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Ronbert

Ronbert

Member
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Joined
Jan 30, 2010
Location
La Crosse, WI
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I've been testing my computers bench marks and doing some research. I've seen people with less than me do better than that 3DMark score though, surely this isn't the BEST my computer can do...

My settings in full are...
E5200 3.325Ghz
709Mhz (Effective) DDR2 2GB
BFG 9800GT

Is my video card bottle necking the CPU or other way around?
 
Umm, youa re at 3.3ghz for one. Two, your ram is SLOW, 709mhz is pretty slow for the C2Duos (alot are running 800+, and even more are around 1066mhz).

Also, your video card isnt all that outstanding. Combine all 3 things, and there you have it. You are about 11k. With 4ghz E8400 + 4870 w/ 1000mhz RAM speed, I was hitting just under 15k.
 
doz said:
Umm, youa re at 3.3ghz for one. Two, your ram is SLOW, 709mhz is pretty slow for the C2Duos (alot are running 800+, and even more are around 1066mhz).

Also, your video card isnt all that outstanding. Combine all 3 things, and there you have it. You are about 11k. With 4ghz E8400 + 4870 w/ 1000mhz RAM speed, I was hitting just under 15k.
Click to expand...

I'm not meaning to sound like a jerk here but that's all stating the obvious what you skipped over is that other people with lower than me scored higher. Second the RAM is slow because it's clocked down to compensate for the cpu since I can't adjust the multiplier hence I'm running 533Mghz.

I know the video card isn't great but budget wise it holds it's own. The 9800Gt was never meant to compete with other cards to be honest... From what I understand the 9000 Series was the start of the down fall of the Nvidia cards though I don't have facts to prove that just opinions from other people.

Back to the issue at hand, is there something being bottle necked here and is there a way to improve this? Also quick theory what if say I clocked down a bit to bump my ram back up, would this possibly improve my "score"?
 
Well, I really dont think your CPU @ 3.3ghz is bottle-necking that 9800 to be honest. If it is, its slight.

Who is running the same system as you with the same results? Again, 11k seems to be a pretty good number considering you have a small cache size (2mb) compared to the e8xxx cpus at 6mb. With a STOCK 4870 (almost 15k overclocked), I was hitting 14.5k @ 4ghz e8400.

Maybe the systems you are comparing to have a higher CPU clock, or possibly overclocked 9800gts? Can you link please?

You said you cant control your multiplier? Why not, is it a board limitation? Your CPU will allow you to LOWER the multi. If you want to get higher speed, you need to up the FSB. Id shoot for 333mhz fsb at an 11x multi, shouldnt be hard to hit. Run your ram a 5:6 strap I believe, and itll run at 800mhz.
 
3dmark is very cpu bound. If you can get that clock speed up to 3.6ish you will see your scores go up.
 
doz said:
Well, I really dont think your CPU @ 3.3ghz is bottle-necking that 9800 to be honest. If it is, its slight.

Who is running the same system as you with the same results? Again, 11k seems to be a pretty good number considering you have a small cache size (2mb) compared to the e8xxx cpus at 6mb. With a STOCK 4870 (almost 15k overclocked), I was hitting 14.5k @ 4ghz e8400.

Maybe the systems you are comparing to have a higher CPU clock, or possibly overclocked 9800gts? Can you link please?

You said you cant control your multiplier? Why not, is it a board limitation? Your CPU will allow you to LOWER the multi. If you want to get higher speed, you need to up the FSB. Id shoot for 333mhz fsb at an 11x multi, shouldnt be hard to hit. Run your ram a 5:6 strap I believe, and itll run at 800mhz.
Click to expand...

Well for whatever reason the board wont let me change the mult at all and it gives me set in stone numbers so like Ram I can only do 800/6xx/or 533Mhz, from what I've been told it's a very limited mobo. It's the Foxconn G31MV-k if that helps any.


EDIT: Watch this video,

It's a very quick run through of my bios it'll help you see more the kind of stuff I have to work with.
Also sorry if I took what you said wrong reading back it seemed kind of like I was snapping on you so don't take offense.

Also this video card if you type exactly this into newegg you'll see it, BGF 9800GT 1gb. It was supposed to be overclocked but from what I see it's a standard 9800GT. I'm relieved to hear you say it's probably not an issue of bottle necking... What I think this all means is out right this system is just, outdated and it's time to move on but moneys tight =/
 
It depends on what you are doing with your system man. If you are wanting to play the next generation of games maxed out while at the same time listening to music, and compressing 5 files with winrar, then yes your system is starting to get dated. But if you browse the web, do word processing, and use facebook, your computer suits your needs just fine.

Dont judge your system simply on the numbers from 3dmark...they are just numbers. If you are a hardcore gamer/overclocker thats different, but if you are an average to moderate user it will suite your needs nicely :)
 
You need to run an application like FurMark that will stress the video card and see how much of the CPU is being used. Open task manager and check the performance tab and then look at the CPU usage history. That will tell you if the CPU is bottlenecking your card because if your CPU is near 100% usage, the CPU is the bottleneck.

