Not that I put any real world faith in 3DMark 2005, but...

[Golgatha]

I owned a 7900GTX for all of a day before doing my taxes and realizing I didn't have enough cash to keep the card. So, I sold it away and in a round about way I ended up upgrading from my old 7800GT to a X1800XT 512MB. So here is my dilemna. I ran 3DMark 2005 on a 3.60Ghz, 2MB cache, 660 Intel CPU, 955x chipset, 2GB RAM and got the following.

X1800XT - 8002 (forgot I enabled high quality AF. Changed to default and now get 8173.)

7900GTX - 8246 (This was set at nVidia defaults)

Is my CPU really a bottleneck for the 7900GTX or is 3DMark just worthless? I was thinking that 3DMark is pretty much a benchmark for just your video card, so these numbers kind of surprised me.

 

[kingdomwinds]

that pentium 4 probably is the bottleneck. Afterall, pentium 4 is intel's flop line. You should have gotten an AMD cpu. For now AMD is the best but that will change when intel releases conroe.

Just for comparison, i got 10369 in 3dmark05 with my defective artifacting 7900 gtx. I also got 10640 with the unimpressive 1900xtx<----- I think the 16pipelines make it perform worse in some games ex)battlefield 2, it was great in CS:S though but in bf2 it was way worse than my 7800 gtx in terms of smoothness.


BTW, did you run dc cleaner after you uninstalled old drivers?

 

[moonboy403]

you should be getting around 10000 in 3dmark05

 

[Golgatha]

Originally posted by: kingdomwinds
that pentium 4 probably is the bottleneck. Afterall, pentium 4 is intel's flop line. You should have gotten an AMD cpu. For now AMD is the best but that will change when intel releases conroe.

Just for comparison, i got 10369 in 3dmark05 with my defective artifacting 7900 gtx. I also got 10640 with the unimpressive 1900xtx<----- I think the 16pipelines make it perform worse in some games ex)battlefield 2.


BTW, did you run dc cleaner after you uninstalled old drivers?

Yes, I did run driver cleaner. That is a great program.

 

[kingdomwinds]

yeah it your pentium 4's fault. Why did you get pentium 4 anyway?

Just another thing, you have the ATI key poller and smartservices enabled? Without them, the card stays in 2dmode.

 

[aggressor]

A64 3200+ @ 2.5ghz with a X1800XT @ 700\800 (default clocks) nets me 9862 points.

http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm05=1885771

X1900XT got 10527, OC'D 7800GTX got 8341

 

[Golgatha]

Originally posted by: kingdomwinds
yeah it your pentium 4's fault. Why did you get pentium 4 anyway?

Just another thing, you have the ATI key poller and smartservices enabled? Without them, the card stays in 2dmode.

I haven't the slightest idea what those things are? Where do I check?

 

[kingdomwinds]

run msconfig. Should be in processes. ati hot key poller and smartservices. Make sure they are enabled Also what are your clock speeds for your gpu. Go into ati's overdrive panel and see

 

[Golgatha]

Originally posted by: kingdomwinds
run msconfig. Should be in processes. ati hot key poller and smartservices. Make sure they are enabled Also what are your clock speeds for your gpu. Go into ati's overdrive panel and see

ATI key poller is running. The ATI Smart service is stopped. Both are checked to load at boot though. GPU clocks are 594/693.

 

[Golgatha]

The only other thing I can think of is that I didn't run driver cleaner between the 7800GT to 7900GTX switch since I was going from one nVidia product to the other. I definitely ran DC before the X1800XT upgrade though.

 

[Golgatha]

Originally posted by: kingdomwinds
yeah it your pentium 4's fault. Why did you get pentium 4 anyway?

MPEG2 encoding mainly. Plus, nVidia's chipsets don't support ECC memory. Upgraded from a 875P system to get PCIe basically. I hate forced upgrades.

 

[Zstream]

Originally posted by: kingdomwinds
that pentium 4 probably is the bottleneck. Afterall, pentium 4 is intel's flop line. You should have gotten an AMD cpu. For now AMD is the best but that will change when intel releases conroe.

