Help with benchmarking!

[Snowbiz]

So I don't quite understand this and Im hoping that some of you may be able to shed some light on this for me. In the image below i have 2 different scores achieved with the same hardware. One score is higher but looking at the details there are some scores that are actually higher on the lower scoring benchmark. I have been experimenting with using ASUS GPU Tweak and have had mixed results, but for the life of me I cannot get the same score of 7510 again, no matter what i do!!!

More specifically I got a higher physics score and a higher combined score on the lower scoring run, which doesn't make sense to me if the total score is higher on the second run.
(And my results are shown as not being valid because i have the newest driver. I went back a version for my driver to get a valid score and this is what i was able to reach )

http://www.3dmark.com/hall-of-fame-2/fire+strike+3dmark+score+ultra+preset/version+1.1/3+gpu

I was happy to get 98th place in their hall of fame for x3 SLI setup. But I can't help to think its possible to get much higher when I look at other hardware combos of people that scored WAY WAY higher than i did.

I am open to reading to, I'm just trying to learn as much as possible here so i can further my benchmarking skill set

Thanks!

SnowBiz!

 

[Mr.Scott]

I see a bunch of possible reasons, but honestly, the scores are so close a fresh re-boot could have made the difference. You're chasing ghosts.

 

[Snowbiz]

As far as getting much higher scores what things should i be looking at? Also do you have any good reading to help me learn how to overclock better/more efficiently? There are other people who have similar hardware that scored much much better, so it has to be possible for me to reach higher scores. Forgive me for sounding like a newb but I'm just trying to learn..

 

[Mr.Scott]

The overclocking isn't what nets the greatest increase in bench score. The tweaks are. When you bench 3D, don't think pretty. Turn off as much of the eye candy as you can. Explore LOD (level of detail). No Vsnyc. It's mostly about maximum FPS. If you have less to process, the FPS goes up, and so does your score. This is an "in a nutshell" explaination, but it gives you a starting point.

Forgive me for sounding like a newb but I'm just trying to learn..

We all started there, it's no problem.

 

[Snowbiz]

I had read something very similar on some other threads. But looking through the settings for the Nvidia control panel there really isn't anything that says LOD. So to put in layman terms, what sort of things should i be looking at? Or is there any certain buzzwords i should be searching for in terms of adjusting the LOD?

Also, will overclocking my RAM make any significant score increases?

 

[Mr.Scott]

For LOD you need a third party app.
Check out Nvidia Inspector or RivaTuner.

OC'ing your ram will give a small increase in some benches, yes.

 

[Mandrake4565]

For LOD you need a third party app.
Check out Nvidia Inspector or RivaTuner.

OC'ing your ram will give a small increase in some benches, yes.

Agreed as well as ocing the processor. One thing I noticed between your two scores was the GPU memory was oced 28 mhz higher in the 2nd run.