Is my Voodoo performing correctly?

[apacide]

Recently I have upgraded my computer quite a bit... When I did a benchmark with my system at 667 Mhz and a Voodoo 3, I got a score of 2618 at 1024x768. After I upgraded to the Voodoo 5, my score is only up to about 3200. The benchmark doesn't look that great, but the games I play look fine. Quake 3 on 1024x768 with everything on max runs perfectly with no skips. The benchmark is just bothering me. The system boots up showing 64 MB of video RAM, but in Direct X Diag it shows 32. I know this is normal; however in 3DMark it shows 24 MB plus about 8 texture memory, adding up to 32. Could the reason that I'm getting low benchmarks be because 3DMark only uses 32 MB of the video memory? I heard that all 64 MB are only utilised while running 3D games, maybe 3DMark isn't considered one of them..?

 

[Tominator]

3DMark is not a very good benchmark! I'm no xpert, but I've read plenty of info that says it was practically written for the other brand of cards....

 

[apacide]

Yea actually right after I posted I read that 3DMark 2000 isn't very good for Voodoo cards, so I tried 3DMark 99 (I heard it's better?). I got these in 800x600 16-bit color:

3DMark 2000 - 3810
3DMark 99 - 5945!

I wonder if that's correct. 3DMark 99 runs different tests but does anyone know if the results are scaled the same and yield the same results? Are there any other good programs where I could test my performance?

 

[Deeko]

Ugh. Do NOT worry about your 3DMark score. It means nothing. Use Quake3 if you have it, if not, download fraps, it lets you see the frame rate in any D3D game.

 

[Dark4ng3l]

Is that cpu a celeron of a p3 it could make a huge difference.

 

[RobsTV]

3DMark is an excellent tool to see how your system compares to systems that have similar hardware. If numbers look close, move on, all is O.K. If numbers are way off, time to find out what settings need to be adjusted to get the numbers correct. These tests "help" answer the question "Is my Voodoo performing correctly".

apacide, for comparison
3dmark 99, 800x600, V3 3k, win98, run advance 3x each.
Duron 600@896 = 6095
Duron 600@600 = 4686
K6-III 400@448 = 3633
So your score in 3dmark 99 of 5945 looks great.

As to 3DMark 2000, besides being a benchmarking tool, it is also a great stability test tool. For benchmark comparison, use default benchmark, which runs at 1024x768.
Voodoo3 scores:
Duron 600@896 = 3026
K6-III 400@448 = 1701 (BTW, GeForce2 GTS in same scored only 1385)

Of course these numbers are well below that of more modern cards, but that is not what we are testing, so we can not compare these to GeForce2 numbers.

 

[RoboTECH]

3dMark2000 scores really should be used to compare IDENTICAL systems, not systems with different hardware.

In other words, I agree thoroughly with RobsTV

<gasp> :Q