I ran and installed the free version *the newest* of 3DMark 05 a couple hours ago and benched my system with the defaults (I couldn't really adjust anything since it's the free version I guess). To make a long story short in 1024*768 desktop resolution with the nvidia image quality set to the highest but with no AA turned on in my GeForce 6200 I was only able to bench about ~1,300 points after the tests were run. Am I missing something here? Surely I would think that the results would be much higher than this??

Throughout the demos I was only able to obtain in the range of 1-6 FPS. When I benched I didn't have AMD's X2 patch installed but I did have Microsoft's Multi-CPU performance degradation patch installed. Does anyone here have any thoughts on this? /wacko.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wacko.gif' />

-------------------------
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ @ 2.21GHz / core
Corsair Value Select 512MB PC3200/DDR-400 memory
DDR-400 eVGA 133-K8-NF41 nForce 4-SLI mobo
PCI-e x16 XMDIA GeForce 6200 Turbo Cache OC'd: 395MHz core 445MHz mem
Seagate Barracuda 80GB S-ATA II 3Gb/s 7200.9 RPM 8MB cache HDD
Sony 16x52x32x52 DVD/CDRW combo drive
Silver NZXT Trinity Case
420W Orion PSU
XP Pro 32-bit edition w/ SP2 -AMD Cool'n'Quiet disabled
19" FD Trinitron CRT monitor

I dunno what score you should have but thats definatelty too low.

I use the same version of 3Dmark05 and I don't adjust anything in the Nvidea control panel. I believe the default for the quality setting should be one down from what you have it set to.

The quality setting should only be turned up to the max for older games that do not tax your card much and 3Dmark05 will tax just about any graphics card.

-------------------------


HAPPY PHENOM USER ! ! !!!

I have the X2 4400 and I purchased the latest 3D Mark s/w lasta week and ran my son's new build computer and got 7800 or so. It is a....

gigbyte G8n-sli-Pro board
x2,4400
evga Nvidia 7800gtx
2 gig of Mushkin enhanced, 3,3,3,8
samsung 214 LCD,
Hitachi 250g sata

Something is not right about you set-up somehow. It might be worth the $20.00 to get the full version I don't know....was to me I was just too curious.

Tell me more about this...."When I benched I didn't have AMD's X2 patch installed but I did have Microsoft's Multi-CPU performance degradation patch installed" I am not familiar with that. Is it an enhancement apparently?

QUOTETell me more about this...."When I benched I didn't have AMD's X2 patch installed but I did have Microsoft's Multi-CPU performance degradation patch installed" I am not familiar with that. Is it an enhancement apparently?

Well by AMD's X2 patch I actually meant the AMD Athlon 64 processor driver. MS's *hotfix* is only applicable to systems that are experiencing performance degradation when the power settings are used or whatever so I went ahead and installed it anyway.

About my benchmark (or lack thereof) I'm not sure why it was so low but here is some more information when I ran it. I was using the newest forceware drivers for my videocard at factory settings (not OC'd in any way), bios settings set to optimized defaults and I'm currently only operating in single channel mode with a 512 stick of corsair value select memory. I was reading up on my GPU and it turns out that it's much weaker than I originally thought (still doesn't really explain that low of a score though). The GPU really only has 64MBs of DDR on it and the rest is borrowed (the other 192MBs) from my main system memory. Since I only had 512 in the system and only 64 realistically on the card that might explain a bit of it, I'm not totally sure. I was in 120Hz with the monitor and the image quality was set to "high quality" in nVidia's utility in the system tray.

-------------------------
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ @ 2.21GHz / core
Corsair Value Select 512MB PC3200/DDR-400 memory
DDR-400 eVGA 133-K8-NF41 nForce 4-SLI mobo
PCI-e x16 XMDIA GeForce 6200 Turbo Cache OC'd: 395MHz core 445MHz mem
Seagate Barracuda 80GB S-ATA II 3Gb/s 7200.9 RPM 8MB cache HDD
Sony 16x52x32x52 DVD/CDRW combo drive
Silver NZXT Trinity Case
420W Orion PSU
XP Pro 32-bit edition w/ SP2 -AMD Cool'n'Quiet disabled
19" FD Trinitron CRT monitor

Just looked at the "README" for 3dMark 05, and according to it:

QUOTESystem Requirements

    * DirectX 9 compatible graphics adapter with support for Pixel Shader 2.0 or later, and graphics memory of 128 MB or above.
    * Intel® or AMD® compatible processor running on 2 GHz or above.
    * 512 MB system memory or more.
    * 1.5 GB of free hard disk space.
    * Windows 2000 or XP operating system with the latest Service Packs and updates installed.
    * DirectX 9.0c runtime installed (download) with the latest updates.
    * Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 installed, for some 3DMark functionality (download).
    * Microsoft Excel 2000, 2003 or XP for some 3DMark functionality.
    * Microsoft DirectX 9 Summer Update 2004 System Development Kit is required to run the image quality test using the reference rasterizer.

