Is this what I should see or is something wrong?

[blackpool9]

I just traded my Athlon XP 2400+ and 512MB of PC2100 RAM for an MSI Neo Platinum with an Athlon 64 3200+ and 2x512 OCZ PC3500 RAM. The rest of the relevant parts of my rig are a Radeon 9800 Pro 128Mb (Driver 4.6), Seagate PATA 200Mb 8MB cache 7200RPM HDD (partitioned into 10MB for OS and 190MB for data and apps), an NEC 8X DVD+-RW and Audigy 2 ZS. Prior to the upgrade, my PCMark04 scores were as follows:

PCMark - 3210
CPU Score - 3141
Memory Score - 1851
Graphics Score - 3873
HDD Score - 4260

After the upgrade, here are the new scores:

PCMark - 4010
CPU Score - 3734
Memory Score - 3631
Graphics Score - 3845
HDD Score - 4472

While I am seeing the boost in Memory score I expected, I thought I would see more of a boost in the CPU score, and
certainly didn't expect my graphics score to go down. The only thing I can think of is that, instead of reformatting and reinstalling Windows XP Home, I did a "repair installation" instead, and the left-over stuff is slowing me down. Or, was I just being too optimistic in my expectations for the $650 I spent on the upgrade?

Opinions, please?

 

[AWhackWhiteBoy]

thats a 15% increase in performance,which is fairly reasonable. processor performance isn't linear. also, what kind of programs do you have running VS what you had running on the older PC? furthermore, PCMark isn't the greatest way to benchmark.

 

[Sonic587]

Do games play faster, system feel faster, ect? If so, ignore benches.

 

[blackpool9]

All my background processes are the same. The two biggest are Norton Antivirus and Firewall. No change between the two configurations.

While some games have performed better, I've noticed some slowdowns and hesitations in Windows itself, particularly when starting up. Two possibilities come to mind: Either Windows is getting "confused" since I switched mobo/CPU/RAM on it without reformatting, or I may be experiencing the SP1 slowdown that I read about. I didn't have that problem with my prior config, but maybe switching from the VIA KT266 chipset to the Nforce 250Gb chipset has caused the SP1 issue to manifest.