suggestions for improving 6800GT performance

[exploitedcs]

I just purchased a BFG 6800GT yesterday and was hoping to get a huge increase over my very old Geforce 3. I installed the official 66.93's from the nvidia site and was only able to get 14782 on 3dmark2001, while my friend with a plain 6800 and AMD64 3400+ is getting somewhere near 21000 on 3dmark01. My CSS/HL2 barely reaches 100+ fps in certain spots and even drops to 50-60, and Doom 3 gives me a whopping 60-70fps. I even formatted yesterday night and the results did not change at all. I have my chipset drivers installed and the rest of my specs are:

WinXP Pro w/ SP2
Asus P4S8X-X mobo
Intel P4 2.8 w/ 133 FSB =[
512 ddr pc2700
Geforce 6800GT (currently using the 66.97 drivers)
WD 80gig 7200rpm w/ 8mb cache
SB Live 5.1

Any suggestions on tweaking or whatever? BIOS settings? CPU or memory limiting the performance of the card? Something I forgot to do/install? Any advice is appreciated.

 

[darkswordsman17]

Well, the CPU and memory are somewhat the bottlenecks, but I wouldn't think they'd be that big of one on 3DMark.

What resolution are you becnhmarking at?

 

[exploitedcs]

Originally posted by: darkswordsman17
Well, the CPU and memory are somewhat the bottlenecks, but I wouldn't think they'd be that big of one on 3DMark.

What resolution are you becnhmarking at?

1024x768, everything is set to default

also I should mention that agp fastwrites is on and the aperture size is set to 256mb if this helps.

 

[housecat]

double check yoru bios options first, see if L2 cache is disabled or something similar.

i generally do not install the chipset drivers when using a intel chipset. but it should not hurt your performance.

otherwise, the cpu/board/mem must be the culprit.. might want to try your GT on his system and see the results.

 

[drpootums]

BTW, if i have a 6800gt with aperture size set at 128mb's does that mean that i'm only using 128 mb's of ram or wat?

sorry, not trying to hijack your thread...

 

[Parabellum27]

Be aware that 3D mark 2001 SE is often used as a "general" benchmark program, which means that it is not related only to video card. To benchmark your video card more accurately (to see if it performs the way it should) try 3D mark 2003 or 2005 instead.

I got 21160 3d mark (2001) with a Radeon 9800 Pro but as you may know, your 6800 GT is 2 times faster, at least than my 9800 Pro but I have 50% more 3D mark than you. Do the maths

6800 GT's usually scores about 10000 3D mark 2003 from what I have seen.

Hope this helps,

Para

 

[BFG10K]

Don't forget to install the latest chipset drivers for you system otherwise AGP functions will be very poor.

 

[McArra]

I think that's you CPU, try with 3dMark03 and tell us, and check ou have AA and AF disabled for benchmarking.

 

[exploitedcs]

I do have the latest AGP chipset drivers installed.

Just installed 3dmark03, first test gave me 10,618 (not too bad?). All my tests are done with default settings, 1024x768 res, "application controlled" set for aa/af, and "quality" set for image settings in the nvidia control panel.

Also I'd like to mention that my FSB is set at 133mhz even though i have a stick of 512 PC2700 which should be 166mhz correct? I don't know if that makes a difference at all, just thought I'd mention it. I have looked around the bios but my cpu won't let me mess with the multiplier =

Edit #2: ran 3dmark01 immediately after and got a whopping 14836 ;[

 

[McArra]

That's the score you should getin 3dMark03. Your CPU/RAM combo must be the problem.

 

[exploitedcs]

Yep, I'm consistently getting 10,6xx scores in 3dmark03 so I guess it's just 01 that doesn't like me..

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: exploitedcs
Yep, I'm consistently getting 10,6xx scores in 3dmark03 so I guess it's just 01 that doesn't like me..

No, 3DMark01 is just horribly CPU/RAM limited (it's VERY bandwidth-dependent) on today's video cards. If you had a faster CPU and dual-channel DDR400, you'd easily get 20K+. You could also try having both you and your friend run it at 1600x1200 with 4xAA/8xAF. Your score will stay very high, while his will plummet.

Just use 3DMark03/05 or AquaMark3. They'll give you more accurate results with fast video cards, since they put a much heavier load on the card and are not nearly as CPU-limited.

 

[exploitedcs]

Well I got 4,725 on 3dmark05 and 52 on AquaMark3...anyway, thanks for all your replies.