tell me your secrets

[subzero]

ok in the interest of OC3Dmark team i want to know how to raise the score on my dragothic and nature tests. when i compare mine to ppl with higher scores than me i have more FPS in all tests except dragothic and nature where they have 20 FPS or more than me. if i can find out how to raise the FPS in these i can get a decent score no probs... thanks

[nimrod0031]

well nature loves high gpu and mem speeds and if you run drago first instead of car you will see a huge increase in fps

[subzero]

ive tried running dragothic first and it helps but then when i run car the FPS in car are lower so i cant win either way

[nimrod0031]

you just have to keep on truckin and you will finally get a good car low score.

try running in this order
drag lo
lob lo
lob hi
drag hi
car lo
car hi
nat

[Kato]

Did you try setting your D3D LOD setting? The default is 1 I think, try setting it to 3.

[subzero]

LOD setting is that the mipmap setting? if so then no i dont think it is a legit test if image quality is lowered.. i have tried it with lower though and i got an extra 300 points on my score

[KILLorBE]

To me there are no secrets (except cheating, but I don't want to know anything about that).

Anyway here are a few things that might help:

High FSB
Memory timings (I had 384MB @ 3-3-3, got rid of 256MB and ran my 128MB Mushkin Rev.3+ @ 2-2-2...gained ~800 points).
Turn off Fog.
Set everything to Performance instead of Quality....DUH.
Use a crappy OS like 98 or ME (XP didn't work for me...haven't tried 2K yet).
Try different drivers (40.52 worked best for me...on ME).
Try different BIOS settings.
Keep trying, I've spend 2 days to get in the top 10 (keep in mind I'm ONLY running @ 140FSB and I'm surrounded by guys/gals running @ 150+FSB...I didn't look at all of them but the guy above me is running @ 158FSB and the ones above him are running @ 160+FSB).

What I'm trying to say is that there's NO such thing as a perfect setup, perfect drivers or whatsoever.

YOU need to find the 'perfect' settings yourself, for YOUR particular setup.

I'm VERY happy with my card, hell look at my score and my FSB, I'm kicking major ass....IMHO (considering my LOW FSB). 10449 (http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=6909367)
Compare that with ANY cely upto 1800MHz and a Ti4200, and I'm still in the top 10.

[Edward2]

Subzero, don't feel bad. I just got a Ti4200 yesterday and I did some inital benchmarking last night. I only got 65 fps on the Nature test while running the video card at 300/661 mhz. I scored a 14151 overall. Obviously I still have a lot of tweaking to do.

Kato, I see that you have an Albatron Ti4200 Turbo. I got the Albatron Ti4860P Turbo. It is the Ti4200 GPU on the Ti4600 PCB. Do you have any suggestions as for overclocking this video card? Also do you have any links to volt modding the card? Thanks.

http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=6987527

(edit) Killorbe, I just noticed that you scored higher than me on the Nature test.

[KILLorBE]

Originally posted by Edward2
Subzero, don't feel bad. I just got a Ti4200 yesterday and I did some inital benchmarking last night. I only got 65 fps on the Nature test while running the video card at 300/661 mhz. I scored a 14151 overall. Obviously I still have a lot of tweaking to do.

Kato, I see that you have an Albatron Ti4200 Turbo. I got the Albatron Ti4860P Turbo. It is the Ti4200 GPU on the Ti4600 PCB. Do you have any suggestions as for overclocking this video card? Also do you have any links to volt modding the card? Thanks.

http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=6987527
You obviously didn't read my post, NO I'm NOT a 3DMark master, but YES I did learn how to tweak my system, Please explain why I'm in the top 10 with my FSB @ 140?? Do you think I'm cheating? Get your ass over here and I'll show it to you LIVE and DIRECT....If I wanted to cheat I would've been #1.

Why do I say this? well I feel like I'm being ignored as you ask Kato for help...Do you really think your card is so much different?

No it isn't, and if it was you should be using Albatron drivers....let me remind you...my card is a 4200 GPU on a 4400/4600 board!!!

Or is it that you can't stand that Asus did a better job (again...tho the first Albatron's Ti4200 Turbo kicked serious ass....but my card is just about that old and kicks Albatrons behind).

Yeah I'm having fun, as I finally got THE most KICK WOOP BEHIND card man has ever seen (well something like that);) .

[Edward2]

What the **** is that all about????

I don't think I insinuated that you cheated. I simply said that my Nature test score was terrible compared to the other game tests. And I only asked Kato about the volt-mod because he has an Albatron board. I actually thought that your post was very informative. I plan on checking a lot of my settings tonight based on your suggestions.

