Does this sound right or should performance be a little better???

The Wicker Man · Apr 26, 2003

My CPU right now is running at 2079.7mhz (166.4*12.5)
My ram is Mushkin Black PC2700 2-2-2-6-1T
I have the Palit Geforce 4 Ti 4200 128 meg (core 250 mem 420)
Quake 3 FPS max settings I get 190 FPS
3DMark2001 I get 10,400 (approx, havent run it for a couple days)
If I over clock the core or memory, the scores drop.

It seems, to me anywase, that scores should be a little higher....
Or am I expecting to much from current set up????
I was told it's my CPU holding me back, can someone confirm this for me?????

If it is, I guess my olny recourse is to get the NF7 and faster ram
a little ahead of schedual.....

Th0r · Apr 26, 2003

The CPU and ur Memory are holding u back.

And when u overclock ur GFX, restart ur machine....then redo the tests...

Shade00 · Apr 26, 2003

I guess you could say your CPU is holding you back, but I think it's more the card's fault. I ran basically the same CPU setup (166x12.5) for a while and with my Ti4200 at 250/500 I would score around 10,700. After O/Cing it to 285/560 it pumped it up to ~11.5k. So I think your score sounds about right if you're not overclocking the card. BTW, it was a PNY 64mb Ti4200.

The Wicker Man · Apr 26, 2003

I am not sure I understand the bit about restarting after overclocking the card, but I can live with it I guess...

Should I have it overclock the card when windows start?????
I am assuming thats what you mean.....

Damian · Apr 26, 2003

You don't have to restart after overclocking.

Movax · Apr 26, 2003

I don't think it is CPU, I can hit about 9500 with my setup. (Sig..)
You should be able to get your FSB to at least 170.

The Wicker Man · Apr 26, 2003

Installed the 41.09 det's and stock for card is 10,830 marks
I guess I can live with that for a while......heh
I wonder why when it's overclocked, even just a little bit, the scores and FPS drop.....

Damian · Apr 26, 2003

What RAM does your card have? Doesn't it have 5ns or so?

The Wicker Man · Apr 26, 2003

Movax said:
I don't think it is CPU, I can hit about 9500 with my setup. (Sig..)
You should be able to get your FSB to at least 170.

I have had it as high as 190 but then I have to severly relax the mem timings......
Right now at 166, it is running 2-2-2-6 1T and Sandra bench scores are very close to what I had at 185-190 with slow ram settings.......

Th0r · Apr 26, 2003

No, what i mean is, overclock ir GFX, then restart ur computer.

The Wicker Man · Apr 26, 2003

if I overclock the card, then restart, it will go back to default, correct?????
Unless I do it in the bios, correct???

The Wicker Man · Apr 26, 2003

Damian said:
What RAM does your card have? Doesn't it have 5ns or so?

I am not sure what ram is on the card, I put heatsinks on the chips and didnt think to look.........

But I sent Palit an email and ask'd what speed the ram was supposed to run at, cause it defaults to 420.
They said in the reply it runs, well heres there reply:

We use memory chip either 4ns or 5ns access time. We optimize
not only the timing for the best graphics performance but also cost
performance by choosing right components which included PCB
material. We know the user deeply concern both performances.

Would you please concern total balance of quality and performance
of the product.

kestrel · Apr 26, 2003

Sounds like they put your email through a babelfish translator, then sent their reply through the same translator.

Black_Paladin · Apr 27, 2003

The Wicker Man said:
I have had it as high as 190 but then I have to severly relax the mem timings......
Right now at 166, it is running 2-2-2-6 1T and Sandra bench scores are very close to what I had at 185-190 with slow ram settings.......

Aaaaah, you have fallen victim to *Sandritis*!

Sandra might show you that theoretically, your performance at 190 FSB with slow RAM timings should be about the same with 166 FSB with fast RAM timings BUT IT'S LYING TO YOU!

Increasing the FSB will *ALWAYS* give you more performance than increasing the memory speed or timings EVEN IF your memory is causing you a bottleneck when you are increasing the FSB.

Ed had a nice article about this on the front page of Overclockers.com and it's called "Memory isn't everything".
Please take a look here:

http://www.overclockers.com/tips00324/

So, I would suggest that you up your FSB to 190 and relax your memory timings and run a real benchmark like UT2003 or even Quake III to compare your performance to your previous performance.

