the cards.

In your case it?s not too bad as your only 7-10% slower which is not a huge hit like my 9100. You only need to overclock your 9600 a little to make up that performance hit without much problem. With my 9100 I?m running in 16bit color to eke out some more performance from the card. I?m going to be replacing it with a 9600pro, unfortunately for Sapphire not one of their cards this time.

 

[Blastman]

Your 3Dmark3 scores are fine for your system. The highest I?ve seen in reviews from a 9600pro (overclocked) is usually around 4000. If you add ~ 10% to your score it puts you around 3700 which is good because the reviews that get 4000 are using faster systems.

There is nothing you could have really done about your purchase. Very few people were aware of the slower cards.

 

[TheMouse]

I barely hit 5000 with my 9700 pro (9500 np softmodded and overclocked)

I would expect a much lower score with the 9600.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

You have a low CPU score and p95TT errors out fast=be certain you don't have heat issues. You may be experiencing instability and clock-throttling so double check those temps.

 

[dguy6789]

With my 9600 Pro, i get 3700 3dmarks in 03. so you should be fine. my system is]

Athlon XP 2600+
512MB PC2700 DDR Dual Channel
Asus A7N8X Nforce 2 ultra 400
Radeon 9600 Pro 128MB 450/660