Why is my 3D Mark2001 score so low?

[HappyPuppy]

I finally got DSL hooked up today and downloaded 3D Mark2001 to test my Radeon 8500. I ran the bench and came up with a score of 5203. WTF? I had DirectX 8.0 so I downloaded and installed 8.1. WOW! Now my score is 5208. I guess that wasn't the problem. I'm using the 4.13.7206 drivers, which I believe are the latest official from ATI.

Can anyone suggest what I might be doing wrong? The 8500 should score a lot higher than that. It's not that I'm hung up on benches or numbers, but I'd at least like to be playing in the same ballpark as other 8500 owners.

My system specs are below:

ECS K7S5A
Tbird 1.4GHz @ 1.4GHz
Swiftech 462A HSF w/ Sanyo Denki screecher
512MB Crucial PC2100
Radeon 8500
TB Santa Cruz
Onboard NIC
3Com PCI Pro modem
Romtec Trios
3-IBM 60GXP 40GB HDD
LiteOn 16x DVD ROM
LiteOn 24x10x40 CDR/RW
3-Ultimate HDD Coolers
LianLi PC70 Case
2-stock intake fans bottom front
2-stock exhaust fans rear below PSU
2-Panaflo Hi exhaust fans rear above PSU
Enermax 431 watt PSU
Win98SE

I see benches on Madonion going as high as 9000. I'd like to get a little piece of the pie.

Thanks.

 

[Soccerman]

what's you 8500 running at?

have you tried the 9008 drivers? if not, go to rage3d to get them.

other 8500 owners are probably running their cards at 300+ mhz, with CPU's overclocked to 1.6ghz or higher, and running fairly high FSBs as well.. btw, I advice you to turn off all programs you run in the taskbar (and even in msconfig startup) before running a test like this and expectin high scores.

also it looks like you built a system with alot of cooling, but aren't putting it to much use. the extra cooling was only meant for systems being overclocked (after all, how can a retail Athlon run stable if it's running in a case with perhaps 2 fans, and with the crappy retail heatsink on it?).

 

[Chubbz]

make sure you get the AGP port driver

 

[Spike]

your scores still seem kinda low. I am running a athlonXP 1800+ (1.53ghz) and a Radeon LELE (230/460) When running at default speed I get a score of 7300 in 3Dmark 2001 1024x768 at 32b When overclocked to normal OEM/LE speeds (250/500) I get 7500, and when even more overclocked (250/510) I get about 7600. This is all under WinXP. Under win98 running at 250/500 I get 7700. You score seems low compared to mine. What version of the 8500 do you have?

BTW, my CPU is not overclocked at all, I have yet tp try 3Dmark2001 with a overclocked CPU. I am using the 3286 drivers from ATI's webpage

 

[Spike]

oh yah, forgot to mention, soccerman is right, those scores that you see at 9000 is due to overclocking. You can check out the average score for a given CPU and graphics card. I believe the average score for the 8500 and a athlonXP 1800 is 7928, mine is below that because I cannot even get my speeds up to retail. You should be able to find the average score for the 8500 and your card. Hope that helps.

On a side not, the average score for the Ti500 and the AthlonXP 1800+ is 7822, slightly lower then the 8500

 

[Seyba]

You shouldn't complain. I'm returning my Gainward Ti450 golden sample.. 5500 score. I see stuff like 7900 with the exact same hardware as me.

Going to wait until GF4, I guess.

 

[HappyPuppy]

You're right about a lot of cooling, Soccerman. I built this rig to eventually do some overclocking, but I was waiting until I could get some default benchmarks first. Downloading 3D Mark on a dialup connection would have taken all night even assuming I could maintain my connection, which I probably wouldn't.

It's the retail 8500 and I have the AGP port driver installed. I'll try the 9008 drivers.

Although I was complaining about my score, I'm not unhappy at all with the 8500. It runs everything flawlessly. I guess what I was trying to find out is if my rig would produce scores equal to similar/identical computers at default speeds. After that I would have a foundation on which to base overclock scores. Does that make sense or did I just make a simple situation complex?

Thanks for the input.

 

[Spike]

Happypuppy, I see that you are using a ECS K7S5A, that is the same board I have. I am wondering now, what is this agp port driver you guys are talking about? Is it something about the ECS board? I don't recall ever installing this and now I am kinda concerned...

 

[HappyPuppy]

Spike, you can get the latest official AGP driver here from the ECS site:

http://www.ecsusa.com/ecsusa/www.ecs.com.tw/download/driver/k7s.htm

or you can get a later version, not yet supported by ECS from the SiS website, here:

http://www.sis.com/support/driver/utility.htm

Sorry, I haven't figured out how to make a link yet.

 

[Bucksnort]

Duh, it's not your card, its v-sync being disabled that gives these guys the ability to post high 3d marks. For example on my system i bench at 5250 roughly with v sync set to always on or auto select. Now turn off vsync and my score is 8100. Why? because the video card driving rate is no longer held back to the monitors 75 mhz refresh rate. This is why you will notice choppy frames at times and tearing when v sync is turned off, the monitor can not keep up with the video card. If you own a nvidia card you can dl coolbits and that will enable v sync to be set as you wish.