Originally posted by: bjc112
Originally posted by: squidman
Under windows, the dma is controlled by BIOS. Sides, what does south bridge have to do with north bridge. and what does the hdd have to do with the performance of the agp? Before each test begins, the data is mapped in the ram, not the hdd? THe best solution for shady would be to format the drive, do the clean install of windows, and try again. Enbling the DMA would actually slow down his drive (in win xp). If he wants to optimize his drive, he needs to disable system restore. Shady, also make sure that the DXDIAG dont display no errors.
Harddrive loading times can affect your 3dmark score. I went from a 40gig 5400 drive to a WD 80 gig 8 meg cache and saw a performance increase of about 500-1000 points, if DMA is not enabled it will def. crimp performace.
Did you do a clean install of the windows on your new drive? If so - then this is the answer. If not, then its really weird. By doing a clean install, i was able to score extra 300 points (which is a LOT for my og GTS card).
Also: i gave this much thought. In the 3dmarkSE, under the default settings, mostly the GPU and system memory are at work. Memory is mapping and serving the data, GPU eats it up. If memory is filled with other unnecessary background crap (which since the availability of the interent became abundant) - then the GPU doesnt get as much food as it needs. My first, and upmost recommendation is still to conclude a clean install, and then run the test. As for me, id be happy to score 8thou, yet alone 13 or 15!!! But soon, i hope, i will ;-)
Yes, 3dmark2001SE, is indeed, quite synthetic. Yet, it gives a user a preview of his graphic subsystem performance. For instance, when you look in the 3dmarks "detail results" you find out that the GPU only pushed, say 1giga texel per cycle. But the GPU is capable of pushing, say, 5. Hence the test is incorrect, and yet, it means that something in your system is preventing the gpu from pushing these 5 texels. I use 3dmark2001SE to simply just give me an insight. I dont friggin gonna shoot myself if i get 500 points less. Internet is a blessing, and a curse.