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20k in 3Dmark2001 with a 9700 Pro?

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batboy

Senior Moment
Joined
Jan 12, 2001
Location
Kansas, USA
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.
 
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?
 
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.
 
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.
 
Only the 9600 series cards need fastwrites

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
 
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
 
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.

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;)
 
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.
 
The 3.7 driver

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
 
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.
 
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