It is possible that 3DMark05 will run on PCs that do not meet the requirements above, but the benchmark performance may be seriously affected. For example, insufficient video memory will result in texture swapping - this will cause fluctuations during the tests, reducing the reliability of the generated scores.

Not sure how it could be that off but I guess I'll have to go ahead and get that other 512 DIMM so I'm operating in dual channel, get a better GPU with a larger amount of onboard local memory and then try and bench it again.

-------------------------
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ @ 2.21GHz / core
Corsair Value Select 512MB PC3200/DDR-400 memory
DDR-400 eVGA 133-K8-NF41 nForce 4-SLI mobo
PCI-e x16 XMDIA GeForce 6200 Turbo Cache OC'd: 395MHz core 445MHz mem
Seagate Barracuda 80GB S-ATA II 3Gb/s 7200.9 RPM 8MB cache HDD
Sony 16x52x32x52 DVD/CDRW combo drive
Silver NZXT Trinity Case
420W Orion PSU
XP Pro 32-bit edition w/ SP2 -AMD Cool'n'Quiet disabled
19" FD Trinitron CRT monitor

With a 128MB with TURBO CACHE 6200, your not gonna score to high on 3DMark05. Heck, My X800GTO only gets 5200.

You have to realize that 3DMark is definatly more of a GPU score than Aquamark3.

Run Aquamark3 and post a screen shot of your score on that.

EDT: Explain to me why you got that awesome CPU/Motherboad, and went with crap RAM? I don't understand that at all.

-------------------------
NO PC As Of NOW!

I'll still be on here once in a while.

[/quote]
EDT: Explain to me why you got that awesome CPU/Motherboad, and went with crap RAM? I don't understand that at all.
[right][snapback]584734[/snapback][/right]
[/quote]


Maybe he works for a living and has other things to buy besides computer upgrades. /wink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink.gif' />

QUOTEEDT: Explain to me why you got that awesome CPU/Motherboad, and went with crap RAM? I don't understand that at all.

Well, considering I'm upgrading from an ancient 1.5GHz P4 i850 chipset with old PC-800 Rambus to this I don't think I did too bad. I'm typically not the type to OC my components although recently I've been looking more into that. Right now the only thing OC'd is my gfx card and for good reason (it's weak).

You're using DDR faster than DDR 400, I have no need for that. My old machine gave a max theoretical main system memory bandwidth of 1.6GBps / channel * 2 channels = 3.2GBps (not that it would have ever been achieved with RDRAM's higher latency). Even with your typical DDR 400 you're getting a maximum theoretical of 3.2GBps / channel * 2 channels = 6.4GBps. This DDR's also lower latency than my old 40ns RDRAM parts so when I get a second module of DDR (probably tomorrow) I'll be running in dual channel with that figure as my max compared to the old (yes I realize that double channel vs. single channel is never really doubling the main system memory bandwidth effectively).

If you think this ram is crap and you're spending loads of money on your ram when I can get a stick of VS512MB400 for $45 (includes the tax in this) from Best Buy down the street I really don't see how you'd come up with that? I've read into the 'fads' when it comes to ultra-low latency DIMMs, heat spreader hype etc etc and the only thing proven to minimally up in-game performance in some games is by using faster memory which is what you're doing. I don't really see the need to run memory faster than what my board is designated to run on *200MHz DDR DIMMs*.

-------------------------
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ @ 2.21GHz / core
Corsair Value Select 512MB PC3200/DDR-400 memory
DDR-400 eVGA 133-K8-NF41 nForce 4-SLI mobo
PCI-e x16 XMDIA GeForce 6200 Turbo Cache OC'd: 395MHz core 445MHz mem
Seagate Barracuda 80GB S-ATA II 3Gb/s 7200.9 RPM 8MB cache HDD
Sony 16x52x32x52 DVD/CDRW combo drive
Silver NZXT Trinity Case
420W Orion PSU
XP Pro 32-bit edition w/ SP2 -AMD Cool'n'Quiet disabled
19" FD Trinitron CRT monitor

r3sil3 is right to point out your video card....the turbocache 6200 is better than onboard graphics, but not much better....3dmark05 is very tough, and quite frankly, your score seems high to me...

additional RAM will help somewhat...

also, it might be ok for now...but if that PSU came with your case, you should consider replacing it your first priority.... it's probably a 20-pin psu and you're using a 20 to 24-pin adapter (which isn't good to do for the long term)

-------------------------
Rig 1: AM2 X2 4850e--MSI K9N Neo V3--2x1gb Mushkin DDR2 800--Sapphire HD4830--Corsair VX450--Acer H213H-Win XP
Rig 2:Athlon X2 7850 Kuma--Biostar 780L--2x1gb Corsair XMS2 DDR2 800--Asus Formula HD4770--Corsair VX450--LG Flatron W2252TQ-Win 7 32-bit Premium
Capitalism rocks!

