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3dMark05 score dropped over 100 after unlocking pipes

S

Slugbait

Elite Member
I thought this kind of odd...I ran 3dMark05 on my new PNY 6800 AGP card at stock for comparison, and initially got 3080, which is pretty good for my box. Then I used RivaTuner to unlock the other other four pipes (it's apparently successful), and watched my score drop by over 120.

Certain things such as fill-rate multi-texturing and pixel shader saw significant gains, some saw small gains (CPU, vertex shader complex, etc) while just a few things saw small decreases...so it's weird that I lost over 100 points. I'm not a math major, but it doesn't add up. The only thing I can think of is that the additional pipes over-saturated the AGP bus...I'm running 4x.

I have not yet overclocked the card.

Does my assumption sound correct?

Specs:
Asus P4B533, Northwood 1.6A@2.4, 1G of Crucial PC2700 (2-2-2-5), Enermax 350W, WD 120G, Deskstar 40G (the 60 series), NEC 3500A, Plextor 4824A, Audigy2 ZS Platinum, etc.

On a positive note: water in HL2 looks lovely (I used to have a Ti-4200)
 
Well, the first logical thing you can try is to up it back to 8x if you mobo supports it. Otherwise, try overclocking it a little. Finally, run an ingame video stress test (like the one in CS) to check if you gain or lost any actual FPS.
 
Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure the 845 series chipset can't support 8x AGP. And it's been a couple of years since the last BIOS update. I'm stuck with 4x.

This was just a preliminary test. I realize 3dMark is synthetic, and results will vary. I just thought the final lower score after opening the pipes was odd, considering all the tests that showed improvement. I was hoping maybe someone could validate my theory.

I'll run some additional tests with CS, and also plan to overclock. I'm not unhappy with my new card, it's actually quite the improvement, and I didn't really want to build a whole new system just for a newer video card...cuz I'd end up spending well over 800 🙂

Thanks for the reply
 
Well, i have a slightly better system (sig) with an unlocked card. I noticed a 300 to 400 point gain with my full unlock (16pipes, 6 shaders) But this is at 8x AGP. Also, did you change the driver? I have noticed 100 point sways depending on driver. Its unfortunate but it would seem logical to assume the 4x bus has been maxed out, which would of course affect all games/benchmarks. A cheap 8x AGP mobo can probably be had for $80, right?
 
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