3dMark03 Score Lowered?

[ViciouS]

I did the tweaktown.com Windows XP tweak guide. Before I spent an hour and a half "tweaking" Windows XP I did a bench mark with 3dMark03. My score was 3331; I ran it again after the tweaks it went to 3328. The reason why I did this "tweak guide" was because I did the catalyst tweak guide and got better scores. I just recently reformatted, and thought "Why not tweak my OS". After doing the catalyst tweak guide i got my score back to 3331, but wait Norton 2004 was still running! So i turned it off, supposedly AV software is a huge resource hog. I'll turn it off and get a better score, right? I turned it off and my score went back down to 3328.

I?m trying to avoid spending 70 bux on another set of 512 mb of DC DDR RAM, but you would think a tweaking guide would make things a little better. I?m not trying to start a E-Penis thread to compare 3dMark scores, but if you do have some advice to make my rig get better frame rates let me know. I don?t have the dough to make an upgrade, sick and out work for 2 years.

ABIT IS7 MB
2.4ghz P4 800mhz FSB w/HT
512mb DC DDR
7200 Western Digital 80gb 8mb Cache
Powercolor ATI Radeon 9600pro 128mb 4.5 Catalyst
Microsoft Windows XP Pro SP1 Direct X9.0b
3dMark03 3328-3331 AquaMark03 26,159

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Better frame rates for 3Dmock, why bother? Use FRAPS in some actual games and adjust your video settings for what you subjectively feel is the best combo for performance and IQ is my advice. Overclock your system and vid card for more "free" performance. A gig of ram is really a good idea at this time

 

[ViciouS]

Originally posted by: DAPUNISHER
Better frame rates for 3Dmock, why bother? Use FRAPS in some actual games and adjust your video settings for what you subjectively feel is the best combo for performance and IQ is my advice. Overclock your system and vid card for more "free" performance. A gig of ram is really a good idea at this time

I'm playing Battlefield Vietnam and Unreal 2004. I figure if I get the Score up in these benchmarking tools it would reflect to better performance in these games. I'm not attempting to get better frame rates in a benchmarking tool to "just know its doing well". I want better performance in these games. Currently I have to run BF NAM at 1200 1024x768 with graphics detail on Low and the other 2 settings on Medium, and it still runs choppy sometimes. I just want to run it on the current res, but with better detail. I mean come on its not like I?m pushing the crap out of the details right now or asking way too much out of this card.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Both those games are among the select few right now that require high-end system specs for the proper gaming experience. I've read BF:V is a PITA anyways, and read many complaints about this game being no better than in a beta stage. UT2K4 needs serious hardware to run properly at exceptable res.

Overclocking your fsb and vid card's ram and core speeds is the best way to get some extra FPS for free right now. A moderate overclock is safe and easy with the P4c and the stock cooler is plenty for the task if that's what you are using. Good luck and sorry to hear about your health and employment situations.

 

[ViciouS]

Thank you for your concerns. I just used the omega drivers and over clocked the card. I tested the crap out of it, and it seems pretty stable. I didn?t go overboard. One thing I still don?t understand is that when I Turn off my AV software the scores get worse.

9600 PRO 128 MB 472.50/351.00
3dMark03 3894 (with AV)
AquaMark03 30,497 (with AV)

Maybe now I can get "Medium Detail Quality" in Battlefield Vietnam. Unreal 2004 is smooth on my system with the details cranked up. I play BF NAM allot because Unreal 2004's stats are down and it?s a crap load of fun. I don?t really care what all the gamer sights say, which I read religiously. A few of my friends own it too so we all play in the same game pretty often.

 

[ViciouS]

Are there any tools like ATITool for over clocking P4 processors? If that?s a whole new huge can of worms then I?ll leave it alone. If its a lot more volatile than overclocking my video card then I?ll leave it alone. I have a 2.4 GHz 800fsb which I hear are ?very overclockable.? I think that means I can over clock it for noticeable performance increases without buying more hardware.

 

[biostud]

so basically your wonderimg where the 3 out 3331 went?

the difference would be like running a game with 60 fps or 59.94 fps, ooooooh what difference. If you want better 3dmark score buy a better videocard. I think that in 3dmark 90% of the weight is put on the videocard and the last 10% on rest of the system, unless ofcourse your system is really slow.

 

[Algere]

Originally posted by: ViciouS
Are there any tools like ATITool for over clocking P4 processors? If that?s a whole new huge can of worms then I?ll leave it alone. If its a lot more volatile than overclocking my video card then I?ll leave it alone. I have a 2.4 GHz 800fsb which I hear are ?very overclockable.? I think that means I can over clock it for noticeable performance increases without buying more hardware.

PCI/AGP lock and raise FSB frequency in BIOS in small increments.

Make sure your memory can handle the increase in FSB speed.

 

[ViciouS]

Originally posted by: biostud666
so basically your wonderimg where the 3 out 3331 went?

the difference would be like running a game with 60 fps or 59.94 fps, ooooooh what difference. If you want better 3dmark score buy a better videocard. I think that in 3dmark 90% of the weight is put on the videocard and the last 10% on rest of the system, unless ofcourse your system is really slow.

I started this thread because I did a windows tweak guide from Tweaktown.com and things didn?t improve. I don?t really care about the 3; I care that I spent 2 hours "tweaking XP,"and not only did things barely change, but got a tiny bit worse. I?m not loosing sleep over 3 marks. It's not a performance loss, which raises allot of concern; it?s just something that I didn?t understand. This guy calls it a tweaking guide and not only did it not improve things they got a little bit worse, why would it do that? Am I going to loose sleep over it; crying till the wee hours of the morning about the .06 fps I loose watching my winamp visualizations, while playing my favorite Yanni cd? Nah, that ain?t going to happen, but am I a lil pissed i spent 2 hours out of my life for no reason, yes.

 

[ViciouS]

I over clocked my 9600 pro to 477/351. My 3dMark went up but I don?t think my frame rates are any better. Old score was 3331 up to 3981. I wish there was a way I could bench mark Battlefield Vietnam, or Unreal Tournament so I could see if there is much of a difference. The original settings for my graphics card are 398/297, it?s not a huge over clock, but it was error free for an hour with the ATITool 0.0.20. If I find out its not making a noticeable difference in the games I'm playing right now I?m just going to go back to the catalyst drivers.