View Full Version : 20k in 3Dmark2001 with a 9700 Pro?
Was playing around last night with my 2.4C watercooled rig (see signature). With a fresh harddrive reformat and OS install, I nailed my highest 3Dmark2001 score ever. Something like 19.7k, so now I'm obsessed in reaching 20k with my 9700 Pro (my 9800 XT has no problem doing 20k with default settings and default speed).
Help me hit 20k, please. I'm using Cat 3.7 drivers. Would Cat 3.10 help a little?
I've set the the top sliders to "performance". AA and AF are set to application preference.
I've overclocked the card to the point where I first started seeing artifacts and then I backed off a little. I don't want to run it with artifacts, that's cheating in my opinion.
What else can I do? Fast Write is enabled, would turning it off help increase me score?
Are there many folks here able to hit 20k in 3Dmark2001?
Anything else I'm missing? Thanks.
fast writes is gonna lower your score 1-2 percent if its off...try cats 3.10 they may help, also don forget to close all apps before runnin 3dmark
try disabling EVERYTHING, including shutting down Explorer. You can always restart explorer after you're done running 3Dmark. Also, I always find that I get my highest scores after a fresh restart. You also might want to test different AGP Aperture sizes.
Ok, I'll try Cat 3.10 drivers and I'll turn off everything. I do know Norton Auto Protect runs in the background, so I'll disable that since this rig is currently not connected to the internet.
One other thing I'll do after reading some other hints is to do a fresh defrag prior to running the test. I'm also going to disable on-board sound and other on-board features since they use system resources.
I will play around with various AGP settings and video-caching settings in the BIOS.
Anything else?
SybrCLocK
02-03-04, 01:42 PM
did you vold mod your carD?
Try running in BIOS higher FSB's for the AGB slot... if you haven't allready.. let me know how it works..
oh...and good luck
Card is not volt modded. It does have RAM sinks and a Swifty water block. I can adjust AGP voltage in the BIOS and I might do that to see if I can O/C the card a few more MHz..
Sybr, thanks for reminding me about AGP bus speed. I'm so used to leaving that locked on default that I didn't even think of increasing the AGP frequency a little.
Cool, this gives me several things to try tonight... 20k or bust.
Steven4563
02-03-04, 05:33 PM
http://www.blackviper.com/?
go to there and tweak that system :)
Leave fast writes enabled.
try cat 3.2
do what steven suggested
Run test 1 at a time
And do a bunch of car low runs after a restart I.E. run test, restart run test again, restart. do this to find a target score for the test. Every pnce in a while the score jumps a few frames ant thats your target. when you find it make sure the run you submit has a "targeted" score
Cat 3.5 and AGP Aperture of 64mb works the best for me. 3.5 is definitely the best; just look at all the top scores for the card. 3.10 works terribly for me, but some have had success. Running tests 1 at a time usually hurts me, but it works for most. Make sure you've got all caching off.
AGP voltage does nothing to add OCability to the card because the card has voltage regulators I think that's how 8x cards can be used in 4x slots.
Fine tune the BIOS for fastest ram Timings, I hear 128 or 256 AGP aperture is the best. Disable USB, or anyports(eg. Serial, Printer) you don't use, set everything to performance in the BIOS. Disable anything you don't need, even think about removing extra PCI cards. www.omegacorner.com has a list of Optimal BIOS settings for max scores.
Install Omega 4.1cats, set all to performance, disable the services according to blackviper for gaming, Clean out the Temporary files on the computer, defrag. Restart run 3Dmark and cross your fingers, crossing your fingers can mean getting to 20k or getting 19,999.
GOOD LUCK!
Dissable USB I forgot that one. Good one Tebore
Also If you dissable any noon essentials on the PCI bus it's an increase (they wont hog it letting your agp have it all)
Bump up the PCI latency timmer also. sine nothing else iwould be on it at the time your card will now hog it for longer.
harryinny3
02-03-04, 10:41 PM
I get a good 2-3% boost when its off. Try setting your pagefile to like 3000 min and 3000 max. this will most likely give you your needed marks. Also try the 64mb Aparture sp? . That also raised my score when i lowered it down from 128.
Gl
Harry
number 138
02-03-04, 11:06 PM
I tried the CAT 3.2's with 8.1, and the 3.10's and 4.1's with DX9.0b and saw very little difference. All after fresh reformats.
My best DX9 score was with 3.10's but only by about 100 points.
What overclocking tool are you using?
Our systems are very similar, so you should be able to do it. Good luck squeezing out the last three bills.
20k 3Dmark01 (http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=7442382)
Been tweaking all evening. Using Powerstrip.
I screwed up in my first post. My max last night was 19.3k, not 19.7 like I originally posted. My bad. After I got home and read my notes and looked at screen shots I realized my mistake.
I'm at 19,758 right now. I've tried everything that's been suggested. Now trying every Cat driver I can lay my hands on. The last 250 points are the hardest.
Some of these drivers didn't seem to make much difference. Finally got the job done with Cat 3.5 plus lots of tweaking trial and error. Was stuck at 19,996 points for a while.
http://mywebpage.netscape.com/batboybain/M0-3Dmark2001-max.JPG
Congratulations.:clap:
I remember when I broke 6000. I was so happy.
Just 14000 more points and i'll catch up to you;)
asw7576
02-04-04, 04:34 AM
batboy... don't forget to conclude your findings. The best driver for 9700pro.
Cat 4.1 is slower than Cat 3.10.
Cat 4.1 shaved 200 points in 3dmark 2001se. I tested it with 9800pro.
Some says Cat3.7 is the fastest driver for 9800 pro.
harryinny3
02-04-04, 06:28 AM
Is a beautiful thing. I allways keep a Burnt copy of it on hand incase they next relese sucks. Your right though. The 3.7 does seem to be there best work to date.
