Why are 3dmark 200X results so varied?

[mozirry]

Just ran 3dmark 2005,

got a 7307

ran it the next day (not immediately after) and got a 7422

I bet I could run it probably three to four more times and still get more variations.


What is causing the variation? I realize its just a 1% difference, but I bet if I were to run 3dmark 2006 where the scores are much lower, I would have a much higher percentage of variation.

 

[Smartazz]

Lets say you have a 2000MHZ Athlon 64 processor, that speed varies all the time, granted it barely changes I would think that the cpu constantly fluctuating might cause a different score and also every time you run it you'll probably have different background tasks running. That's what I think that's what causes it.

 

[aaqubit]

I don't think the clock speed variation is enough to justify this.
My clock is 2000MHz +/- 0.5, which is 0.025% change

It's probably what you have run in the background. Perhaps there were some memory used by other programs that were not freed back to the OS.

Perhaps the thread scheduling system of Windows will be affected by certain high priority threads (such as you moving your mouse), thus having more resources devoted to watching your mouse movements than usual.

Perhaps other background processes...

Anyway, 1% variation is good enough.

 

[Gannon]

It's just a benchmark. no need to get your pants in a twist.

 

[xtknight]

Was this between reboots? Whatever was in your memory, whatever was in your cache that had to be swapped in and out can make a difference.