Just for comparison, i got 10369 in 3dmark05 with my defective artifacting 7900 gtx. I also got 10640 with the unimpressive 1900xtx<----- I think the 16pipelines make it perform worse in some games ex)battlefield 2, it was great in CS:S though but in bf2 it was way worse than my 7800 gtx in terms of smoothness.


BTW, did you run dc cleaner after you uninstalled old drivers?

less pipes means less performance? Dude please use google before sounding dumb...

 

[the Chase]

Well your CPU is probably holding you back some, but those 2 cards are not as far apart as you might think. I have an opty running above 3Ghz and with stock clocks on the 1800XT got around 9500. At 720/820 it hits 10,641 in 05. I know an OC'ed GTX will best this but not sure by how much. Anyone break the 12,000 mark yet with their GTX?

 

[Golgatha]

Well, forget 3DMark 2005 anyway. Just sat down and played an hour of COD2 and man the difference is night and day. Can run 1280x960 with 4xAA and 16xAF with all the goodies enabled and have absolutely no slowdowns. Makes me want to grab FEAR again and give it a whirl.

Happy happy happy joy joy joy!

I must admit though, that stock fan is annoying as heck. Loud! Glad I have an Accelero on order. Should be here Monday. Just hope this doesn't raise my case temps too much going from a DHES to internal exhaust.

 

[Golgatha]

Hmm, not sure if the CPU is a bottleneck or not. The 3DMark certainly doesn't scale linearly with the CPU clock. I can now get about 8,600ish with the 3.6Ghz CPU overclocked to 4.01Ghz and X1800XT running 635/800. I was getting 8,200ish. If it was perfectly linear I would be right at about 9000. The only web review I saw break 9000 (I think it was 9020) was with a FX-55. I don't think I'm doing too bad since I bought this CPU used for just over $200.

 

[Gunslinger08]

I hit 8600 with an Opteron 165 (dual core, 1.8 GHz) and a 7900GT @ about 10% below GTX speeds. You are definitely CPU limited.

 

[Munky]

Blame the P4 cpu, there's nothing wrong with the card.

 

[Golgatha]

Originally posted by: munky
Blame the P4 cpu, there's nothing wrong with the card.

Actually, I've seen scores for an X2 3800+ and 4000+ single core. They are right in line with the scores I'm getting overclocked to 4.01Ghz. Going by the AMD PR numbers, I'm getting what I'm supposed to be getting using an X1800XT.

I would conceed that perhaps I was CPU limited with the 7900GTX running at 3.6Ghz however. Just something worth noting for P4 owners. The extra $200 will not net you any extra performance going from the X1800XT to the 7900GTX or X1900XT(X) possibly.

 

[1Dark1Sharigan1]

Originally posted by: Golgatha
I would conceed that perhaps I was CPU limited with the 7900GTX running at 3.6Ghz however. Just something worth noting for P4 owners. The extra $200 will not net you any extra performance going from the X1800XT to the 7900GTX or X1900XT(X) possibly.

Maybe in 3DMark05 but that obviously would not be the case in real-life gaming at high resolutions with high eye candy . . .

 

[Golgatha]

Originally posted by: 1Dark1Sharigan1

Originally posted by: Golgatha
I would conceed that perhaps I was CPU limited with the 7900GTX running at 3.6Ghz however. Just something worth noting for P4 owners. The extra $200 will not net you any extra performance going from the X1800XT to the 7900GTX or X1900XT(X) possibly.

Maybe in 3DMark05 but that obviously would not be the case in real-life gaming at high resolutions with high eye candy . . .

True. The default benchmark is at 1024x768 with no AA or AF. This is not how I play games . Typically I run at least 1280x1024 with 4xAA and 8xAF.

 

[hans030390]

Running at 3.6ghz should not bottleneck you.

 

[Munky]

Not sure about the x1800xt, but even a P4 EE 955 would bottleneck a x1900xtx in many cases, even at 1600x1200.

http://www.legionhardware.com/document.php?id=523