General:
Name: Benchmark 2006-01-06 01-59-47


Processor:
Vendor: AuthenticAMD
Name: AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4200+
SpeedMHz: 2212
Type: 0
Family: 15
Model: 11
Stepping: 1
Flags: 0xE3D3FBFF
Number: 2
HyperThreading: n/a
MemoryOS: 536322048


Graphics:
Description: NVIDIA GeForce 6200 TurboCache™
Vendor: 4318
Device: 353
SubSys: 0
Revision: 161
CoreClock: 0
MemoryClock: 0
Driver: nv4_disp.dll
DriverVersion: 6.14.10.8198
VideoMemory: 260046848
TextureMemory: 250609664


Operating System:
Version: Microsoft Windows XP
Type:
Build: Service Pack 2 2600


Run0:
DisplayWidth: 1024
DisplayHeight: 768
DisplayDepth: 32
AntialiasingMode: 0
AntialiasingQuality: 0
AnisotropicFiltering: 4
DetailLevel: 4
AvgFPS: 20.210369
MinFPS: 4.264400
MaxFPS: 59.000000
AvgFPSRender: 23.031517
AvgFPSSimulation: 164.901917
AvgTrianglesPerSecond: 6083971
MinTrianglesPerSecond: 724105
MaxTrianglesPerSecond: 19471861
AquamarkScoreRender: 2304
AquamarkScoreSimulation: 8246
AquamarkScore: 20210
====================================================
Here is my AquaMark3 default test scores after a fresh format with the same setup as what I wrote about with the 3dMark 05 only the GPU was OC'd this time to what I've got in my sig. The 3dMark 05 test run used the factory 350MHz core 400MHz memory clock frequency settings for the GPU.

-------------------------
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ @ 2.21GHz / core
Corsair Value Select 512MB PC3200/DDR-400 memory
DDR-400 eVGA 133-K8-NF41 nForce 4-SLI mobo
PCI-e x16 XMDIA GeForce 6200 Turbo Cache OC'd: 395MHz core 445MHz mem
Seagate Barracuda 80GB S-ATA II 3Gb/s 7200.9 RPM 8MB cache HDD
Sony 16x52x32x52 DVD/CDRW combo drive
Silver NZXT Trinity Case
420W Orion PSU
XP Pro 32-bit edition w/ SP2 -AMD Cool'n'Quiet disabled
19" FD Trinitron CRT monitor

Ran the same test again under the same conditions switching from my initial setting of System Properties -> Advanced -> Performance|Settings -> Performance Options|Advanced|Memory usage of "Adjust for best performance of: System cache" to "Programs". This time around I scored a little higher with 20,270 for the final score (both the GPU and CPU score were a tad higher in this figure).

I like this test much better than 3dMark 05's free trial test so when I grab another stick of memory *probably today* I'll try again... and then when I get a more respectable GPU with more memory. Not sure what the results should be for my rig with this setup but feel free to give some opinions on them if you like.

-------------------------
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ @ 2.21GHz / core
Corsair Value Select 512MB PC3200/DDR-400 memory
DDR-400 eVGA 133-K8-NF41 nForce 4-SLI mobo
PCI-e x16 XMDIA GeForce 6200 Turbo Cache OC'd: 395MHz core 445MHz mem
Seagate Barracuda 80GB S-ATA II 3Gb/s 7200.9 RPM 8MB cache HDD
Sony 16x52x32x52 DVD/CDRW combo drive
Silver NZXT Trinity Case
420W Orion PSU
XP Pro 32-bit edition w/ SP2 -AMD Cool'n'Quiet disabled
19" FD Trinitron CRT monitor

Well, maybe the third time's a charm, but as has been said twice already, your video card is by far the weakest link in your system. 6600gt is the minimum for playing the latest games. At decent settings Cod2 or Fear will bring your current system to it's knees -- in fact many of the latest games don't notice a nice CPU much, it's all about the GPU baby! Of course you could avoid playing the GPU hungry games now and down the road, but since you started this thread asking for comments on how your system fared in a graphics test, I hope it is dawning on you that the only way you are really going to improve your graphics performance is to upgrage your graphics card.