And they work on every card they advertised they would work on. Unlike 3.8-4.1 drivers.
Harry
GOOD JOB. Let me guess you didn't cross your fingers at 19.996 and you did after. :D
The finger crossing and cussing must of worked. I might try Cat 3.7 again. They did work good too. I'll outline what I did a little more in detail later today... off to work now.
heheh sounds like its become a personal secret :) jp
Summary of how I made 20k in 3Dmark2001 with a 9700 Pro.
1) Hardware is listed in my signature. Watercooled 2.4C running at 3.56 gig. Mushkin Level 2 RAM using the 3:2 ratio (DDR396) and 2,2,2,5 timings. WD Raptor SATA harddrive, two optical drives, and no PCI cards. Built by ATI 9700 Pro with Swiftech waterblock and Tweakmonster RAM sinks. Case is cooled with four 120mm fans. Abit IC7 mobo has modded northbridge air cooling and small passive southbridge sink. I can post a pic if anyone is truly interested.
2) Fresh HDD format and WinXP Pro installed, using service pack 1 and DirectX9b. The .inf drivers were installed from the motherboard install CD. The OS was optimized by following the guide at this website: http://www.blackviper.com
3) Virtual memory page file set to a static 1000 (since I had 1 gig of RAM). Use a higher amount if you have less RAM. I disabled everything in the task bar and in the startup (nothing running in the background hogging resources). I defragged the harddrive constantly and rebooted in between tests.
4) I flashed to the most recent BIOS update. In the BIOS I disabled on-board sound, USB, and printer port. Tried various AGP aperatures, but 128 seemed to work the best for me. Disabling video caching didn't do much that I could tell.
5) Disabling Hyperthreading helped a little.
6) Increasing the AGP voltage allowed me to O/C the vid card core 10 to 15 MHz more, but did nothing to increase vid RAM speed. (I know others claim this won't help, but it did improve stability in my system). Increasing AGP bus speed caused problems, so I left it locked at the default 66 Mhz.
7) Vid card settings were all set to maximum performance. AA and AF set to application preference. I overclocked the vid card until I just started seeing artifacts and then backed off a little. My vid was overclocked to core=400 and memory=350 using Powerstrip. Was rather disappointed how the RAM wimped out.
8) Cat 3.7 and Cat 3.5 seemed to work the best for me. My best score was with Cat 3.5, but I did other tweaks after I installed them, so I will try the Cat 3.7 drivers again. Was not happy with 3.2, 3.9, or 3.10. Did not try 4.1 or 3.4 yet. I'm going to play with the drivers some more tonight.
Did I miss anything?
I tried the Cat 3.4 drivers and they were about 24 points lower than the Cat 3.5. Next I tried Cat 3.7 which resulted in only 4 points less than the Cat 3.5, which is well within the margin of error, so essential both 3.5 and 3.7 scored the same in my particular system. I decided to stay with Cat 3.7 since they have more bugs fixed for various games and apps. Besides, I was too lazy to change the drivers again. Although, to be fair, I should test the Cat 4.1 drivers too I guess.
SybrCLocK
02-05-04, 02:01 PM
batboy, could you post a pic with the video card? i would like to check out the ram sinks and the core sink too..
do you have problems in games? i mean hangups?
the_donger
02-05-04, 02:08 PM
http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=7518195 (http://)
here is my 9700pro still tweaking system alittle. hope to get it higher after some tweaks
the_donger
02-05-04, 02:10 PM
http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=7518195
Very impressive score, Donger. That's about what my 9800XT does.
Here ya go Sybr... Never have any problem in games.
http://mywebpage.netscape.com/batboybain/9700+pro+mods4.jpg
http://mywebpage.netscape.com/batboybain/9700+pro+mods3.jpg
SybrCLocK
02-13-04, 05:03 PM
batboy, i`m bringing this post to life again for a simple reason. i thought about changing the stock GPU sink, and replacing it with a stock P4 heatsink. What do you think about it? i dont know if the weight is to much
or did any of you replace the stock sink with any other CPU sink?
Sorry, I haven't looked at this thread in ages. I've seen people put big heatsinks on vid cards before, but don't ever recall seeing a P-4 sink on one though... they are sort of big and heavy. Anything's possible I guess.
Well, I just modified a spark 7 and mounted on my volt modded XT and then modded the stock hsf to fit on the back of the gpu. I went from max 2001se stable overclock of 510/420 to 535/437. No artifact jumped from 477/405 to 500/414. I was using a Giant II before. I looked at the stock intel hsf and it wouldn't fit on the XT. I'm not sure how it would fit on the 9700
SybrCLocK
02-26-04, 10:23 PM
a spark you say... hmmm..
Thermaltake Spark 7 @ 6000 rpm
pkrew did you lower the rpm`s or... is yout pc really loud?!
meatneck
02-26-04, 10:23 PM
i just got 13085 with my ati 9600pro..thats good for me..as a matter of fact i did a compare results with other amd and ati 9600 series and i beat the highest score by about 400 points..now all i need is an ati 9800xt and ill be set(and that wont be for a while i just spent 600 bucks on upgrades last week)some day i hope to see the 20,000 range..great score
update..new score of 13125. the bad news is 3dmark shows my cpu as a duron so i searched the durons and im far from having the top score(oh well i had a moment of fame in my own mind)
It depends on what I'm doing with it. It pretty loud when I turn up all the fans but not bad when I set them down a bit. The case has 5 smart fan II and I have a 120mm antec smart cool with the thermistor shorted so it runs full on my memory. They get pretty load at full throttle. But not bad when I turn them down abit.I have to lower the overclock on the card when I do though. Overall I'm very happy with the upgrade.
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