As for our video cards being different or not, I have no idea. I am a video card overclocking newbie. My previous video card was a GF4 MX440. Can you provide any links on volt-modding it?

I don't play any video games on the computer, and I don't plan on setting any records with my video card overclock. I simply bought the video card because I thought it would be fun to play with (overclock).

[KILLorBE]

Sorry, I'm having a crappy day ('friends' not responding to my calls/sms and more of that kinda sh..).

Feel free to call me an ass (yes mods he's allowed to do so)...do it thru PM anyway;)

[Edward2]

No problem. We all have bad days now and then.

I just hope that I can figure out why my Nature test score is so low based on my setup. I looked at the top 15 people on our team and everyone scored 80+, while I only scored 65. I must have something setup wrong.

[nimrod0031]

I just opened a can of whoop ass on nature.....176fps :)

[subzero]

well i was getting around 83 FPS in nature but i have tweaked it up to 95 FPS but i still want over 100. i used omega 44.03 driers and that helped alot and win2000 also gives about 400 points more than winXP plus disabling services helped out nature again cause the more memory free it seems to help it alot. also nature can handle a higher core speed than the rest of the tests which is weird since it is the highest detail.. extra cooling let me get a few more mhz out of the card which help overall. but i still cant find exactly what makes the nature test run beter just some things you do will hget an extra 3 or FPS..

[Edward2]

Being a 3dmark newbie, I have a couple of questions.

Do you have to run all the tests at once? Or can you run a couple of tests, tweak your settings, and then run a couple more tests?

Also, how do you run the tests in different orders? I could not find an option to change the order.

[Edward2]

Hey Killorbe, I wanted to thank you for the suggestions.

I tried turning off the fog and setting everything to performance instead of quality, and I gained 400 points. Then I tried using the 44.03 drivers instead of the 45.23 drivers, and I gained another 600 points. So I have increased my score from 14151 to 15177.

My Nature test score increased from 65 to 86 fps. Still not great, but it is a huge improvement.

http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=6993662

[subzero]

which 44.03 drivers? original Nvidia or the omega drivers or the other tweaked drivers?

[Edward2]

My 15177 score was with the original Nvidia 44.03 drivers. I have also tried the following drivers (all of these tests have been run at the same CPU speed and same GPU/Mem speed):

Omega 44.03 = 15307 (http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=6993975)
Omega 43.45 = 15327 (http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=6994817)

I then tried setting the LOD to 4.0 in Rivatuner and scored 15405 (http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=6995834).

I still want to try a couple of more drivers both Nvidia and Omega. Then I probably need to lap the GPU heatsink and see if I can increase the GPU/Memory speed some more. I am probably near the limit for my current speed.

[El<(')>Maxi]

Originally posted by Edward2
I then tried setting the LOD to 4.0 in Rivatuner and scored 15405 (http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=6995834).



Can someone tell me what LOD is? I looked around in RivaTuner and did not see it. Is it specific to Nvidia card's?

Maxi

[KILLorBE]

Originally posted by El&lt;(')&gt;Maxi
Can someone tell me what LOD is?
LOD stands for Level Of Detail, and it's not specific to Nvidia cards.

Originally posted by El&lt;(')&gt;Maxi
I looked around in RivaTuner and did not see it.

Maxi

Run RivaTuner -->Main tab --> "Driver settings" click "Customize..." then click the second Icon from the left (It will say "Customize DirectDraw and Direct3D settings" on mouse move over).

Set VSync to "always off", disable USB and such in BIOS, remove all PCI, ISA, AMR and what not cards, Set refresh rate to 60, Only use 1 stick of memory (as you can see I'm doing fine with only 128MB), shut down all programs running in the back ground.

Some say you should defrag, but I doubt it really helps as I scored around 10K with a 2.5GB PIO mode 4 HDD (20MB/s Max.), but that HDD came directly from a VIA board (Didn't reinstall the OS nor did I uninstall the VIA drivers, and my CPU ran at a slightly lower speed).

As soon as I have some more time on my hands I'll see if I can come up with some more tweaks.

[subzero]

hmm how can 1 stick rather than 2 make a difference. im sure i tried this some time ago and 2 made no difference. plus wouldnt dual channel make it a little better anyway? thanks for the tips though and keep em comming :)

[El<(')>Maxi]

Hey Sub if your on XP then try this.

From run box type | msconfig | select diagnostic startup | reboot | run bench | for 2K1, save project | msconfig | select normal startup | reboot | then open 3DMARK and submit the saved score:p

Hey KILL orB, well the reason I did not see LOD was because RT say's I do not have a supported driver installed. I am running the CAT 3.5's. I'll bet the softmod hack has somthing to so with that...

Maxi