Is 3D Mark a good overclocking tester?

[Daikaiju]

Just how good is 3D Mark at showing how good your system is in terms of speed, and how much that performance as been enhanced by overclocking? I am using the current setup at the moment.

AMD Athlon Thunderbird 1.33ghz 266fsb
Aopen AK73 Pro A motherboard (KT133A chipset)
512meg generic PC133 SDRAM CL3
ATI Radeon 8500LE 128meg
Windows ME

With this setup, i got a score of 7095 at default settings

I then overclocked my system, only slightly as this was my first ever overclocking attempt so i didn't want to take any chances. I increased the FSB to 140, and thereby overclocked the processor from 1333mhz to 1400mhz. I ended up with a score of 7246

Are these scores reasonable? Is this an ok increase in score considering it was just an increase in clock speed of 67mhz?
To be honest, this test is just me experimenting for my real overclocking project. Hopefully i will have upgraded my system this time tomorrow to an Intel Pentium 4 2.53ghz, Aopen AX4G Pro (i845G chipset) mobo and 512meg Samsung PC2700 DDR (i am only waiting on the motherboard, i already have the processor and ram), and will be changing the OS from winME to win2k. What kind of 3D Mark scores could i expect to get with this setup?

Thanks for any info and/or opinions....

 

[Wingznut]

Here's my take on 3dMark...

I think it's an excellent benchmarking program. But as a single entity, it isn't good for comparing different systems. For instance, if Bob's system scores 1000 more points than yours, that doesn't necessarily mean that Bob's system is better than yours.

For comparing before/after tweaking results on a single PC, I think it does it's job very well. Both in terms of performance and stability.

But it is just one benchmark. If you want to test system stability, use a variety of benchmarks.

 

[Duvie]

I agree with wings....I also think 3dmark is a good video card stability tester but that is it...I would not use it solely to check the stability of any ocing I am doing. I will run memtest for the ram and prime95 for the cpu...I then test a divx encoding and actual programs I run. I am not a big gamer so 3dmark is not a big show for me.


I think the system you are getting you likely should be able to take that score up to 9500....being comparable to mine when I am running at 2.53ghz with about 316mhz ddr and my radeon 8500le...May get a bit more since I don't know how much the 128mb model helps in that test.

You are going to oc a bit I imagine, right???

 

[Live]

Consider using "Sisoft Sandra" and "cachemem" to test performance.

UT2003 has a built in game benchmark. This is included in the free demo aswell. Download demo and find benchmark.exe in your UT2003 folder.

But of course 3D Mark is good to test the impact on gaming.

 

[blackhawk]

How you're using 3d mark is the way its to be used. Its good for checking the relative improvements and stability of individual changes on a single system and the impact this has on the score. If 3d mark wont complete, its either too high an overclock or driver problems.

I use sisoft burn in as well at 100% for a real test after the 3d mark run.

comparing different computers 3d mark scores is futile as they are dependant on other parts of your system as well

 

[Daikaiju]

I forgot to mention that i also have Sandra and use that for benchmarking too, i'll make a note of the scores i get in those tests on this system before i upgrade to the new (with any luck, later today!). I am a bit weary about Sandra's benchmarking, and that they shouldn't be taken as an absolute... but then that also applies to 3D Mark, perhaps even more so. And since i am only comparing my own scores with my system upgrades, it should suit that purpose well.

I hope to overclock the 2.53ghz system by a little, but not too much, anything around 2.8ghz will be fine for me. I keep reading conflicting opinions on the motherboard i've chosen (Aopen AX4G Pro), some sites say it's a great overclocker, some say it's very ordinary, so i really have no idea how it's going to do until i set it up. I won't be using anything like water cooling, just the stock HSF that came with P4, a rear case fan and the dual fans inside my enermax 450watt psu. Incidentally, i am used to AMD processors, been using them since the K6-2, and i was stunned at how small the P4 actually is, and how huge the hsf is lol