Athlon 64 3400+ and system gettting HORRIBLE benchmark scores

[FastFSB]

Last week I built my Athlon 64 3400+ system with a Gigabyte GA-K8VNXP, and 2x 512mb Mushkin DDR433, a promise sx4000 raid controller, 4x 120GB WD Special Editions, Enermax 550w PS Chaintech GF 5950, etc. Everything works great except my graphics benchmarks are way too low, although the sandra benchmarks are fine and my HD benchmarks are great.

The problem is not the graphics card as the Radeon 9700 Pro that I used until today was getting scores that were just as bad. I have reinstalled winxp twice but the problem persists. I am using the most recent graphics, chipset, etc drivers and I don't believe there are any conflicts or overused IRQ addresses. I am also running distributed.net (of course I turn it and other background programs off for benchmarking) and I get around 8.1 million keys/s on RC5-72, which sounds about right. I am pretty competent when it comes to building computers, and although I have built only p4 systems in the last 2 years I have worked with AMD systems before that. I've never run into something like this before, so any suggestions would be appreciated. Here are the benchmark number:)

Sandra CPU Dhrystones:9358 mips
Sandra CPU whetstones:3740/4466 mflops

Sandra memory bandwidth: 3050mbps

Sandra CPU Multimedia: 20951 it/s / 22530 it/s

Sandra Cache & Memory Benchmark: Curve is exactly as is should be

Pcmark 2004 score: 3863

3dmark 2001 se score: 13852

3dmark 2003 score: 4716

IRQ info:
IRQ 0 System timer OK
IRQ 1 Standard 101/102-Key or Microsoft Natural PS/2 Keyboard OK
IRQ 3 Communications Port (COM2) OK
IRQ 4 Communications Port (COM1) OK
IRQ 6 Standard floppy disk controller OK
IRQ 8 System CMOS/real time clock OK
IRQ 9 Microsoft ACPI-Compliant System OK
IRQ 11 Universal Serial Bus (USB) Controller OK
IRQ 12 PS/2 Compatible Mouse OK
IRQ 13 Numeric data processor OK
IRQ 14 Primary IDE Channel OK
IRQ 15 Secondary IDE Channel OK
IRQ 16 NVIDIA GeForce FX 5950 Ultra OK
IRQ 16 Texas Instruments OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller OK
IRQ 18 WinXP Promise FastTrak S150 SX4/SX4000 Series OK
IRQ 18 Realtek RTL8169/8110 Family Gigabit Ethernet NIC OK
IRQ 21 VIA Rev 5 or later USB Universal Host Controller OK
IRQ 21 VIA Rev 5 or later USB Universal Host Controller OK
IRQ 21 VIA Rev 5 or later USB Universal Host Controller OK
IRQ 21 VIA Rev 5 or later USB Universal Host Controller OK
IRQ 22 Realtek AC'97 Audio for VIA (R) Audio Controller OK
IRQ 23 VIA Rhine II Fast Ethernet Adapter OK

[sandman001]

Do you have agp fast write enabled?

Did you test it all to make sure it's stable?

are you sure you got the chipset drivers? One time I extracted them, but never actually installed them. dumb mistakes happen.

[AL Romero]

wow, that IS horrible scores for a 64. hope u figure it out cuz thats a fattie system :D

[Gautam]

Could you give a compare link, please?

[snvpa]

I'm gonna take a wild guess and say that the agp drivers might not be installed, I believe on some nforce platforms its a different file and doesn't install with the chipset drivers. The only thing that looks off is the graphics benchies. That system should pull 20k in 01 and 6500 or so in 03.

[FastFSB]

Here is the compare link: http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k3=2163440
I should have included that to begin with :)

The chipset is the K8T800 and I have the drivers installed. I also have the latest drivers from nvidia's website installed. The system ran prime95 for 20 hours the day after I built it and produced no errors. 3dmark/sandra/pcmark do not crash - the system is rock solid IMO.

[bypolar1]

It seems to me that you are running in 4X and not 8X.

[Xtc4u]

If it is using something along the lines of the AMD 8151 AGP 3.0 tunnel its a ATI and AGP driver conflict. My Tyan Thunder K8W and ATI cards do not get along because of that. Probably not related but I got horrible scores on my Dual Opteron rig. Ended up selling a brand new 9800 Pro and sticking with my GeForce cards.

[Maxvla]

everything except the 3d scores look spot on. i'm not really familar with the via k8 chipset so i can't really help. sandra scores for a64 are always lower than they should be. except memory which seems to do pretty well. my record is 4574mb/s single channel :)

[Thatbonokid]

if the 4x agp isnt it...i bet u were messing around with ur graphics and set ur Anti aliasing and anisotropic filtering all the way up and unchecked application preference...well at leasst thats with ati cards.


it could even be that GEFORCE SUCKS REAL REAL BAD AND I CANT BELIEVE U BOUGHT THAT CARD:)

[snvpa]

your agp drivers are not installed unless 3d mark doens't recodnize your board, but that seem sunlikely, Notice in the agp current/ avalible setting your current is 0x. I'd uninstall adn reinstall all drivers that came with your mobo making sure than some type of agp driver is installed.

