Help me with my Asus 9800 XT please?

Hey guys - after finally reformatting my cpu and installing the card - seems to work pretty well - except I load up 3dMark to benchmark my system and it rates rather low compared to similar systems.

So I look at the details more closely - the standard clockspeed of the 9800xt is 410 mhz - and when I reboot and check "SmartDoctor 2" (asus's version of a program to manage core speeds/memory speeds) it says 410. Super - but once I run 3dmark - I check my results and it says my core is 365 mhz - I go back to "SmartDoctor 2" and the bar that controls core speed is at the absolute minimum - 360 mhz - I press "defaults" and it jumps back up to 410 - resets the screen and hums away.

Run 3dmark again and it's back down to 360 mhz.

Whaaaat is going on?

Setup

A7N8X Deluxe
XP 2200+
Asus 9800XT (with latest Asus/ATI blended drivers for it)
1024 megs of pc 2700

My score is irrelivent - but this problem with resetting the core clock speed is pretty annoying and most likely happening every time I play a 3d game.

Please offer some suggestions and help - Thanks guys.

Is your CPU overclocked at all? Overclocking the card is rather pointless as your CPU is one hell of a bottleneck for it stock

No it's not - but my point is... 412 Mhz is not overclocking the card - that's default factory set.

I run 3dmark and it UNDERCLOCKS the card...

Its only a "bottleneck" in turns of generating performance numbers on 3dmark2001.

Which version of 3dmark are you using? I would try using a oc'ing utility to verify speed of gpu. Also, i would recommend using 3dMark 2003 (that said, i wouldn't trust the numbers generated by 3DMark too much, they seem to report slightly lower clockspeeds, though not in the number that you are reporting).

I use PowerStrip to overclock my 9800 XT and have no trouble like what you are mentioning.

Hmm, I will find this "powerstrip" and try it - thank you.