Radeon 8500 - low 3dmark score...

[MrPabulum]

Sup fellas,

I'm currently running an XP 1900 system on MSI K7T266 Pro2 board. She's oc'ed to 1.65 and the memory is set to CAS2 latency. The video is an original Radeon 8500 64mb running at 300/300; the drivers are the latest Catalyst 3.0a revision combined with Direct X9. The driver was updated from the original Catalyst 3.0s. Now here is the troubling question: on the one hand, the system is running better than ever, no hiccups at all; all of my games perform better than before, or smoother anyway. On the other hand, the 3dmark score, with all of these optimizations is hover at 7770, which seems a little low. Now 3dmark is only a benchmark, so it doesn't mean that much in the long run, but I'm still confused as to why I'm not getting a score aroung 8600-8800. The original Cat 2.5s gave me a score of 8650 w/o any optimizations! I do remember resetting the BIOS when I reformated the machine (long story) so could there be a setting I'm forgetting about. AGP aperture is set to 128mb, thought that shouldn't make that much difference. Maybe its Direct X9? Any ideas guys?

 

[Killrose]

That score seems pretty low. Underclock the card and run it to see what you get. Graphic errors sometimes slow things down. Make sure FSAA/Ansio is dissabled. Some tweakers enable it by default, or at least an earlier Rage3dtweak did.

 

[308nato]

Run ....DXDIAG.... and see if ATi SmartGart

has disabled your DX 3d goodies. Also verify that the driver install did not drop your AGP mode from 4x to 2x.

 

[NEVERwinter]

yes, try to underclock your card, or flashing the BIOS.
and try to return to DirectX 8.1, i read some ppl got DX9 messed up their system....

 

[MrPabulum]

Thanks for the advice. I clocked the card back to 275/275 and turned off aniso settings. Score jumped to 8420. Clocked the card back to 300/300 and got 8555. At least the numbers are a bit more competitive, though in comparison 3dmark's ref. for a radeon 8500 is in the 8800s. Could be that this revision is a tad slower. On the 300/300 test, I forgot to turn Powerstrip, so that might've lowered the score a little ("he's really searching for points..") Should I turn AGP Fastwrites on?

 

[Viper96720]

Your score is fine. What kind of cpu is the higher score using? Intel P4's usually gives slightly higher scores.

 

[MrPabulum]

AMD XP 1900 oc'ed to 1.65. It says XP2000 on boot up. Hoohaa!

 

[Killrose]

Originally posted by: MrPabulum
AMD XP 1900 oc'ed to 1.65. It says XP2000 on boot up. Hoohaa!

Cheater

 

[MrPabulum]

I do my best.

 

[Auric]

I don't know how those XP's normally perform but it seems low compared to my Celeron 1.1 @ 1500 with SDRAM which was getting 7600-7900 with the R8500.

Perhaps you should do a "clean" install of the drivers -that is uninstall the control panel and drivers, reboot, cancel auto driver install, use RegCleaner from jv16.org to delete ATI entries, search and destroy (er, delete) any remaining ati*, then install drivers and control panel and reboot. Verify SmartGart settings in display tab and via atiprbxx.exe.

 

[blackhawk]

I run the 8500 retail at 275/275 on an amd 1800XP thats slightly overclocked to 1900 and get 8550ish on 3dmk tests so think thats fair. I've updated drivers several times and never seen a big difference.

 

[Toro 45]

Retail 8500@default,Xp1600@xp2100=8939 (points 3dmark)
Retail 8500@default,Xp1600@xp2100=9411 (Ram set to turbo)
Retail 8500@290/295,Xp1600@xp2200=9854 (Ram set to turbo)

DX 8.1,Cat 2.5

Could be the DX9/Cat3's

Toro

 

[bunnyfubbles]

I used to be able to hit 9000 + 3D marks with my 8500 at one point. I stopped caring about 3D Mark so much when I'd update my drivers and see improvements in games but not 3D Mark. I've got a clean install of the Cat 3s and DX9, my games run fine and I'm in the low 8000's, around 8300 with my XP 1700+.

 

[MrPabulum]

That's interesting, b/c my games have gotten so much smoother, and yet the 3dmark score isn't particularly great, but that's fine by me. I was wondering whether or not I should keep 8x anisotropic filtering on? At 16X? Is it worth the performance hit?

 

[Deeko]

...

 

[mflacy]

I've hit over 9600 3dmarks with my setup by overclocking my 8500 to 300/310, but it's not stable enough to play games. I pushed the overclock back to 275/295 and it's stable as a rock at a little over 9000 3dmarks.

I'm going to upgrade when the 9700 pro hits $100 to $150.

 

[SickBeast]

I have the exact same system as you and I score 9700 with my card running at 310/285...try tweaking your memory a bit more, I'm running cas2 3/5/2, and make sure your memory is running syncronous with your fsb.