Why is my Ice Storm score very low?

[Berryracer]

with my Alienware 18 laptop, the Ice Storm score is like double what I am getting on my 980GTX x2 SLI now although all other scores seem fine. What's up with that? I disabled GSYNC while benchmarking in order to not cap my FPS at my monitor's refresh rate.

GeForce GTX 780M SLI (350.12) [W8]




GeForce GTX 980 SLI (353.30) [W7]



And that's comparing it to a laptop that has a slower CPU. I am running a 5930K @ 4.2 GHz on all cores and everything is stable plus two 980GTX cards in SLI should destroy my laptop setup.

Here is another thread about the same issue:

http://forums.evga.com/Gtx-980-3dmark-13-Cloud-gate-too-low-score-m2225603.aspx

I have overclocked my GPU by 40 MHz on both the core and mem let me set them back to stock and try

Edit:

I disabled the GPU Overclock and now the Ice Storm score is a bit better but nothing near as it should be, I got 73817 now for Ice Storm:

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/7797329?

Please take a look at the detailed results which include more details maybe it would help

Even according to this just proves that my score is way too low:

http://www.3dmark.com/hall-of-fame-2/ice+storm+3dmark+score+performance+preset/version+1.2

 

[Ketchup]

Did you check versions? The latest version of 3DMark, which you may be running on your desktop, is 1.5. Looks like you are/were running 1.1 on the laptop. You are also running different driver versions, which could have positive/negative effect on the scores.

 

[Berryracer]

Did you check versions? The latest version of 3DMark, which you may be running on your desktop, is 1.5. Looks like you are/were running 1.1 on the laptop. You are also running different driver versions, which could have positive/negative effect on the scores.

I see, thanks for the hint.

Can you please run the Ice Storm test on your GTX 660 on the latest 3DMark just for us to see the difference. I know you will get a lower score but if you get anything near my score or even higher then that means there is an issue.

 

[Ketchup]

Here's a couple. Running 3DMark 1.5.915

4.0 Ghz and driver 352.86

4.4 Ghz and driver 353.30

 

[Berryracer]

Here's a couple. Running 3DMark 1.5.915

4.0 Ghz and driver 352.86

4.4 Ghz and driver 353.30

Thanks a lot for this bro, this just comes to show that my Ice Storm score is extremely low given the fact that you have an older GPU. I suspect it is the driver, 353.xx have been known to have a throttling issue it's been discussed indepthly on the NBR Forum (Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpd2ZzAGrfo&feature=share )

I have to wait for a newer driver from nVIDIA I guess

I cannot use the older driver 345.20 which doesn't throttle because it won't install on my 980GTX

PS: was your test done on Windows 7 or Windows 8.1?

 

[Ketchup]

Thanks a lot for this bro, this just comes to show that my Ice Storm score is extremely low given the fact that you have an older GPU. I suspect it is the driver, 353.xx have been known to have a throttling issue it's been discussed indepthly on the NBR Forum (Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpd2ZzAGrfo&feature=share )

I have to wait for a newer driver from nVIDIA I guess

I cannot use the older driver 345.20 which doesn't throttle because it won't install on my 980GTX

PS: was your test done on Windows 7 or Windows 8.1?

I really don't think your video card is throttling, unless you are thinking your other scores are low as well. Fire Strike pushes both your CPU and GPU, so you may want to make sure your CPU isn't throttling.

Use 3DMark Ice Storm to compare low cost smart phones and tablets. Ice Storm includes two 720p Graphics tests to measure GPU performance and a Physics test to stress CPU performance. Ice Storm uses DirectX 11 feature level 9 on Windows.

http://www.futuremark.com/benchmarks/3dmark

These test were done on Windows 7.

 

[Berryracer]

I really don't think your video card is throttling, unless you are thinking your other scores are low as well. Fire Strike pushes both your CPU and GPU, so you may want to make sure your CPU isn't throttling.


http://www.futuremark.com/benchmarks/3dmark

These test were done on Windows 7.

I ran wPrime with 12 threads and saw the clock stable @ 4.2 GHz in CPU-Z:

What do you think?

 

[Ketchup]

I ran wPrime with 12 threads and saw the clock stable @ 4.2 GHz in CPU-Z:

What do you think?

