help me get my 3d performance higher..i'm new at this

[Jeff Bolton]

ok, you guys can see my new computer in my siggy. before upgrading to this wonderful machine, i had an SDR athlon system with a 32mb matrox g450...on average i'd get about 1000 3dmarks from 3dmark2001 (not SE). that thing was horrible for 3d gaming so there was never much tweaking to do. now that i'm on this new system i'm introduced into the world of high clock speeds, high framerates, and (relatively) high 3dmark score.

p4 2.26 running at 160fsb= 2.72ghz
512mb corsair xms running 160:214 (3:4), cas2
stock leadtek gf4 ti4400

so here's the deal. before i even spent the 3 hours downloading 3dmark2001se on 56k i upgraded the leadtek drivers to the nvidia 40.71's (i think those are it, whatever the latest ones on the website are). first time i ran the benchmark i got about 9500 points, and i forgot that i had my default AA set to 4xAnsio or whatever it is. not 4xAA but whatever the other 4x option is. i turned it off totally and ran the benchmark again to get a better 11500 or so. well either way, i've seen much slower systems getting a much higher score, i'm thinking i should at least be getting 13000 here without any AA. is there some settings that i don't know about? i'm not a 3dmark junkie but benchmark numbers are nice to throw around when bragging (hey, i'm getting 90fps in jk2 with full detail and 60fps in morrowind with full detail an 4xAnsio so i don't REALLY care, but you know...). so, you 3dmark wizards...aside from overclocking the card itself (which may be coming soon) what options can be tinkered with to get a better score?

tia

jeff

 

[freddiedaman]

have you turned off V-sync?

 

[Jeff Bolton]

where would i do that?

btw, thanks for the mondo fast reply

jeff

 

[freddiedaman]

well basicly V-sync limits your framerate to be no higher than the frequency your monitor runs at. You can mend this in the control panel (Display-Settings-Advanced) or something like that, i run the swedish version of xp myself, so I do'nt quite know what it looks like in the english version. If that didn't help I'm sure one of our english speaking friends will be glad to help.

/freddie

 

[Kato]

Check out this article by Colin from PCStats.(Also check out his first articles too, link inside the second one). The articles cover all the basic of tweaks for 3dmark.

 

[Jeff Bolton]

thanks for that link kato

i'll have to go into the bios and mess with some settings i guess. when i tried setting my ram to 2-5-2-2 it just beeped at me and wouldn't boot and i had to reset the cmos. maybe 2-6-2-2 will be better. i'll also try disabling v-sync and post back my results...either way i should be getting more than 11500

jeff

 

[larva]

things that helped mine

My machine has less clock speed (2400MHz), less fsb (150) and slower memory clock (375MHz). I can only run cas2.5 with my generic PC2700 ram. Even so with the the Ti4400 12K is obtainable with stock clock rates, and nearly 13K with the 300/650MHz realistic max for my card. Definatley clock up the video card, and check the following:

Set AGP aperature to 128MB
DO NOT enable AGP fast writes
Set Mipmap level to "best performance" in the D3D dispaly options
Definatley use Det 40.71, 40.72 is not as fast
Incresing core speed on the video card from 250 to 300MHz has a large effect. Upping the ram timing helps as well, but to a lesser degree. Your card should easily accomodate the Ti4600 rates of 300/650, my card is crap and does.

Other than that your system sounds very well designed. It is dissapointing to see anything like 9K with this set of core components, my machine reached 9K with the GF3-Ti200 I started out with.

 

[Jeff Bolton]

well, with 4x quincux 9000 isn't too bad i guess. if i do all the stuff that you suggest will that just help my benchmarks or will i get better overall gaming performance?

thanks for the compliment on my system too, i love it. windows2000 loads up in less than a minute, i get like almost 3.5gb/s memory bandwidth...high benchmarks or not, i think this is a very fast system...poo on all the people with 3+ ghz machines, this thing can hold its own as far as i'm concerned. i DO plan on upgrading in like 6 months though, to high end p4 northy that doesn't need an upgraded mobo (maybe 2.8 when they get down to about $200), some faster ram (by the time i built this thing the pc3000 was already outdated) and a newer video card (either r9700 or nv30). the parts being replaced can go into a budget system and all i'll have to get is the case, mobo and hard drive.

jeff

 

[larva]

hehe nobody ever fragged me in 3Dmark

As you point out these concerns are somewhat unrelated to in-game performance. I've not played with AA, even systems of the magnitude of ours know the difference. GF4's let one think about employing AA, but the performance drop is still substantial. If you are playing D3D apps an increase in 3Dmark of 1000-2000 points is noticeable. The only game I play seriously is Quake3, and it is an openGL app. Both my GF3-Ti200 and my current Ti4400 provide 260+fps at my 1024x768 deathmatch settings. Going up to 1600x1200 or playing with AA enabled would require a stronger video card regardless of the speed of the processor. It sounds like your rig is performing like you need it to, just clock up that video card and set realistic resolution, detail, and AA levels for the game in question. I totally agree a 2.4-2.8GHz P4 is hard to distinguish from one running at 3.2GHz regardless of the benchmark figures.

 

[Jeff Bolton]

yeah i overclocked the core to 300mhz and i got up to 12007 3dmarks..not too bad but i know i should still be able to get higher..but the question is...do i really care?

jeff

 

[Melhisedek]

And what was your final result with all the tweaks ?