Absolutely terrible 3dmark scores.. help

Hey guys, I need help!

My system is an Athlon64 3500+ with a 6800GT... (WinXP) nothing overclocked. when I first ran 3dmark05 I got around 4500 points.... then I upgraded the drivers, now I get only 2700! I went back to the old drivers, still 2700!

I see guys here saying they get over 10,000 points without an overclock on their 6800's.... WHAT am i doing wrong? Please help me I don't understand.. I want to get into oc'ing it but I want to fix up my stock scores first....

I have no large background tasks churnign up memory, I always use msconfig to clean up my startup applications... as far as I know my computer should be in tip-top form.... thanks for help!!

Update: Downloaded riva tuner and my core is at 350mhz and memory at 1000mhz. Is this normal for a 6800gt? Core temp is 61 degrees at idle.... seems a little warm?

Who told you they are getting 10K in 05 on a 6800Gt with no OC. Whoever told you that, they are full of it! Completely and totally full of grade A horse manure!

There is no way. Guy are getting 10K on 7800GTX's highly tweaked and OC'd, and not every 7800GTX OC'd will do that. For some, it takes SLi with 7800's to do it.

2700 is not what I would call an acceptable score though for a stock card.

Did you load the drivers like this?

***NOTE: Before Doing This, Disconnect From The Internet, or Turn Off Any Broadband Modem You Are Using. By Booting To Safe Mode, You Are Bypassing Critical Safeguards Built Into Windows. You are Also Bypassing Anti-Virus, Firewall, and any other Security Measures that load during a normal boot process. ***

1. Download and Install Driver CLeaner Pro
DC Pro can be found here => http://www.drivercleaner.net/
2. Download the new Forceware Drivers here => http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?id=10
3. Uninstall Drivers in normal Windows thru "Add/Remove Programs"
4. Boot Into Safe Mode By Holding the F8 during reboot, h9ighlight "Safe Mode" then hit enter, and then on the next screen select your OS...I assume your running WinXP, so highlight that with the arrow keys, and then hit "Enter".
5. Once In Safe Mode, Run DC Pro, and select nVidia from the dropdown list, and click "start".
6. Once DC Pro has finsished, install the new drivers while still in safe mode.

By using this method, you get rid of any bits and pieces of driver files that may hose things up, and you get a cleaner load. You also don't have to worry about anti-virus software conflicting with the driver load.

This sounds like a bad driver load to me. Something has to be really hosed up to cause a drop like that.

instink said:

Update: Downloaded riva tuner and my core is at 350mhz and memory at 1000mhz. Is this normal for a 6800gt? Core temp is 61 degrees at idle.... seems a little warm?

Click to expand...

350/1000 is stock speeds for a 6800GT yes. Your temps do look a little warm to me. It's probably becasue of the bubble gum junk they use for TIM. It's more like a thermal "barrier" than a thermal "interface" material.

What brand of card is this. It's also possible it could be bad cooling. Many of the cards with stock cooling have horrible cooling.

61 is not dangerous or anything, but it could be alot better. My card is OC'd 425/1140 right now, and it's currently running 46C idle, and it goes up to about 61C when it's loaded. My cooling is slightly modified though. It's still stock cooling, but it's copper, and it's been lapped, and AS5 has been applied.

Well i followed that driver install guide to the letter and no help... 2800 3dmarks now. I have to reinstall the SM Bus drivers everytime I reinstall grafix drivers... is this normal? I wish I could figure out what the hell was wrong

instink said:

I see guys here saying they get over 10,000 points without an overclock on their 6800's.... WHAT am i doing wrong? Please help me I don't understand.. I want to get into oc'ing it but I want to fix up my stock scores first....

Click to expand...

You might be thinking of 3dmark2k3 for the 10,000 points. This should be stock for your card in 2k3.

Ok cool. that doesn't explain why i had 4600 then suddenly 2700 though

instink said:

Ok cool. that doesn't explain why i had 4600 then suddenly 2700 though

Click to expand...

Did your games performances get cut in half too?

Have you change anything in the control panel? Filters?

Changed nothing, and I havent noticed a games difference, as the only game i've been playing recently is GTA San Andreas which is not very demanding...

What would you say I should be hitting? 5000 3dmarks? 4000 maybe?

Well shoot. There goes that idea. I could've sworn it was a bad driver load.

If you're having to reload SM Drivers everytime, you might have a conflict ofr some kind...maybe an IRQ conflict. That is only a guess though, and that gets into hardware speciffic stuff that I don't own.

Hopefully somebody will see this thread that owns that hardware, or most of it, and has seen this before.

Sorry I couldn't have been more help. I tried. The drivers did help though. You increased 100 points, and it never hurts to get a good clean install when diagnosing things like this. It wasn't a waste of time. It's a good thing to do with issues like this, and needed to be checked.

In this case it didn't fix the problem though. Keep plugging. You'll get it. Don't get aggravated with it. These systems do tend to reveal things in time. It just takes time sometimes.

Play with it, maybe you'll stumble on to something. Just make sure you do one thing at a time, or you won't know what change did what.