It's not about being stable. It's about throttling. Run something like Real temp, core temp, or CPUID Hardware monitor and see what your cores are up to during the test.

 

[railven]

Something definitely seems off, here is my 980 Ti single card score day 1 I got it:

Graphics score is 20K, only 6K less than your SLI.

 

[Ketchup]

Something definitely seems off, here is my 980 Ti single card score day 1 I got it:

Graphics score is 20K, only 6K less than your SLI.

The last screen shot showed his CPU (possibly throttling) at 3.5 GHz (unless the app just refused to record the real speed). It may even lower, based on the score.

 

[railven]

The last screen shot showed his CPU (possibly throttling) at 3.5 GHz (unless the app just refused to record the real speed). It may even lower, based on the score.

Even if his CPU throttled back to stock clocks (what I'm guessing), would it affect his graphics score that severely?

 

[Ketchup]

Even if his CPU throttled back to stock clocks (what I'm guessing), would it affect his graphics score that severely?

Don't know. I would have to underclock my CPU a good bit to test that theory, but I don't have time today. Maybe berryracer can get back to us with some numbers.

Edit: Lifer post!

 

[Berryracer]

Update guys,

I tried disabling SLI and the score jumped back to 153,xxx so that's right. and that's on a single GPU. Enable SLI and the score drops by half.

I tried the same test with Fire Strike and enabling SLI increases the score by almost 40% so SLI is not really an issue I think it's a driver issue with this 980 GTX with Ice Storm

I even tried changing the SLI cable just to make sure but that didn't make a difference

 

[Ketchup]

Ah, good detective work! It would be interesting to try some different types of benchies and see if they are having any issues with SLI.

 

[Berryracer]

Ah, good detective work! It would be interesting to try some different types of benchies and see if they are having any issues with SLI.

I will continue more testing but at the moment I am limited to what the buggy nVIDIA Drivers have to offer. Let's not forget that the 980 Ti is still fairly new as it only has 2 driver versions released which is 353.06 and 353.30

That or I will await and see if 3DMark gets updated.

I will keep you posted and thank you for reading.

 

[railven]

I will continue more testing but at the moment I am limited to what the buggy nVIDIA Drivers have to offer. Let's not forget that the 980 Ti is still fairly new as it only has 2 driver versions released which is 353.06 and 353.30

That or I will await and see if 3DMark gets updated.

I will keep you posted and thank you for reading.

I guess cuz I have Win10 but it forced Driver 353.50 on me. I wonder if this is exclusive to Win10 for now?

Also, I'm starting to get that weird cursor issue, haha it's hilarious.

EDIT: There is also 353.38
http://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3694/~/geforce-hotfix-driver-353.38

What I was using before I got forced to 353.50. I didn't have any issues with that one, might try to go back to it see if it fixes my cursor issue.

 

[Grubbernaught]

Hmm... have you watched your hardware monitor to ensure you GPU's are leaving idle clocks in SLI during Ice Storm?

Also most likely quite unrelated, but for what its worth, there is a thread on the CPU forums with a chap experiencing issues with his 5820K not leaving stock clocks when running single threaded workloads:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2427067

It seems changing his windows power plan from Balanced (default) to high power mode has resolved the CPU issue for him. (Page 2 of thread)

I am very interested in this as I have a very near identical setup, although I will not be home to do any testing until Tuesday.

Can you please run Firestrike Extreme with SLI enabled, a typical score for your CPU/GPU's is about 15K+

 

[bystander36]

It may also be noted that there is a reason Firestrike is the primary PC test, and that is because most of the other 3dmark tests are very CPU bound. A lot of those tests are designed so tablets and phones can have something for benchmarking.

I do not recall if Ice Storm is one of those, but it very well may be.

 

[Grubbernaught]

It may also be noted that there is a reason Firestrike is the primary PC test, and that is because most of the other 3dmark tests are very CPU bound. A lot of those tests are designed so tablets and phones can have something for benchmarking.

I do not recall if Ice Storm is one of those, but it very well may be.

Indeed Ice Storm is the lowest end test in 3dmark and really should not be used to gather high end performance metrics. But the disparity is still interesting. I'm thinking the cards are not under enough stress to leave idle clocks in sli and the CPU is possibly in the same boat.

Provided firestrike extreme and game performance isn't impacted, this is purely academic but curious none the less.