Why does my Aopen Geforce 2 suck? Or is it my system?

[kevreh]

Hola-

I just bought an Aopen Geforce 2 32ram MX card last night at Microcenter for $50 after rebates. Well, after tweaking my settings I can only get 393 on 3dmark2001! According to the MadOnion comparison others are getting quite a bit more with my setup. That's pretty much the same score I had with my Voodoo3. After looking at my specs below, do you think it's my card, or a limitation of my system?

PII 333mhz
Asus P2L97DS mobo
128ram
9gig SCSI

Thanks.............

[Violator]

Dude your cpu is seriously limiting your GeForce, you really need at least a 5-600Mhz CPU to give it enough data to work with.

[RedDeathDrinker]

Yeah, I'm running Violators old PIII 600 and mobo, and I get "just bordering on the edge of" decent results (max acheived @1024*768, 32 bit colour, 3DMark2001 - 1635)

Now just waiting for him to get his GeF3 card (I want hid Radeon....)

Hey V!, when you upgrading to a Palimino and new mobo??????

[Violator]

soon my impatient friend soon

hehehehe

:)

[kevreh]

Is there a direct corralation between processor speed and 3dmark score? I mean, even if I had a 1ghz cpu my score would only "scale" to about 1200 (1ghz is 3x what I have). I'm just Wondering if there isn't something else I'm overlooking.

kev

[Violator]

It will scale to a certain point, once you are over 1ghz cpu the card will become the bottleneck. Bear in mind as well that 3dMark2001 is VERY intensive on your system. Have you tried 2000?

[kevreh]

Originally posted by Violator
It will scale to a certain point, once you are over 1ghz cpu the card will become the bottleneck. Bear in mind as well that 3dMark2001 is VERY intensive on your system. Have you tried 2000?

I'll try 2000 tonight. But reddeathdrinker sez above: "PIII 600 and mobo, and I get "just bordering on the edge of" decent results (max acheived @1024*768, 32 bit colour, 3DMark2001 - 1635) "

So (not to bitch too much) his processor is a bit less than twice as fast as mine but he's getting results that are over 4 times better than mine. Hell, my score was at 800x600 too! I'm really wondering if its 'cause AOpen is a cheap crappy brand???

kev

[funnyperson1]

well mhz is not always a fair wayto compare cpus for example p3 vs. celeron, or athlon vs p4, a p3 compared to a p3 and p2 by clock speed comaprison is not fair at all.......also a p3 also requires a superior mobo(100 or 133 mhz) and superior ram pc133.....its just not fair to the p2......

[Zuck Gou :)]

Might be an MX-200

[e laursen]

Could also be that the L2 cache of the PII is only running at half speed. I say CPU. The MX (even 200) should push better figures than that. Your CPU is .25 micron technology; dude is old. Newer CPU architectures (ie PIII) also have newer extentions that help performance. It really isn't fair to compare MHz across architectures. Consider the Athlon vs. PIV... Athlon wins at lower MHz.

The drivers you are running for the card, the version of windows, and DirectX version all play into the score. Using 3dMark2000, I get about 4800+ with a c2-600@900 (next generation from yours, though;.18 coppermine core) and gf2mx-200 (using win98reg and 6.50 drivers.)

BTW, isn't a 333MHz processor running at 66MHz FSB? THAT could be the biggest bottlneck (except your CPU is still old, no offense!)

[kevreh]

Yeah, figured that I'm only putting off the inevitable of upgrading my cpu & mobo. It is kinda silly to have a newer 3d graphics card couple with an "ancient" (in computer years) cpu. I'm eying a Athlon or Duron. Can't believe they give the P4 such a spankin.
Plus they're sooooo much more affordable.