Poor 3dmark05 scores with fast system??

[ShLoNkY]

First off my system specs are below.

I have my fx55 clocked at right around 2.8ghz with 14x multi, 200 fsb ans HTT at 5x at stock voltage. I also have an x1800xt at stock speeds and recently got a 3dmark05 score of 9055 which I thought was pretty low as my friends have comparable systems are getting 12000+

I recently changed the multi to 13x with 220 fsb abd HTT at 4x and it improved my score to 10070 even though the clock speed was pretty much same. (+60mhz i think)

My question for you folks is what is the best setting for my RAM as I have 4x 512 sticks of corsair in dual channel. Is me having 4 sticks of memory holding me back?? The system only detects 4 sticks of memory at 333mhz.

I know there is a trick or something that I am missing. Thanks in advance. :)

[bradyapba]

yes 4 sticks is holding you back. 1st, when you go to 4 sticks, it defaults to 333, and you cant change it.

It will also kill your OC. There is an great article at anandtech where they tested the 4 sticks vs 2 sticks, it killed the OC by like 75%.

Try only 2 sticks, and OC some more. You will increase your score.

Also with 4 sticks, you cant go with 2T vs 1T, which is also slowing you down.

I know there is more im probably missing here, im sure others will chime in and help out.

I have that article saved somewhere at home, I will link it when i get out of work.

[tricky0502]

i tried using 4 512's and my system ran like crap! the memory devider gets dropped down to 333 and you have to run in 2t command rate. your much better off with 2 1gb sticks or just run 2 512's.

[ShLoNkY]

For some reason I thought the memory divider wasnt an issue due to the 64 memory controller being on the chip??

[bradyapba]

Just the opposite, thats the exact reason why its the issue.

[tricky0502]

For some reason I thought the memory divider wasnt an issue due to the 64 memory controller being on the chip??
with 4 slots populated it becomes a factor. ive been running my system at 250 fsb 10x 4htt and 333 devider, and when i tried 4 512 my system very unstable. i ended up returning the second pair of 512's for some 1 gb sticks. now it runs great like when i had 2 512's.

[bradyapba]

sorry i meant to post this earlier heres and article that explains in great detail, and better than I could, about 2T vs 1T and the 4 dimms vs 2...

heres a snipet

"Using the same DIMMs and same timings, we could only reach a 240 Processor Clock or +20% with 4 DIMMs. Two DIMMs allowed an overclock to 318 or +59%. With two DIMMs, we could overclock almost 3 times higher than with 4 DIMMs. You can likely overclock a bit higher with 4 DIMMs by further tweaking memory timings, but 4 DIMM overclocking will always fall far short of 2 DIMMs on current Athlon 64 memory controllers"

link (http://www.anandtech.com/memory/showdoc.aspx?i=2560)