Just got new Gf4. Benchmark results are bad.

[podSpark]

Hello,
I'm not completely sure if this is the right forum but I think so.
I just got my Leadtek Geforce 4 Ti4600 but the 3D Marks results are way below the average.
System is PIII 1000 @ 1100, 512 MB SDRAM.
My Score (3D Mark 2001 SE) is 6000.
Yes I know that the CPU and RAM is holding back the full potential of the card, but when doing a GPU comparison at madonion, the average for Ti4600 and same CPU is 8600! Even Radeon 8500 and Geforce 3 Ti500 get higher scores.
With my old Geforce 2 PRO I got pretty competitive scores, scoring even higher than Geforce 2 Ultra averages so I don't think that my system is configured extremely bad.

The only weird thing I found so far is AGP aperture size. People wrote about it and I checked my BIOS, but no option for it. I can only set the AGP speed and it's 4x. The BIOS is a "CUSL2-C" from ASUS with an Intel chipset btw. I just checked my system info with 3D Mark and found some weird entries for Motherboard and AGP capabilities:
"Rate: 1x, 2x" and "aperture Size: 64 MB".
Ok, first why this rate? Can't my motherboard do 4x?? Unbelievable. Especially because I could set it in my BIOS options but this is weird. BTW the "revision" is 2.0 if that is of any importance. Fastwrite is also "not supported".
Second problem the aperture size... Damn... 64 MB obviously was enough for my old 64 MB card but now this sucks for the 128 MB Geforce 4. How can it be, that I can't set this option in the BIOS? Maybe my BIOS just can't do anymore? I heard it would even improve to set double the size of the cards meg as aperture size, so this is twice as bad. Maybe this is the reason for my bad results? And is there anything I can do about it besides of bying a new mobo? Help please.

Edit: Forgot to mention that I use the latest detonator drivers and of course DX 8.1. vsync is disabled, no AA, etc.

 

[Barrei]

Aperture should generally be set to one half of the amount of RAM you have in your dimm sockets.

 

[podSpark]

But I can't set the aperture size anyway in my BIOS, that's probably my main problem. How can that be?

 

[podSpark]

I got 7500 now by increasing the settings for my RAM (2T instead of 3T), seems to be stable... yet... we will see.

 

[Reliant]

3dMark is not all video card too. If you are trying to reach high scores such as those in the 10,000 range you won't
be able to cause your CPU is not as fast as some of the others. Most of the high scores are from overclocked XP's or P4's, some of the P4's in 3dMark database are up to 2.5Ghz. Do remember that 3dMark is a synthetic benchmark, it is only for
bragging rights, I am sure all of your games run fine.

 

[Barrei]

Alot of mobos like mine are able to adjust aperture in the bios unfortuanately your must be one that cannot.

 

[BD231]

Your running a P3 man, those things have horrible mem bandwith by todays standards, and they are cerrently Intel's celeron. If your using an i815 chipset, the highest AGP app. will go is 64mb. Time to upgrade buddy.

 

[podSpark]

I said that I compare my scores to other people with the same CPU because I don't want to get a lower score than I could. At least not that much lower. And it showed that it was worth it, it runs incredible better now (for example the werewolf demo before ran like crap, now it's pretty smooth). I also did a tiny bit of overclocking the GPU, now even the "bumps" I had before in some tests are gone and my score is 7700. Still not near the average of 8600 but 1700 higher than before so it's fine.
Shows that just saying "ok, my system isn't good enough" is _not_ the right thing to do.
Of course Q3 and Unreal Tournament run fine, but I didn't buy the card for those games. I'm waiting for games on the new Unreal engine (esp. UT 2003) and those will definetly stress my system to the max.
bdog: Yes, 64 seems to be the max. I found the option (it's called differently) but can only choose 32 or 64. I tried 32 and didn't get a lower score though so I think it's not critical.
The only thing I want to solve now is why my mobo can only do 2x AGP when it's claimed to be able to do 4x.

 

[HardWareXpert]

I got about the same score as you with a AthlonXP 1700+(1466Mhz) GF4 Ti4400(275/550) only by overclocking to 300/610 did I get over 8100 3dmarks.

Overclocking the memory anymore and my 3dmark score does not gain hardly any, must be my CPU as it's become the bottleneck.

My AGP aperture is set to 128Mb but 64Mb makes hardly any difference, however on the GF3 Ti200 I had set it to 128Mb (previous card), which made a major difference.

My System

 

[Tates]

podSpark,

Make sure you have the latest bios from Asus for your CUSL2-C which is 1012c_07. That is the bios for a CUSL2-C board w/o audio. I believe the latest bios revision sets the AGP to x4.

Good Luck

 

[DannyDiplo]

You can use RivaTuner to check what your AGP speed is set to, and if your motherboard supports it, you can force it to 4x mode in the drivers. As for AGP aperture size ideally you'd want to set it to 128MB, but failing that 64MB. However, with a 128MB video card I doubt any AGP settings will much effect since I can't imagine you'd need to use extra system RAM for texture caching. I honestly don't think AGP settings are what are affecting your scores.

If I where you I'd download the 28.90 detonators from http://www.guru3d.com/files/detonator/ as these have proved the fastest drivers for 3D Mark 2001 SE on GF4 cards. I'd also update your BIOS and check in the settings that you have everything optimised.