New motherboard any suggestions???

[jt8284]

Hello everyone! This is my first post here! Anyhow, I recently purchased a new motherboard and new CPU and I'm kind of disappointed at the results I'm getting. Before I continue I'll give you the two systems specs.

Old System:
ASRock P4V88 motherboard with VIA PT880 chipset w/ most upto date bios
Intel Pentium 4 Prescott 2.8E w/ hyperthreading @ 3.01 ghz w/ Alpha Heatsink 44C idle 51C full load
215 mhz fsb (860mhz bus speed)
2x 1GB Pc2700 DDR Ram 166mhz @ 181mhz
2.5-3-3-7
Sapphire ATI Radeon X800XT PE 520/560 @ 526/587 w/ Arctic Cooler VGA Silencer
120GB Sata Hard Drive
48*40*48 Sony CDRW
16x Sony DVD
A Open 300 watt Power Supply

Catalyst 4.9 w/ hotfix 4.91
Directx 9.0c



New System:
ASUS P4P800SE motherboard with Intel i865P/PE/G/i848P chipset w/ most up to date bios
Intel Pentium 4 Northwood 3.0c w/ hyperthreading @ 3.75 ghz w/ Alpha Heatsink 33C idle 44C full load
250mhz fsb (1ghz bus speed)
2x 512mb Pc3200 DDR Ram 200mhz
FSB/DRAM: 5/4 Divider @ 250mhz/200mhz
3-4-4-8 Crappy Ram and I can't get the timing any better
Sapphire ATI Radeon X800XT PE 520/560 @ 526/587 w/ Arctic Cooler VGA Silencer
120GB Sata Hard Drive
48*40*48 Sony CDRW
16x Sony DVD
Antec 433 watt Power Supply

Catalyst 4.11 w/ hotfix 4.91
Directx 9.0c

My 3dmark03 score went from 13,100 to 13,300. I was expecting a much greater improvement. Comparing with others on the Futuremark ORB I saw that they got 14k or higher. Anybody know whats wrong?? Is it because I installed the hotfix w/ Cat 4.11??? Thanks everyone!!

 

[jpeyton]

RAM timings could be a factor. Also remember that 03 is more GPU limited, and 01 is CPU limited; did you test 01 and compare the scores?

Also, your performance would likely hit 14,000+ if you could run th 250FSB 1:1 with 2.5/3/3/7 timings. P4s are memory bandwidth hungry.

 

[jt8284]

Could the RAM timing and 5/4 divider really be messing up my scores that bad??? Is that just in 3dmark03 or is that going to screw my graphics in all games??? I play doom3 at 1280*1024 @ ultra graphics and I get 60fps with 2x AA and 8x AF. What I mean is, does 3dmark03 scores really matter that much??? Thanks

 

[jpeyton]

No, 3DMark scores don't matter much; they are just benchmarks. In game performance is much more important.

 

[jt8284]

I tried running fsb : Dram at 1 : 1 @ 233/233 which was approximately 3.5ghz and my score dropped to 12,800. I don't get it, when I had the old motherboard I had a 2.8E prescott and my ram timing was 2.5-3-3-7 and my score reached above 13,000. At the time my ram was asyncronous by 33mhz as well, yet my score was alot better. Even though 3dmark scores don't matter this is really annoying. Is it the Northwood CPU??? Is prescott that much better? Sorry for asking you so many questions but I'm really annoyed by all this.