[Xtc4u]

I had the same issues with my chipset, no xfer rate shown. Even after reformatting countless times and trying different installation practices it never worked right. I swapped out to my GeForce card and it works 100% Stable.

[#18]

Did you install the chipset driver from the CD came with the motherboard? It's the first thing you have to do right after install the OS. It must be done before install the video card driver.

I had trouble to break 18k in 3dmark2k1SE with the system below in my sig just because I skipped this step. And it gets over 20k after I fixed it.

Try to do things in following orders,

install OS
install chipset driver from the CD came with the motherboard
install directx 9.0
install video card driver
then rest stuff do whatever order you like


Also make sure the AA and AF are both disabled in control panel. And AGP rate should set to 8x. Fast write needs to be enabled.

[zxlr8]

Wow I am at 20k in 3d01 and I probably spent well over $800 less than you. I would make sure it is not your raid controller using system resources. Hook up just one drive directly and try it that way. Hopefully it is not!! I think that it could be the video card but I am not sure why it would be so bad. What are your settings for the video card in the bios? Aperture? agp? Is your card or cpu oced?

[zxlr8]

Wait, your memory bandwidth is abnormally low.....try one stick of ram at a time and make sure you have the memory in the right slots to enable dual channel, oh wait they don't have dual channel right?

[Shade00]

His bandwidth is fine. Go uninstall the video card drivers, reinstall the Via Hyperion 4-in-1s, and then reinstall the card drivers.

[bottoneatrpi]

Umm...your cpu score in 3dmark 2003 should be alot higher than 235 :-/

That seems processor dependent for some reason...my
a64 3000+ @ 2.2ghz gets around 650 or 700 for the cpu score in 3dmark2k3.

I'm still not sure what could be wrong but that cpu score is way off.

Btw, I've only got a 9500np softmodded at 380ish/300ish, so the video card isn't any stronger.

[Motley]

his AGP reports at 0x ???

[Motley]

Originally posted by #18
Did you install the chipset driver from the CD came with the motherboard? It's the first thing you have to do right after install the OS. It must be done before install the video card driver.

I had trouble to break 18k in 3dmark2k1SE with the system below in my sig just because I skipped this step. And it gets over 20k after I fixed it.

Try to do things in following orders,

install OS
install chipset driver from the CD came with the motherboard
install directx 9.0
install video card driver
then rest stuff do whatever order you like


Also make sure the AA and AF are both disabled in control panel. And AGP rate should set to 8x. Fast write needs to be enabled.

revised...

install OS
install chipset driver from the CD came with the motherboard
install XP SP1
install directx 9.0b
install video card driver
then rest stuff do whatever order you like

make sure you install chipset drivers BEFORE installing Service Pack for WinXP!!

[Maxvla]

Originally posted by bottoneatrpi
Umm...your cpu score in 3dmark 2003 should be alot higher than 235 :-/

That seems processor dependent for some reason...my
a64 3000+ @ 2.2ghz gets around 650 or 700 for the cpu score in 3dmark2k3.

I'm still not sure what could be wrong but that cpu score is way off.

Btw, I've only got a 9500np softmodded at 380ish/300ish, so the video card isn't any stronger.
my a64 3000 scores 800 at 2350mhz

you are right. 235 is very wrong.

[Silent Buddha]

Cool 'n Quiet on?

[cujo]

i do all windows things sp1, criticals, dx9, first. then i do chipset drivers. then vid card drivers. then other shtuff. sp1 is needed for usb2.0, so why would you do chipset first? also, why use drivers that came with cd? i only do cause all the new nforce drivers give me static (2.03 rules). in most other cases the newer ones are probably better.

anyway i've never had any problems. benchmarks are where they should be.

[FastFSB]

Ok I think the problem is solved now. I reinstalled winxp and all the drivers and my 3dmark 01 score is now just over 20k. The bad part is that I don't know why it worked this time and not the last 4 times. Either way I'm going to benchmark more tomorrow after school & work. Thanks for all the help!

[#18]

Just over 20k at stock speed on both CPU and video card?

[Silent Buddha]

A little over 20k for 3dMark01 sounds about right for an A64 3400+ and FX 5950 Ultra at stock. Glad you got it working!

[Maxvla]

Originally posted by #18
Just over 20k at stock speed on both CPU and video card?
sound right. my 3000 and 9800pro at stock scores about 19,200.

[#18]

I was thinking that time we both saw someone got 21k with an Athlon 64 3200+ and 9800Pro both at stock. I expected a little more, something around 22k from a stock 3400+ since it runs 200MHZ higher. Maybe 9800Pro is better than FX5950 Ultra in 3dmark2k1SE?

[340Duster]

Just for comparison sake, I ran 3DMark01SE a minute ago one time at all stock speeds on the system below and got 19045. I tried it at 2200MHz but it froze during the first test. I guess I need more AGP tweaking.