Help! Bad benchmarking

[John47]

Hi All,

I just completed building my first "super pc" and the experience was exhilirating! Thanks Rob for a great book!:)

My sense of pride and accomplishment was quickly dashed, though, when I ran the 3DMark06 benchmarking tests on my video card. My score was 2985, and out of the 101 computers with similar hardware, I ranked number 100. Ouch. What am I doing wrong? :(

System specs:
Chip: AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+
Board: MSI K9N Platinum SLI
Ram: Crucial Ballistix 2048MB PC2-6400 DDR2
Video card: eVGA GeForce 7600 GT 256MB DDR3
OS: Windows XP SP2

[Jamie Nixx]

Install the latest drivers, do a bios update, update your DX version and clean up your computer.

In all honesty though mate a computer with that kind of spec should really only hit about 3000 - 3500 3Dmarks in 06, and you were only 15 marks off.

Don't be downhearted, that computer still has a great spec.

[John47]

Thanks for the hints, Jamie. One of the reasons I was so bummed was because many of the systems that were just slightly above mine had much lower CPU chip speeds (like 2.0 and 2.2 GHz vs. my 2.6 GHz). Is the graphics card really the most critical aspect of better 3D gameplay?

A couple of quick follow-up questions:

1) Looking into the device manager, I see that the AMD dual core chipset has a driver and that it is a default Microsoft driver from 2004. Could this be part of the problem. Do AMD chips have their own Windows software drivers and are they necessary for performance??

2) How would I go about improving the 3DMark06 score at this point? (I can't return the GeForce 7600 GT card for a refund) Should I get an identical card and link them via SLI? Or would the price-performance ratio be higher if I bought a new card altogether?

Thanks!

[Jamie Nixx]

It depends how much you can get the second 7600GT for, i don't recommend SLi to anyone who is newbish to computers, you should check out my review in the other video card section and see what you think, its the same in principal accept i used more powerful GPU's.

The 7600GT is still a great card, why get downhearted over what a lousy program says, as long as your computer does what you want it to do then who cares.

Back to the SLi front, check out ebay if you can get a decent looking second hand 7600GT for cheap, SLi is worth it, but if you are a gamer you will have to upgrade soon.

3D mark 06 is very critical of graphics cards, because its gaming bechmarking software

[The Wise Monkey]

I got a very low score in 3DMark06, even though my specs are much higher than yours. Mine was down to a faulty GFX card though.

I have a 7600GT too though, and I only scored 3800, and thats with an e6750 @3.2GHHz.

If you want a better score to judge your computer by, try PCMark - its done by the same company, but doesn't focus so much on graphics.

When all is said and done, the score means sod all - its just a way to say to your friends "I got xxxx on 3DMark, aren't I 133t!!!1!!11!oneoneone"

[Jamie Nixx]

WM is exactly right, 3D mark is for bragging rights for how good your computer is, although it judges performance poorly.

Like i said, as long as your computer does what you want it to do, why worry :)

[John47]

Thanks WM and Jamie for shoring up my confidence - I will definitely try PC Mark and see what that tells me. If everything looks bad when I try to run Half Life 2, then I'll know that I have to look into getting a better graphics card.

Cheers!

[Jamie Nixx]

Rest assured that graphics card will play HL2 on high no sweat, i played it on high with a 6600GT so that should inspire some confidence lol :D

HL2 = best FPS ever made :D

[John47]

Super, that's really what I'm hoping for. I loved HL, and just haven't played HL2 until I got an upgrade. Lucky for me (ha), my Dell motherboard died, and now I have brand new super hardware to play. I'm looking forward to Starcraft 2 also, whenever Blizzard gets that off the ground.

[Jamie Nixx]

Don't hold your breath mate, Blizzard love taking their time lol.

And i just finished HL2 Ep1, OMG, it was awesome, i am downloading episode 2 right now wooo :D