Oh, almost forgot. I would guess a 4-5000 score would be average. Non OC'd I would lean more towards 4500 to 5000. OC'd 5-6000 and fully tweaked 6-6500 maybe if everything was perfect.

Thanks heaps, i really appreciate your help and effort

I have 3 days off work... maybe I should format and reinstall windows... argh what a pain!

Thanks again

okay for one. i have it tweaked pretty well and well u can see my marks in 3d05 in my sig. almost 6 but cant hit it.

go int riva tuner and see if your fans are running at 100%. mine were running at 25% and i didnt even notice cause i was using coolbits. so i installed riva tuner just for the fan speed option. now my card stays cooler.

also check to see if AA is on or AF or Vsync. turn those all to application controlled and vsync turn off totally. check those.

This is the highest I've been able to hit.

That is using a BFG 6800 GT OC @ 425/1100
on an:
AMD Mobile 2600 @ 2.5 Ghz
Abit NF7-S rev 2.0
2 Gb Corsair Ram
2-80 Gb Hitachi Hdd in RAID 0 Config

jtracc20 said:

okay for one. i have it tweaked pretty well and well u can see my marks in 3d05 in my sig. almost 6 but cant hit it.

go int riva tuner and see if your fans are running at 100%. mine were running at 25% and i didnt even notice cause i was using coolbits. so i installed riva tuner just for the fan speed option. now my card stays cooler.

also check to see if AA is on or AF or Vsync. turn those all to application controlled and vsync turn off totally. check those.

Click to expand...

If your gonna bench, turn AA/AF off totally. You don't want the application to use any. Those two options will really affect a score. I also go into the nVidia Settings, and set the global driver settings to "Advanced", then go into the dropdown box and set right down the list like this...
AA - Off
AF - Off
Image Settings - High Performance
Color Profile - Not available
Vertical Sync - Off
Force mipmaps - Bilinear
Conformant Texture Clamp - On
Extension Limit - Off
Hardware Acceleration - nView/Clone Span Mode (some drivers may not have this option)
Anisotropic Mip Filter optimization - On
Anisotropic Sample Optimization - On
Triple Buffering - On
Negative LOD Bias - Allow

Obviously these settings are only for benching. I crank the card back up for gaming as it loses too much eye candy with all of that stuff disabled.

I had also forgot about the fan. Yes, definitely crank that thing if you have stock cooling. It's gonna be louder, but if you're going for performance you gotta move the heat away.

http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm05=1023275

This is my highest run @ 6155.

This was an approved run with approved drivers and was posted for our benching Team.

Hey guys.. got a new motherboard, reinstalled windows, checked temps (max 78 deg C while running 3dmark05) and I get 2500 3dmarks....

SURELY there is something seriously wrong here?? All AA/AF/Vsync etc options are turned off.... its an albatron card,,,, still under warranty I think, is this an isue I can take up with them maybe?

It's throttling. 78C is too hot...wayyyy too hot! Lots of people will tell you these things will handle 80C, but it's still too hot. There is no reason why these cards should ever get above 65C even with the most GPU intense games/simulators available. I have probably THE most intensive simulator that has ever been developed on my system. I run a 6800GT that has the 1.4v Perf. 3D volt mod in the BIOS, and stock cooling and it runs 46-49C Idle and 59-61C full load at 4x/8x and 425/1150. It never gets above 65 benching at speeds above 435/1170. That is with stock Chaintech cooling that has been lapped, and AS5 was applied.

I can just about guarantee you that the TIM (bubble gum crap) they are using on that card is driving temps up. That stuff is really not a Interface material at all, but is a thermal barrier that traps heat. I've told guys this many times on here, and every single one of them that has replaced the goo with quality AS5 or Ceramique has come back and reported that the temps went down subtantially.

It is hard to belive these comapnies build such great cards that are electronically sound, and are engineered so well, and then put complete crap for cooling and TIM on them, but that is the case.

The question you have to assk yourself is this...

Is it worth the the increase in cooling efficiency to void the warranty and give me a possible increase in performance by increasing my OC?

I say "possible" because there are never any guantees on whether a component will OC, but I don't think I've ever read of an nVidia card that wouldn't.

Coolinf is the first thing you have to get sorted before you can OC properly. It is the singlemost important factor in how well a componet will OC. Electricity doesn't flow right when stuff gets hot. It increases resistence, and causes havoc with stability.

Awesome thanks, I'm sure I have some AS5 around here somewhere, i'll give that a go. I didnt realise my temps were too high, I thought these cards didn't start throttling til 120 degrees... thansk

WELL I took the card out and took the heatsinks off.... lots of dust in there, got all that crap out, took the main heatsink off and wiped away the standard gel there. couldn't find my AS5 but I found a tube of generic heatsink compound so i put a dab of that on... booted into windows, 53 degrees idle, now 68-69 under full load which is a good improvement over 78 degrees BUT no performance increase in 3dmark...

So I guess you'll tell me I need to lap the Hs and get soem AS5... which I am prepared to do, if it actually has a chance of making it better..... or I could just sell it and get a 7800.... soooo tempting