new PC, need help with strange 3dmark results

[richardrds]

High guys, I was not sure what forum to put this in so hope it is OK here.

I received my new PC last week (see sig) and it came doa, Mobo would powerdown after 3 seconds. Well to make a long story short, after a few phone call troubleshooting sessions the place were i bought it sent me a new mobo and cpu and had a tech dispatched to pick up my system. I received the PC back the next day and the tech replaced the mobo/cpu and everythink looked ok.

I was able to load up some apps, browse the internet, play my favorite flight sim, ect...

I was not sure of which GPU i wanted at the time i palced the order so i ordered a cheap MX4000 ($28) with the system with the understanding that i would repalce it asap. Well yesterday i took the plunge and i installed a new BFG6800OC.

I downloaded 3dMark03 and got low benchmark scores 4400 for this system. Then after doing a little research i turned from quality to high performane, app control of aa/af, and no vsync and reran the test. Now i get aroung 9410 which seems ok for my hardware since i am not overclocking the cpu or gpu at this time because i am still researching on how to OC without hurting anything.

I then decided to download 3dmark05. I was only able to get one complete run out of 5 attempts, 4 times the program would freeze or restart during the cpu stress tests, also during the cpu stress stest the video play back was real choppy, like half second freezes. The one time the test did complete i got a score of 3700.

The other wierd think i was seeing is i had to reinstall 3dmark03 2 times now because i keep getting error meseges when i try to run the test saying one of the texture files got corrupted. So maybe i have a harddrive error pblm with my new pc, but i ran the check disk utility and it said it was Ok.

So i have come up with a few qustions if someone could answer or point me in the right direction:

1. When the tech dropped off my PC he told me he left all the Bios options set to their default values (ABIT-AV8). I hit the delete key during a restart and looked at the values and they seemed ok to me but i am not an expert and don't really know how they should be set. One thing i noticed was that AGP apeeratuer size was 128M and fast writres were enabled, i think i remember reading somewhere that fast writes should be disabled? Any other bios options i should think about changing?

2. Is there any good PC heathcheck programs that i could benchmark the entire new PC to see if it is OK, like some kind of stress tests for the harddrive since 3dmark03 keeps getting corrupted texture files (happend t times now).

3. I am thinking that my problems running 3dmark05 may be because i only have 512M ram, and that is the minimum according to the read me file for it. Should it run better on mu system which only has 512M ram (256x2 dual channel)

 

[Matthias99]

First, set everything back to stock if you have anything overclocked. Then run memtest86 to test your memory (set it to all tests, let it run overnight), and if it passes that, try Prime95's torture tests. Those should tell you if you have a hardware problem with your CPU/MB/RAM. The fact that your system crashes and your files are getting corrupted makes me think you almost certainly do.

It could also be your PSU; the ones that come with most cheap cases are *crap*.

 

[Zardnok]

Also make sure that you have the latest version of DirectX 9 downloaded and installed. Fastwrites should be off and IMO AGP aperture set to 256. Mathias gives good advice about running Prime95 overnight. That will tell you a lot about your system. Try to look and see what the 12v rating is on that powersupply. With your set-up, I would think 18 amps is minimum to run stable, but I am a power junky!

 

[Hyperlite]

just a thought about the video card....shouldn't the stock mem on that BFG OC be 775?

In respect to 3dmark05, don't expect a smooth ride through those CPU tests...heck, i still chug at less than 10fps through all the CPU tests.

 

[richardrds]

Thanks for all the helpful replies guys, i feel alot better now, i figured out my pblm.

I downloaded prime 95 and let it run for an hour stress test and no errors, so i did some more thinking and research and figured i had to many background processes and programs running.

I found a great freeware program called FSAutoStart. It was originally made for getting better performance for flight simulators, but you can use it for anything. What it basically does is give you a listing of all services and programs that are running on you pc, you then can configure it to shut down the services and programs you don't need running. The COOL thing about this app is it will automatically restart the services and programs you shut down when you are done running your target app (in my case 3dmark03/05), or if you miss configure it to not restart the proceeses all you need to do is reboot your PC and you are back to everything running the way it was before you shut stuff down.

It took me about 10 minutes to figure out how to use the program, but after that now bring my services down from 44 running to 13, and my programs down from 18 to 3. With all that background crap out of the way 3dMark03 and 05 run everytime for me now.

My best 03 score so far is 9419 (847 cpu), and my best 05 score 3597 (cpu 4616). From going to the 3dMark web site and doing some compares it looks like i am at the high end for my system specs considering i am not doing any overclocking of the CPU or GPU yet (except for the 325 to 350) that the BFG 6800 OC does to the core out of the box. And thanks for pointing aout the low frame rates with the CPU tests in 05 Hyperlite, when i saw my sytem chugging at 2.5 to 5 fps i thought for sure i had a pblm, but after doing some compares at the 3dmark web site you are correct and that is normal for a PC with my specs.

Thanks again for the replies, and the BFG specs out of the box are 350 core and 700 mem for their 6800 OC model. Thanks for all the help!!!!!

 

[Gamingphreek]

Well if your not getting errors now why dont you just stop "playing" 3dMark and find a real game and see how it runs and make your own conclusions?

-Kevin