You will get the BEST performance when both the FSB and the RAM are running at their maximum speeds but if you had to sacrifice one for the other, ALWAYS sacrifice memory timings and speed. Never sacrifice the crucial FSB.

For one thing, the Athlon is more FSB starved than anything else starved (this is *especially* true with nForce 2s dual channel DDR).

The Wicker Man · Apr 27, 2003

Ok I went up to 185 FSB x 11.5 multi, CPU was 2.1xxghz
I ran Quake3, 3DMark2001, and Vulpine GLmark.

3DMark2k1SE
185 FSB 3DMark
166 FSB 3DMark

Quake 3:
--------------------- Q3Bench RESULTS ---------------------

FILE: q3b_042703_161325.txt
START TIME: Sunday, April 27, 2003 04:13:25 PM
COMMENT: 166 FSB fast ram timings

BENCHMARK SETUP:
----------------
DEMO: four
CFG FILES RUN: Maximum
RESOLUTIONS RUN: 1024x768
NUMBER OF RUNS: 3 times.

MAX Configuration File Settings:
(1024x768) 192.3, 192.5, 192.5, AVERAGE FPS: 192.43

*********************************************

--------------------- Q3Bench RESULTS ---------------------

FILE: q3b_042703_153227.txt
START TIME: Sunday, April 27, 2003 03:32:27 PM
COMMENT: 185 FSB Slow ram timings

BENCHMARK SETUP:
----------------
DEMO: four
CFG FILES RUN: Maximum
RESOLUTIONS RUN: 1024x768
NUMBER OF RUNS: 3 times.

MAX Configuration File Settings:
(1024x768) 191.3, 191.1, 191.3, AVERAGE FPS: 191.23

VulpineGLmark:
The gold line is 166
The blue line is 185

Black_Paladin · Apr 27, 2003

Ok I went up to 185 FSB x 11.5 multi, CPU was 2.1xxghz

OK, *open mouth*, *insert foot*.

I don't know what to say. Turns out you were right. I am puzzled though.

I myself get better results in any 3D game I play by using a high FSB and relaxed memory settings than I do by using a lower FSB and strict memory timings.

Perhaps this phenomenon applies only to Intel systems but I would have thought that it would be true even more so for AMD systems because of the starved FSB these systems have.

EDIT: Since you have such a fast CPU, I think it's possible that your graphics card is causing a bottleneck. Actually, now I think about it, with an AMD CPU at over 2ghz, I would have thought that you should be able to exceed 10000 points in 3D Mark with a ti4200.

The Wicker Man · Apr 27, 2003

Not so fast with the foot in mouth....heh
I figured it would too, cause I had a GeForce 2 Ultra and raising the FSB help'd it out.........
My best 3dmark score with g4ti4200 was 11,491

Black_Paladin · Apr 27, 2003

The Wicker Man said:
Not so fast with the foot in mouth....heh
I figured it would too, cause I had a GeForce 2 Ultra and raising the FSB help'd it out.........
My best 3dmark score with g4ti4200 was 11,491

Heh, that's pretty nice. What were the clock speeds for the ti4200 when you got that score?

Btw, I think you have really pretty sweet systems.

EDIT: Is that Eddie in your avatar? I can't see very well. I'm asking because I worship Iron Maiden and it looks like you picked your nickname from the Brave New World album so I'm assuming you like Iron Maiden too.

The Wicker Man · Apr 28, 2003

Ahhhh yes, the only time I didn't listen to them was when Blaze was singing for them..heh
Yes that is Eddie, and yes Iron Maiden is about all I listen too....

That score came a few installs ago, I am not sure if it was overclocked or not..
I really should start putting details in the description field......

EDIT:
I just had an interesting experience......
I though I would try to turn down the ram a little, 400mhz.
with RivaTuner, then I went to the clock controls in display properties
And low and behold, that reported 400 also....
Normally, when I try to run it up a bit with either and check the other one, the other one reports default speeds......
So perhaps I am correct in my assumption that there not really overclocking the card....
But that still wouldn't explain the lower numbers when I try to OC would it......hmmmmmmm

I must keep investigating......... :bang head

The Wicker Man · Apr 28, 2003

Well, I finally managed to overclock the card.....heh
I wint go into details, but lets just say, I feel like a dufus.......

Not impressive but a little higher then normal......
3DMark 2003

3DMark 2001se

The core wont go to 300, so I set it to 280 and ram at 512

Does this sound right or should performance be a little better???

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