[Illyest]

Well I've got her up and running and finally have been able to run some benchies, games and preliminary overclocking. The first thing I noticed in coolbits is it says the memory is running at 800mhz (I was expecting 1600mhz). Initially I thought coolbits was cutting it in half now unlike previous nvidia cards and thought nothing of it. I then decided to load up ATITool for temp monitoring purposes and it shows the memory running @ 400mhz .

As I became very curious I installed the same driver and ATITool version (beta 84.20/beta 25.14 respectively) on my 6800gt rig (rig2 in sig). Low and behold coolbits showed 1100mhz on the mem and ATITool showed 550mhz.

I'm not sure what to make of this but benchies seem to be performing on par with reviews around the web and the few games I've tested (F.E.A.R., BF2, X3, Rainbow Six:Lockdown) all performed well at max settings @ 1280x1024.

Anyone have a 7900gtx and noticed this?

[Soichiro]

I heard somewhere that the 7900GTX underclocks the core and memory in 2D mode, and then bumps it up to full speed when doing something requiring 3D graphics, so that may be the cause.

[Illyest]

Yeah it does and I thought about that too but when you look at 2D mode in coolbits, it only downclocks the core (to 275mhz) and doesnt touch the memory. ATITool has a nifty feature that shows the 2D clock and 3D clocks for the card seperately and displays 275/400 for 2D and 650/400 for 3D.

[Illyest]

After a more thorough comparision of my benchies vs reviews and 3DMark orb submissions I've found that my scores are really under par. I uninstalled the beta drivers ran driver cleaner and installed the drivers from the disk, 83.19. However my scores didn't change (actually dipped a little) and the memory speeds still says 800mhz in coolbits with 3D proflie selected(400mhz in ATITool, even running the artifact scanner).

Here are some scores.

3dMark06 5076
3DMark05 7954
3DMark03 21366

Doom3 timedemo1 1280x1024 Ultra Quality 70.5 fps
F.E.A.R test 1280x960 all setting max (no soft shadows) 66 ave fps

I'm hoping someone can chime in with their experience with a 7900GTX. The only other thread I see here the poster is apparently RMAing.

Thanks in advance!!!

[Surfrider77]

My 1st BFG 7900GTXOC should arrive over the weekend. I will let you know as soon as I get some benchies done.

7,954 '05 sounds really really off. My old 533 bus 3.2G P4 and x850 card OC'd would break 6k.

[Illyest]

a little followup. It seems Coolbits does halve the memory speeds with the Geforce 7 series then ATITool apparently halves them again...

Any other tool that will show GPU temp in the system tray?

I think I'm gonna do a reformat and see if my 05 score gets fixed, gonna try reinstalling DX9c first though.

[V10Ace]

I hit 8k in 05 with an OC'd single 7800 GT. The 05 score is definitely off.

[TheRedDawg]

I use Everest Ultimate Edition as it gives me all temperatures in the tray. GPU/Ambient CPU/Ambient etc...

R

[PerlAddict]

Originally Posted by Illyest

a little followup. It seems Coolbits does halve the memory speeds with the Geforce 7 series then ATITool apparently halves them again...

Any other tool that will show GPU temp in the system tray?

I think I'm gonna do a reformat and see if my 05 score gets fixed, gonna try reinstalling DX9c first though.

I do believe MBM5 is capable of showing GPU temps with the right configuration files.

[Joeteck]

Vanilla 7800GTX is 650/1600, right? So then the 800 memory speed is correct...

[Illyest]

Ok...reformat finally done...benching...

FYI, the orb added 7900 series support....get to benching

[Xtreme Barton]

dont forget to run it at the good ol' 1024 x 768 resolution for some of other folks

[Illyest]

^^ Not a pro user so that's all i can do besides 06 which defaults to 1280x1024

Anyways, all my scores went up
03 http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k3=4682056 21539
05 http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm05=1883687 8091
06 http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=189765 5104

But 05 is still 1-2k underpar from the rest of the stock 7900GTXs i've seen, l'strange.

Never had an issue like this before benching video cards...way underpar scores and all. Anyone have any ideas?

This is a fresh install.

Edit: While looking at the details page in 3dMark05 I noticed AGP Apeture is 256MB, the mobo I have has no option to change it (first time I've noticed it didnt have an AGP apeture setting). 03 does as well but 06 say 0b but lists total video memory as 724 Is this anything I should worry about?

[Illyest]

http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm05=1883782 8850 with P4 650 @ 3.9ghz. I see i'm a little cpu bound now but is it 2k worth???

[Illyest]

Originally Posted by Illyest

http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm05=1883782 8850 with P4 650 @ 3.9ghz. I see i'm a little cpu bound now but is it 2k worth???

Well, seeing as how I have an opty and p4 rig I decided to answer that question myself. 7900GTX stock speeds.

------Opty 165 @ 2.4Ghz------P4 650
3DMark03-----21811-----------21539
3DMark05-----10637------------8850 (@3.9Ghz)
3DMark06-----5916-------------5104

It seems the P4 is a real bottleneck in benching so I'm finding myself in a bit of a predicament. Games run as advertised on the P4 rig...max settings in everything i throw at it and the rig doesn't flinch...but seeing there is a strong probability the 975x wont support conroe, i'll be stuck on the dead-end P4 architecture with this mobo.

Maybe I'll test the ebay thing...

[jpersinger]

I didn't realize the 3dmark rift was so great for those different processors. You should do some gaming and record frame rates. What were your 7900 GTX clocks on the 10637 05 run?

[Illyest]

Originally Posted by jpersinger

I didn't realize the 3dmark rift was so great for those different processors. You should do some gaming and record frame rates. What were your 7900 GTX clocks on the 10637 05 run?

Stock 650/1600

[Surfrider77]

I didnt know 3dM05 was so bound by CPU as well. Thats crazy how much your Intel rig seems to be bottlenecking.

Just FYI, my overclocked FX60 at 2.8G scored 11k3 on my BFG 7900 gtx in 3dM05.

[bignick]

I am curious to see what my system scores. I ordered a 7900GT it should be here on the 27th. (NEVER ORDER ANYTHING FROM MONARCH) My best score with a 6800GS and P4 630@3825 is 6513. I would think the 7900GT should give me at least 1500-2000 points. There are many tweaks that you might be overlooking. I here the P4 bottleneck garbage all the time. Look at my CPU score I don't think my CPU holding me back. http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm05=1798121

[bignick]

Also isn't an opty 165 a dual core? You really can't compare a single core to a dual core. I'm sure if he had a Pentium D his score would be 10,000+ in 05'. I'm surprized your 06' score isn't much higher dual cores really excel in 06'. Most of the time doubling there CPU score vs. similar clocked single core.