regading 3dmark 05

[SNieX]

hey guys

i want to bench my xfx 6800gt and get the scores so that i can compare... are there any special settings or options in 3dmark 05 that everyone uses so that all "benches are in the same perspective"

like the only thing i did to achieve my scores was "run test" and that was it... i didnt add or remove any of the options or maps. or textures or anything like that...

what i want to achieve is the GPU score...

thanks all...
screen-shots would be highly appriated for the options and settings of the 3dmark05

Thanks

SNieX

[Sucka]

We run all tests on default settings as far as the benchmark in concerned. You can do tweaks in windows and what not to improve scores however.

[speed bump]

Hit escape when the first CPU test starts and you won't have to go through the bother of the any sound or CPU tests to get your score.

With 3dmark05 and a card like the 6800gt you probably will seem very little to almost no gain with overclocking your CPU into the far reaches of its power.

With a p4 you'll probably wan't to be running DX9c and win XP.

For drivers I would try the newest 77 WHQL drivers even though some people swear by the 71.89's the 77.72's are worth about 100 points over them.

Unfortunetly there isn't a huge amount of tweaking that makes more than a 5-10 point differince in 3dmark05, now 3dmark01 is very different you could be teaking for 01 for months and still not be the best at it.

[ludeboy12]

hmm.....always thought there was some sort of secret tweaking involved.....

i always see people post scores and they frequently say "without any tweaking" or "still tweaking"......always wondered what tweaks people are talking about as i dont really know anything when it comes to that area....

[speed bump]

There is alot of tweaking involved but alot of the "secret" tweaks are more things that come from 3dmark01 and aquamark3. Do you still need alot of tweaking? Yes. If you really wan't to see what tweaking for an all out 3dmark score is like look at Guatams excellent 3dmark tweaking guide nestled in the stickys.

[Sjaak]

see people post scores and they frequently say "without any tweaking" or "still tweaking"......always wondered what tweaks people are talking about as i dont really know anything when it comes to that area....

Mostly tweaks with ram timings, GPU core/mem Mhz'age, OS tweaks (services, ram usage, 3rd party programs) and such.

[Sucka]

As mentioned, by tweaking they ussually mean memory timings, Windows tweaks, drivers, and so forth. There is no tweaking you can do to the benchmark itself, otherwise that would not be a legit run.

[jpersinger]

Regarding cpu speed effects; when initially testing my rig I was utilizing 3dmark 05 in the stability testing process. I recorded scores for various CPU speeds...I don't have them in front of me right now...but it seems like I was scoring 3500-3600 at default speeds (2.0 gHz) and 4100 at 2.8 gHz...however obviously mem speeds were different as well. I believe for the 2.0 gHz run I was on 1:1 DDR 400 and on the 2.8 gHz run I was at either DDR 491 or DDR 510 (I think DDR 491 as this is what it should be with the 5/6 divider; but memtest seemed to think I was at DDR 510 and my voltage requirements to pass memtest stable were higher than at DDR 500 so...). Timings were similar if not congruent.

Moral of story...cpu speed effects (in combination with mem) effects 3d mark fairly significantly...in my case around 15% improvement.

[jpersinger]

I need to devote some time to these OS tweaks...I have not dabbled in this and I know that usually there are 30-40 processes running on my pc and the idle mem usage is in the 200-300 MB range if I remember correctly. I'm sure this isn't helping my benching.

EDIT: 3 stars...

[ludeboy12]

sweet i'll have to look at the tweaking guide and what not.....

i didnt realize i needed to tweak my OS and what not.....nor did i reaize that timings made a difference either....

gonna have to play with these things a lil and retest.....at any rate thanx for the heads up guys....