Lastly, even though adding memory to your system is a good idea, don't fall into the trap of thinking 128mb isn't enough for your GPU. This is the card I have in my sig:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/...asp?...N82E16814122201' ">http://www.newegg.com/Product/...p?Item=N82E16814122201
With only 128mb, it has done a pretty nice job of handling anything I've thrown at it (Hl2 Fear cod2 far cry King Kong etc) Sure I'd love to bump up the resolutions and completely max out the settings on everything, but since I can on most everything and the low power draw and quiet fan are perfect for a SFF system, that 7800GTX is going to have to wait. (That card might easily end up in another build down the road though, cod2 is that good.)

Anyway it would be interesting to see your score after you've upgraded your card.

-------------------------
Antec Aria SFF case w/ 300 watt PS
Sempron 64 3000+ o/c to 2.25, stock hsf
ASRock K8NF4G-SATA2 Micro ATX mobo
Wintec AMPO 512x2 3200 (250 fsb/ht)
Samsung hyperquiet SP1614N 160GB HD
AOpen Cocoon wireless RF KB/mouse
Leadtek PX6600GT TDH Geforce 6600GT
128MB GDDR3 PCI-E x16, o/c to 564/1160

QUOTEWell, maybe the third time's a charm, but as has been said twice already, your video card is by far the weakest link in your system.

So I noticed.. oh well, will definitely be getting at least a 6800 or so here within a month or so. I like ATi Radeon cards but since I've got an nForce 4 board I figure I'll go with an nVidia gfx card (since I've always been used to them) and with SLI support I'll be able to make use of it hopefully down the road when I decide to get another video card and a higher-rated PSU.

I actually haven't played F.E.A.R. yet but have seen a couple quick trailers and some screens and the gfx and detail looks amazing *saw it on the VGA's also*.

I've managed to score around ~22,000 points in AquaMark3 now by overclocking my GPU a bit more and tweaking some things a bit. I haven't bothered attempting to OC my Athlon X2 yet but maybe down the road for fun without really taking it too far. The GPU however, as you're aware of and I am now too, needs to be replaced with a better one which will happen here pretty soon. This GPU's "Turbo cache" sort of pisses me off (ATi's HyperMemory solutions do the same) because I just researched and found out about what this actually is _after_ I purchased my system that included it... as it was labeled a "256MB" GPU when in all actuality it's really not but instead my version's a 64MB onboard vRam with access to 192MB's of system memory <-- that part right there I'm not liking too much.

Even with my current configuration (even before any tweaking or OC'ing of the GPU) I'm still able to run SOF II at it's highest settings in high resolutions 1024*768+ so I'm currently happy at the moment. The old Quake 3 Team Arena engine that SOF II uses still looks good to me and performs great here so no complaints when it comes to playing my favorite game.

-------------------------
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ @ 2.21GHz / core
Corsair Value Select 512MB PC3200/DDR-400 memory
DDR-400 eVGA 133-K8-NF41 nForce 4-SLI mobo
PCI-e x16 XMDIA GeForce 6200 Turbo Cache OC'd: 395MHz core 445MHz mem
Seagate Barracuda 80GB S-ATA II 3Gb/s 7200.9 RPM 8MB cache HDD
Sony 16x52x32x52 DVD/CDRW combo drive
Silver NZXT Trinity Case
420W Orion PSU
XP Pro 32-bit edition w/ SP2 -AMD Cool'n'Quiet disabled
19" FD Trinitron CRT monitor

ill give it to u straight bro im running a sempron 3100 from 1.8 to 2.25mhz overclocked and a connect3d x800gto unlocked to 16 pipes at 520/529(1040) effectively and im scoring 6229 on 3dmark05 and 66000 something on aquamark. by far and im sure about that your graphics card belongs in the garbage bin. sorry to tell it to u like that but thats the truth. im using a slower cpu than u and the graphics car makes a world of difference.aquamark is 3 times as yours and 3dmark also, and its not my cpu its the card that makes the difference. its a shame that u spend more money on a good cpu and mobo just to have it trounced because of a bad card. unless ur going for sli get an ATI card>>mine trounces roomies 6800 ultra on an fx55/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /> so get another good graphics card and your on your way to stardom good luck

-------------------------
[FONT=Arial]
AM2 WINDSOR X2 5000 2.6GHz
ARCTIC COOLER FREEZER 64 PRO CPU cooler
2 X connect3d X1950XTX 48 SHADERS 16 pipes 650/2000 CROSSFIRE
2x1024 CORSAIR running at 747mhz 4-4-4-12 at 1T timings
MSI K9A PLATINUM crpssfire 3200 motherboard
22 inch widescreen LG 226wtq monitor
160GB SATA2 MAXTOR hard drive
THERMALTAKE ARMOR JR case
3X120MM FANS 1X92MM FAN 1X92mm exhaust