What resolution do you use on your monitor? The lower the resolution, the more stress on the CPU, the higher the resolution, the more of the GPU is being used.

EDIT: I got my chips mixed up on the first part so I deleted it.
 
Last edited:
I'm a hardcore gamer :p I don't do much of anything else, I listen to music while I play some next-gen games, I don't do any encoding or anything so I'm not worried about that. Also since coming here I've become an overclocker I'm considering the I3 540 cpu line but like I said I wanna push this computer as far as possible and right now money is to tight to invest in a new system.

Remember bda, I CAN'T adjust the multiplier
 
Also, can you up the FSB atleast? If you can, bump it up to 300mhz. Give you 3750mhz. You can run your RAM at 5:6 still. 720mhz ram speed w/ 3.75ghz. That should help a bit, but again I really dont think you are going to gain but maybe 500 points in 3dmark06 even with a higher clock.
 
I messed up and got my chips mixed up so disregard the part about the multiplier that I deleted. I need to get some sleep....;) Anyway you can find out what your bottleneck is by looking at the CPU usage history while running FurMark.
 
doz said:
Also, can you up the FSB atleast? If you can, bump it up to 300mhz. Give you 3750mhz. You can run your RAM at 5:6 still. 720mhz ram speed w/ 3.75ghz. That should help a bit, but again I really dont think you are going to gain but maybe 500 points in 3dmark06 even with a higher clock.
Click to expand...

Another strange problem every time I go even slightly over 266 for some reason the computer will boot fine and when I check CPUZ though the computer has reverted back to it's original 2.50Ghz, check the bios and it's reset it's self to optimal settings. Does that every time, buyers remorse on this motherboard unfortunately, when I got it I wasn't into OCing though so I didn't build this computer around that thought.

I guess I should start investing in new parts soon-ish then eh?
 
bda1967 said:
I messed up and got my chips mixed up so disregard the part about the multiplier that I deleted. I need to get some sleep....;) Anyway you can find out what your bottleneck is by looking at the CPU usage history while running FurMark.
Click to expand...

That's something I will definitely check into thanks for the heads up bda! :thup:
 
Did you OC your gfx card as well? That should improve your score a lot.

3DMark06 is heavily CPU dependent. It puts a lot of weight on the CPU score, and it's multi-threaded, so quads kill duals.
 
Its true about quad killing duals, But even when I was using my Q6600 at 3.6 and my GTX 260, I was only seeing scores around 15k. Yeah some people were getting a little higher, but on average with average 3.4-3.6 overclocks, people werent really hitting higher than that.

Also remember not to compare with people using 3DMark05, there is a huge difference.
 
Hey guys a couple things have struck me today.

First off I clocked the GPU at 4 different clocks, 110, 115, 120, and the original 100. 110Mhz gave me about 90ish point increase which doesn't even translate to .5% so I decided it would be safer to let it be. Just as well everything after 110Mhz made my score go below my original 100Mhz score.

Also my Mobo box says FSB: 1333, 1060, and 800Mhz, what does this mean to me? Because I thought that was the RAM speeds it supports and I had to face palm my self when right below it the box reads "DDII 800MHZ/667MHZ".
 
That's the thing while overclocking. There comes a point when you peak, and no amount of voltage will get you over that. Its either time to upgrade whatever component is holding you back, or settle.

In the case of the relationship between GPU and CPU, they have to be pretty evenly matched or you will reach a bottleneck point. This is what you are probably experiencing. You need to get your CPU faster if you want more out of your GPU. It would probably do well if you could get your CPU up to 3.6 or 3.7. But I think your beginning to understand the relationship. Graph your results for better understanding

The speeds on you Mobo Box are the speeds it supports. I am not sure why it says DDII 800/667 though w/o reading the manual or at least seeing the box.
 
Ronbert said:
Also my Mobo box says FSB: 1333, 1060, and 800Mhz, what does this mean to me?
Click to expand...

It means that your motherboard will only support CPU's with a fsb up to 1333MHz. That is a quad pumped effective speed too. Divide 1333 by 4 and you have a fsb of 333MHz.

Your CPU has a fsb of 800 effective so 800/4= 200MHz. For you to run that CPU at 1:1 FSB:RAM you need at least DDR2-400 (400/2=200MHz) but you can go all the way to DDR2-800 as supported by your motherboard.
 
Ronbert said:
I've been testing my computers bench marks and doing some research. I've seen people with less than me do better than that 3DMark score though, surely this isn't the BEST my computer can do...
Click to expand...

Can you actually post what scores you saw with your hardware? how much better are you looking for.


your question is too broad to answer without a reference system you are trying to compare against.
 
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