Benchmarks = GIMMICK!!!

[scarecrow1]

But i compared other peoples computers on the benchamark website who have the same system as i do and got better marks. Are there any 64bit drivers for the 9800XT avialable now?

[eagle1]

Originally posted by vass0922
Then you're not using a 64bit processor so the benchmarks maybe hurt by the processor running as backwards compatible instead of its native 64bit.

NOPE!
That's not it vass.
Remember that the 32 bit extensions on these Athlon models are pretty powerful.
A friend of mine has almost the same specs and he does get better scores.

Did you went to the BIOS and checked the setting I mentioned above?

[ShawnD1]

Another thing to check is the FSB and the AGP size in the bios. I'm not sure about other motherboards, but I know that when I reset my bios, the FSB goes down to 100 (which is about 60% of what it is supposed to be). AGP size on my board defaults to 32mb IIRC.

[scarecrow1]

Isnt Power saving a good thing? Please exaplin what it does so that i can decide wether i need it or not.

[RamonGTP]

What it does is lower the speed and I believe voltage also when there is a light load on the CPU... It SHOULD bring it to full power/speed when you're running a benchmark, but you may want to turn it off, just for the sake of benchmarking to see if that may be the problem.

That said, your score does seem a bit on the low side givin your system specs. Make sure you have vsync off, and AA/AF set to application prefrance. I'm scoring over 6100 in '03 with a mobile 2600+ @ 2.4GHz and a 9800 Pro@420/380.

[eagle1]

Isnt Power saving a good thing? Please exaplin what it does so that i can decide wether i need it or not.

The friend I mentioned who has the similar system as you had this CPU "feature"enabled and it definitely DOESN'T TURN OFF while running intensive applications. So please turn it off and benchmark again.
If you see a difference, that was the problem, if not, you can turn it back on and start checking other places which might be problematic.

[JayMan]

Originally posted by scarecrow1
But i compared other peoples computers on the benchamark website who have the same system as i do and got better marks.

I presume your talking about the futuremark forum... I'm a member there but i only read, not post...

What ya have to realise about the futuremark forums. 90% of the poeple on there bench for the best score possible... Not taking image quality into account. Meaning they overclock their systems to the absolute max (many people there run their benchmarks with ALOT of artifacting & corruption of the images due to the overclocks), ontop of this they alow run a very low LOD, and perform various other tweaks to lower the quality of the images to produce a higher frame rate, giving a better score.

I say disable that power saving feature, drop all quality settings to there absolute lowest offered in the drivers (most futuremarkers would take this further & use tweaking apps to lowe the quality more) and i bet you will be much closer to their scores. But to get closer than this you will need to overclock your CPU & videocard.

In 3dmark03 videocard has the highest demand... So a 1Ghz P3 with a 9800XT would actually get a higher score than a 3.2Ghz P4 with a geforce3... So if you are gonna overclock, first place i would start would be your video card.

JayMan

[usslindstrom]

I don't know...

I just broke the 6K+ mark with my PC. Scarecrow's seems like a bad score.

Mine is a 3200+ (just 32 bit, and not o/c'd yet)
9800 Pro 128mb (little o/c'd)
512 of 3200 ram (another GB later, but not for that test)

Just try what Eagle says, and it might help a little.

[scarecrow1]

Say i go into the BIOS and disAble power saving, if this does happen to boost my score, does this mean that my games will run alot smoother? faster? better graphics?

[douglas55]

HAHA I hit 1-2 fps on 3DMark03 on battle of proxycon.......Beat that!!