Driver change or lack of ram? 3dMark11 score down?

Hey guys.

I got my system up and running, with all 3 cards with water cooling.

Since Uplay servers have crashed, i cant really play Watch_dogs.

So i thought i'd bench some more.

Now, the rig has change in only 2 areas.

2 sticks of ram have been pulled out (the heatsink was lose on one) and i updated to the 14.1 driver from the 13.9.

Overclocks are 100% the same.

Why am i down almost a full 2000points? Is is really the driver?

Current status (after 3 runs with a restart in between each one)
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/8369366

Highest score i have ever made (so far)
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/8347305

Driver would be the first place I would look.

It has nothing to do with ram. If you take the time and look on your next run, you will see that barely any system (or GPU for that matter) ram is used. So long as you didn't drop below dual channel, that isn't the issue.

I agree with driver. It's worth noting there is now a 14.6 driver released for Watch_dogs as well.

Janus67 said:

I agree with driver. It's worth noting there is now a 14.6 driver released for Watch_dogs as well.

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Might aswell get it, but i dont want to change anything since im still testing to try and find out what the heck is causing my desktop to freeze at random times. Im starting to think its Firefox, so currently running Chrome.

For the r9 290 series of cards powertune was broken in 14.1 and 14.2 drivers. You could set it to 50% and it would still act ad though it was at 0% and throttle the cards if you pulled too much power. I'm not sure if it was also broken for the 7900 series cards but that is the first place I would check.