Gautam
01-29-04, 07:05 PM
This is assuming you've gotten all the no-brainers down(chipset/video drivers, stable overclock, etc.) but are still feeling like you're not scoring quite up to par. When I first ran 3DMark on my new system, I knew that something just wasn't right about my score. It wasn't outrageously low, but I got topped by everyone within 150MHz of me... All the guides just talked about how to overclock a video card, and to install chipset drivers, and other basic stuff that I had down. So I got tweaking, and found plenty of nuances along the way. Here's my journey through 3DMark. Hope it helps, and please list any possible improvements if you know of them. I think there's more left.
All of this is done at 10.5x220(2316MHz) and video card clocks of 445/370. These are all approximate values, and may have had stuff like reinstalls of windows in between. Starting from the top...
17500 First bench WinXP and DX9.0
17700 Clean install
18100 Changed AGP Aperture from 128mb to 64mb
18500 Reinstalled Windows with APIC enabled
18700 Changed from Catalyst 3.6 to 3.5
19100 Installed Windows 2000 and Directx 8.1
19300 Changed virtual memory size from 384mb to 480mb
Close to 2000 points gained without changing any speeds :) My score is still worse than many similar systems because of my low amount of memory, lack of dual channel and relatively relaxed timings. I think that 20k at this speed could be possible without these constraints. Some other notes:
Real-time priority only seems to hurt
Disabling title screens only hurts
nForce 3.13 performs worse than 2.45 and 2.03
Catalyst 3.10 and 4.1 are awful for 3DMark
1024x768@85hz seems to be the best resolution and refresh rate
Scores tend to vary over a margin of about 150pts, mainly thanks to the Car tests
This all only applies to my systems. Different drivers and settings may do better on yours.
All of this is done at 10.5x220(2316MHz) and video card clocks of 445/370. These are all approximate values, and may have had stuff like reinstalls of windows in between. Starting from the top...
17500 First bench WinXP and DX9.0
17700 Clean install
18100 Changed AGP Aperture from 128mb to 64mb
18500 Reinstalled Windows with APIC enabled
18700 Changed from Catalyst 3.6 to 3.5
19100 Installed Windows 2000 and Directx 8.1
19300 Changed virtual memory size from 384mb to 480mb
Close to 2000 points gained without changing any speeds :) My score is still worse than many similar systems because of my low amount of memory, lack of dual channel and relatively relaxed timings. I think that 20k at this speed could be possible without these constraints. Some other notes:
Real-time priority only seems to hurt
Disabling title screens only hurts
nForce 3.13 performs worse than 2.45 and 2.03
Catalyst 3.10 and 4.1 are awful for 3DMark
1024x768@85hz seems to be the best resolution and refresh rate
Scores tend to vary over a margin of about 150pts, mainly thanks to the Car tests
This all only applies to my systems. Different drivers and settings may do better on yours.