What is wrong with my system? (low 3dmark score)........

M

MadDog5145

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 2, 2004
Messages
142
I have been trying to play Farcry and Unreal Tournament the past couple of days but my system keeps locking up and ends up restarting. I then ran 3Dmark05 and got only a score of 4109 with my 6800 Ultra. I ran it a second time and got a simlar score. I am not overclocking anything and my video card is not having temperature problems.

System spec:
Compaq SR1010Z
AMD64 3400+
1GB Corsair valueselect
160GB SATA hdd
200GB ATA hdd
250GB ATA hdd
PNY 6800 Ultra
Xclio 450BL psu

Here are more details about my system provided by 3dmark:
http://bmt134.90megs.com/SI.xml
 
Heh, sorry, you didn't say, so I have to check just to be sure. You have vsync off right?

Don't shoot the messenger, it had to be asked.
 
I dont even know what vsync is...don't shoot the noob ;)

I have never tried pc gaming before because I always thought it was such a hassle.....well so far it is a hassle
 
Well, Vsync is the thing that will royally screw up any benchmarking you might hope to do by limiting maximum framerates as well as slowing them a bit more even when not going that high just to keep them right. Essentially what it tries to do is match the video card frame output with the monitor's actual drawing so you don't end up with occasions where the FPS goes too high and the monitor is still halfway through one frame when it starts on the next, causing a horrible looking tearing effect. By synchronizing, it tends to look a little more smoothly anyway even at lower rates because of the matching outputs, but, it has to stop and wait instead of being able to get ahead. Since benchmarks generally rely first and foremost at just tallying total framerates, if you have this option on, your framerates will be lower even if your card is powerful enough to do more and your score will also suffer.

Well, for benchmarking it should be off obviously, but, in real life basically everything else, vsync is a god-send that makes games just look better and feel more smooth unless your framerates are REALLY bad.


BTW, I think officially everyone uses the "performance" quality setting in the control panel for benchmarking. No one has told me to stop doing this anyway. The fact is, everyone needs to use the same quality setting for any benchmarks to actually mean anything. Oh, and be sure things such as full screen antialiasing and anisotropic filtering are set to "application preference" so 3dmark can turn them off and get a proper reading (if you have to force them on, set them in the 3dmark settings to the same thing so it at least tallies the score a bit more accurately.) Obviously you'll want to use a higher quality setting for actual gaming -- that is, if you like to actually see something other than a blur in front of you. d-:

To get to the nvidia control panel, right click a blank area well away from icons on your desktop and choose properties (that's the shortcut, the long cut is to open up the windows control panel and run display properties from it.) Click the settings tab, then advanced. You should have a tab with the nvidia logo showing the name of your video card, select that. Most of the options you want are in the performance option on the left.

Oh, and while I'm thinking of it, be sure you have semi-semi recent drivers. Older drivers perform more slowly in modern games/benchmarks. They do, however, yield better quality results in older games sometimes though. And don't be fooled, you DON'T have to use only the drivers that your manufacturer provides. The nvidia reference drivers stay way ahead of most manufacturers out there (takes them over a month to stamp their logo on the installation screens sometimes.)
 
Ok, I turned off vsync off and left the other two application controlled. My 3dmark score is still around 4000. I will try updating my drivers....just got to find some first....
 
www.nvidia.com click on download drivers then click on download drivers (stupid the way they use a dropdown to get you to the same thing like that.)

Like I said, just go ahead and get the reference drivers from them. Don't worry over getting them from your manufacturer. Gone are the days of manufacturer drivers being required to get the full extra capabilities of one's card (used to be VIVO wouldn't work with reference drivers, so you were stuck with ancient ones, but, these days nVidia provides a WDM for VI, and VO is just plain built into the whole thing.) These days, practically the only thing a manufacturer driver is is an outdated reference driver with their logo stamped everywhere the nvidia logo used to be.
 
Thanks. I upgraded to Forceware 77.77 drivers and got a 3dmark of 5667 :cool:


I am gonna play some Farcry and hope that it doesnt lock up anymore.....
 
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