Low Performance from System

[aviosity]

Hey all,

So this summer I built my gaming rig. I got the best components I could afford, since I'm going off to college and need it to last awhile...AMD64 3200+, 6800GT OC, K8V SE mobo, and a gig of A-Data RAM (had to go cheap, ran out of cash), with a 37-gig Raptor and 160 gig Hitachi (7200RPM with 8meg cache) in a RAID JBOD array. I noticed when I've been playing FarCry, Doom3, etc, that my box just isn't performing up to spec when compared to some of my friend's boxes (getting a lot of stutter at high quality and low AA settings, for example).

I ran some synthetic benchmarks, and the most disturbing was the 3dMark05. While most people's systems with my specs ran from about 3500 to 6000, my bench is down around 1900. Any clue why this might be...I'd really appreciate any opinions, because benches really aren't my area and I'm starting to feel like I wasted my money :-/

Thanks so much,
Aviosity

 

[meltdown75]

Hi & welcome

Insofar as performance goes, I find that the state of Windows / software setup can have just as much as an effect on benchmarks than actual new hardware. For maximum benchmarking ability, hopefully your install of whatever version of Windows you are running (hopefully XP Pro w/ SP2 & all updates) is reasonably "fresh and clean" as I like to call it... Nothing beats a fresh install, but a clean OS and environment is key too. I'm not saying you can't get great scores with an "old" install of XP Pro, I'm just saying a fresh one is great.

Obviously then we come to drivers you are using (video AND audio), what you may or may not have running in the background, how clean of "crap" you keep your system, etc. Ensure your BIOS settings are optimal for your setup as well.

That's about all I can recommend!! good luck

 

[Philippine Mango]

Originally posted by: meltdown75
Hi & welcome

Insofar as performance goes, I find that the state of Windows / software setup can have just as much as an effect on benchmarks than actual new hardware. For maximum benchmarking ability, hopefully your install of whatever version of Windows you are running (hopefully XP Pro w/ SP1 & all updates) is reasonably "fresh and clean" as I like to call it... Nothing beats a fresh install, but a clean OS and environment is key too. I'm not saying you can't get great scores with an "old" install of XP Pro, I'm just saying a fresh one is great.

Obviously then we come to drivers you are using (video AND audio), what you may or may not have running in the background, how clean of "crap" you keep your system, etc. Ensure your BIOS settings are optimal for your setup as well.

That's about all I can recommend!! good luck

FIXED

Be sure you have your chipset drivers and what I mean by that is if you have a VIA chipset, you go to their website and install the drivers for what ever chipset you have because chipset drivers from the direct manufacturer instead your mobo manufacturer are generally better and run faster. Since they have to work on ALL motherboards with that chipset, it's also going to mean it will be more reliable. I say use SP1 because SP2 is KNOWN to slow down a system significantly and can cause a lot of stability problems. I hate SP2 because of what it has done, I will likely never upgrade to it.

Care to post your scores like in 3D mark 2001,2003,2005? It's ok to bitch about your synthetic marks if they are significantly low. It can help you see what's the culprit to the system slow down. I did a benchmark on an incredibly fast PII system and wondered why it was so fast, turns out I was getting 700MB/s+ out of 800MB/s memory bandwidth! I also did the same test on another very SLOW PII system and turns out it was getting 300MB/S memory bandwidth out of 800MB/s.