The mystery of the 5000 missing 3DMarks

HeXploiT

Diamond Member
Jun 11, 2004
4,359
1
76
I'm building a system that consists of a GA-G31M-S2L, e2200, 2gb Ballistix 1066 ram and an 8800GTS 640mb videocard and Vista x64.
So I installed all the software and ran 3Dmark06 and received 8000 points in 3dmark 06. I then overclocked the CPU & GPU and ran 3dmark again and received 11,000 points.
Well I was having trouble with the initial install so I formatted and reinstalled everything the same way and ran 3dmark again and received 3000 points. I then overclocked and only got to 5000. What gives? As far as I can remember everything is exactly the same. I tested the ram in Everest and it's running at full speed and clock speeds for the cpu are correct.
I've tried different versions of the video driver with no change in results.

The only thing I did differently was I ran clockgen with an unsupported PLL to overclock but then I turned it off.
I can't for the life of me figure out what happened here. ???
 

VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
56,570
10,200
126
Hmm. I have a E2140 @ 3.2GHz, on a GA-P35-DS3R v1.0. Running two instances of SeventeenorBust, I score around 7M per core. Well, one day it rebooted on me and reset my overclock. I re-set my OC in the BIOS, rebooted, and now I only score 5.5M per core. Strangest thing ever. CPU-Z confims that I'm still properly overclocked.

Is there some sort of magical "performance mode" that gets set in these C2D CPUs? Or some piece of hardware that dies, and drops performance, transparently?
 

HeXploiT

Diamond Member
Jun 11, 2004
4,359
1
76
Well this is ridiculous. I'm going to reinstall for a third time and run a benchmark as soon as windows is installed.
 

HeXploiT

Diamond Member
Jun 11, 2004
4,359
1
76
I figured it out. One other difference that I had forgotten about is that I had installed service pack 1 on the second install from a disk (which does not update through windows update). I did a system restore to before SP1 and now I have my old scores back.
 

HeXploiT

Diamond Member
Jun 11, 2004
4,359
1
76
Probably one of the reasons they aren't releasing it as a direct windows update yet.
 

vj8usa

Senior member
Dec 19, 2005
975
0
0
Strange. I didn't see any drop in 3dmarks after installing SP1 (also Vista64, but with an ATI card). Maybe it's a driver issue.
 

HeXploiT

Diamond Member
Jun 11, 2004
4,359
1
76
A driver issue with service pack 1 maybe yeah.
Without SP1 the benchmarks are splendid and all drivers work perfectly.
 

Dadofamunky

Platinum Member
Jan 4, 2005
2,184
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0
Try Vantage too. 3DM06 is pretty obsolete. I get 12800 on mine with Vista 64 SP1. On Vantage it's P6800.
 

HeXploiT

Diamond Member
Jun 11, 2004
4,359
1
76
Originally posted by: Dadofamunky
Try Vantage too. 3DM06 is pretty obsolete. I get 12800 on mine with Vista 64 SP1. On Vantage it's P6800.

Well I got 11500 on 3d06 and P7036 on Vantage. Interesting comparison.
Thanks I hadn't thought about the fact that 3dmark is 2 years old now.
 

tigersty1e

Golden Member
Dec 13, 2004
1,963
0
76
Try some other benchmarks.

Run a CPU only bench to rule that out, like super pi.


Also, check your power settings in Control Panel. Go to the advanced settings and make sure the CPU is set to 100% on max.