3dMark06 score, Sapphire X1950 Pro, is this good?

romeotech

I ran 3DMark06 Basic Edition and got: 3673
Is this a good score? CPU tests were brutal, getting basically 0 frames.

SM2.0 Score: 1725
HDR/SM3.0 Score: 2036
CPU Score: 656

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Alienware Area-51 | ASROCK 4CoreDual-SATA2 | Intel Core 2 Duo E4500| 2GB RAM | Sapphire Radeon X1950 PRO 512MB GDDR3 | Soundblaster Audigy 2 6.1 | Enermax Liberty 620 Watt Power Supply

DudeBoyz

Here is a good link to show you how good the X1950 Pro should perform against other cards.

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/...timate_review/

You could do some other benchmarks, make sure your AGP SmartGart is on, set at 4x or 8x or whatever the max is. Maybe reinstall your chipset drivers to ensure it is all working properly.

Good luck.

zaim

you should be getting over 5k

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romeotech

Wow not even close to 5000, any suggestions on what I can do to increase my score?
My mobo only has AGP4X not 8X, not sure how much of a factor that is. Smartgear is on.

How do I reinstall chipset drivers, just go to intel's website and just run some exe's? Just dont want to screw up anything. Thanks for all the help.

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Alienware Area-51 | ASROCK 4CoreDual-SATA2 | Intel Core 2 Duo E4500| 2GB RAM | Sapphire Radeon X1950 PRO 512MB GDDR3 | Soundblaster Audigy 2 6.1 | Enermax Liberty 620 Watt Power Supply

DudeBoyz

No sweat.

You have the 850 chipset, right? You should be able to go over to the Intel web site and find the latest and give it a shot.

You could check Device Manager and maybe use some other apps like Sandra to find out if all your hardware is running at optimal config (DMA on, AGP Fast Writes on, etc.) and perhaps also check your BIOS.

I would not panic if one benchmark isn't up to snuff. I've never really trusted synthetic benchmarks as much as in game play.

You could load up FRAPS and check your frames per second to see if things are performing well during game play, with AntiAliasing and Anisotropic Filtering off, then on, and see what you end up with.

You may have to invest some time and energy to get it all configured optimally, but it should be worth it, and you will probably learn a lot.

Good luck.

Dyre Straits

One of the things you need to do that will make the difference is to make sure your 3D settings are all set to Performance before running any benchmarks.

I don't see where you say which drivers you're using, so, the 3D settings will be located differently depending on whether you have CCC, CP, or ATT, or whatever. If you're using the default setting it will normally be something like Balanced. You want to move the slider all the way to PERFORMANCE, or select Performance from the options.

On my own system, with the X1950 Pro PCIe card, I had to do some overclocking of the graphics card to get over 5000 points. Most AGP version scores I've seen are in the mid-4000 range.

EDIT: In fact, just checking Futuremark now, there are no scores over 4799 for systems using X1950 Pro of any kind and using a Pentium 4 CPU.

So, I strongly advise you to do a Compare using parameters close to what your system really is. It's the only way to compare apples to apples.

On the other hand, Core 2 Duo based systems are getting over 9000 points. Yours and my systems will never reach that high of a score.

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DudeBoyz

I thought you were supposed to run the 3DMark benchmarks with your drivers in the DEFAULT configuration so you could compare with others within the proper context to help bring meaning to the numbers?

I would want to see real numbers that meant something instead of just trying to get a high score that doesn't compare 1:1.

I suppose you could test both ways, with the Performance on and the Default and that way you cover your bases. Facts and Data = Win and Relevant Facts and Data = Bigger Win

RaveneR

wouldnt the AGP at 4x lower the scores a little?

DudeBoyz

On my systems, there seems to be no difference at all between 4x and 8x.

zaim

very very VERY minimal....... or nothing at all

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Dyre Straits

If the purpose of running the benchmark is to see how high you can push the card, then Performance is what you want to set the drivers to. It's pretty much just another way of "overclocking" if you want to look at it that way. Otherwise, why do any OC'ing at all when running benchmarks?

For all practical purposes, 3DMarks is just a pretty show and gives some people bragging rights. Like so many others have pointed out, the real test is whether the games play good or not.

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DudeBoyz

If the goal is to get a realistic comparison of 3dMark scores against others on the 3dMark web site, defaults are the best way.

Overclocking is not the same as lowering image quality to get better performance.

I like to bench the card with it configured how I would have it running during use. I would bench with defaults, then with AA set to 4x and AF set to 8x.

If the goal is an accurate comparison of how your card holds up against others and their scores, that's one thing. If ya just want fast for the sake of fast and don't care about image quality, by all means, set everything to performance.

But we all have our own preferences. No biggie.

romeotech

Thanks for all the input, I appreciate it.
I am using the latest catalyst package (7.1 I believe) and referenced tweakguides (http://www.tweakguides.com/ATICAT_1.html) to set up catalyst. One thing that was advised from there was to set AGP Fast Write off because "As mentioned earlier, Fast Write is a major source of instability on most systems and provides little to no performance benefit, so it is strongly recommended that you select Off here to disable Fast Writes."

I checked the intel website for i850E chipset drivers. The latest they had was 2004 so I installed them.

I have the free edition of 3DMark06 so I have no option to change anything.
You're right about the game tests, those are where it counts.
I can play Splinter Cell Chaos Theory perfectly and Half Life 2.
Battlefield 2 on the other hand plays but not smooth with everything maxed out.
That's to be expected with that game anyway.

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Alienware Area-51 | ASROCK 4CoreDual-SATA2 | Intel Core 2 Duo E4500| 2GB RAM | Sapphire Radeon X1950 PRO 512MB GDDR3 | Soundblaster Audigy 2 6.1 | Enermax Liberty 620 Watt Power Supply

DudeBoyz

You might want to check your BIOS to be sure all your AGP stuff is enabled there, just to be sure. It should be ok to enable it all and then do testing and if something wigs out, you can reboot, enter the BIOS and change the settings back.

Here is a link for ya:

http://www.ngohq.com/home.php?page=F...&dwn_cat_id=18

On that site, they take the latest Catalyst Drivers and give you the option of using them with the original Control Panel instead of just CCC.

On the original Control Panel, there is a SMARTGART tab that you can view to see what the status is, and it also has a "Retest All" button.

You could uninstall the CCC and install the CP version just to test if you wanted, then go back to CCC if you wish.

Good luck.