Extremely low score in 3DMark 2001

[arisaa]

This was my first time ever.

Then I went online to compare my score full of pride.

I tried to locate a composition similar to mine.

It was a real shock.

If you're not bored please check this : http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=6297791

My score : 3447??????????????????????
Guy's score : 8817!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


What could be so wrong ?

My system :

Asus A7V8X-X
Athlon XP2200+
Shamsung 512 DDR 333MHz
WD 40GB ATA100
Prolink Geforce4 MX440-8x (core@274MHZ memory@286MHz no OC)


Please spare a couple of minutes for a desperate PC victim.

[Bigjakkstaffa]

The geforce 4 mx cards arent known for their performance, being budget/workstation cards, so that score sounds around about right to me

--Jakk:t

[arisaa]

Thanks for replying Bigjakkstaffa
but the other guy has the same card (though I understand that clock speeds might be higher at his card) and the difference is immence.

What could justify such a difference ?

[Bullion]

check the setting of the test. I had a g4mx-420 that was colcked like a demon that returned around 6k a few years back, they were pretty handy cards for the price

[richard_cocks]

ok with 3dmark2001 my first bench was 3874, over the next day I got it up to 8431

here's what I did:

cleaned off a trojan I had :rolleyes:
generally cleaned other spyware,
rolled back my drivers to 44.03 (this may not be new enough for you since you have a gf4mx, I have a gf3).

that alone got me up to 5433.

Then I went poking around the bios, twiddling with some settings that I thought might help, without touching overclocking etc, just normal cios settings that weren't optimum I got it to a further 6754.

The rest may not apply for you, but to get that last extra oomph I actually changed from 11X166 to 9x200, this gave me a nice whack up to 7444, but that was back on 52.xx drivers, going back again to 44.03 drivers put me back to 8283, and a last little overclock to 9.5x200 got me to 8431 (but a detailed look showed that is basically a "fake" increase since it was all earned from "cpu marks" with at most 0.1fps difference in actual tests).

my orig test which yielded 3874 the system did feel sluggish (for a new computer as it was at the time!) with 8431 games run great.


what precisly is the other guy's system?

but as you can see, without touching hardware (save for a little overclock for the final 200 marks, although I did already have 400Mhz rated ram which was needed) I over doubled my score, a lot more than just hardware can vary with a computer.

EDIT: p.s. my CPU is a barton 2500+, so don't be suprised if you can't get up to 8500, if you do though I'll be jealous ;)


EDIT2: ahhh, now had time to check that link and directly compare it to my best scoring bench.

he's running his FSB at 200Mhz, on exactly the same motherboard as I'm running mine on.

he's using 43.45 and running his ACP at 8x are the main stuff that's clearly going to help.

do you have a compare url for your own bench?

EDIT3: last but not least, here's my compareurl for my best score, although our hardware differs quite a bit.

http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=7225260

[richard_cocks]

Originally posted by Bullion
check the setting of the test. I had a g4mx-420 that was colcked like a demon that returned around 6k a few years back, they were pretty handy cards for the price

yeah, since I recently got a new computer and couldn't afford the "best" gfx card around, I decided to wait, I re-took the gf3 out my old computer, and so since my sister was taking my old duron 800 off me, I decided to put in a gf4mx440 in it's place. I dind't run it much, but visual quality had changed a lot from my old gf3 to the mx440, a lot crisper image, and it was a nifty beast, but since I had a 128mb gf3 variant, mine old gf3 was still slightly faster (if less directx compliant) than the new card, so she got that.

and my GF3ti200 still isn't OCed, I used to have it runnin at ti500 a year or so back but really since I'm only running mainly half-life at a constant 100fps I can't see the advantage :\ (yeah my system is going to waste hehe)

[Bigjakkstaffa]

As stated, thee gf4mx is not really a gaming card by any stretch, as such you wotn see many people consistently turnign out high benchmarks, you'll probably fidn the geezer above with 8K has got his card highly overclocked and is very much an exception to the rule (unless running a seriously meaty CPU).

This chart:

http://www.tomshardware.com/graphic/20030120/vgacharts-05.html

Gives you a good idea of where the MX440 at stock performs in the overall makeup of things, as you can see not very high. On the evidence of the above chart, your score looks fine

--Jakk:t

[richard_cocks]

nonetheless, it should be possible to get that system up to 5000+ (which is about a 50% increase) with that card, maybe not out the box, but this is sysopt - system optimisation - is it not ;)?


But anyhow, arisaa if you publish your results then it will be easier to see if there's any obvious reason you scored as low as you did.

[Bigjakkstaffa]

Originally posted by richard_cocks
nonetheless, it should be possible to get that system up to 5000+ (which is about a 50% increase) with that card, maybe not out the box, but this is sysopt - system optimisation - is it not ;)?


It will probably need both the CPU, Memory and Video card overclocking, plus some tweaks in the BIOS, but i would say 5000 is achievable, not with plain old application/OS tweaking though

--Jakk:t

[richard_cocks]

I don't know, as I said, I doubled mine before I began overclocking anything.

I wouldn't have even tried had it not been for the fact that other similar systems I was looking at on the 3dmark results borwser were all getting higher than me!

there's a free 10% performance gain just by picking the right drivers with an nvidia card.

but yeah, bios tweaks are a must, they are what can really kill a system if set to "fail safe" or similar.

Personally I think my bios settings were more than shafted since I built my own PC, I had no reference to go on, so other PCs shouldn't have quite such poor settings, but it's still an area that is often overlooked before people dive in and start overclocking their "beast".

[arisaa]

Thank you all for replying. I am sorry for not responding but I was away for a few days.

Well I think bios settings are optimum.

As of trojans and spyware I check my system daily.

My VGA (came to me by "accident") is quite a slow performer with default clock settings at 275\286. Now it runs at 300\335 with
the help of a fan.

I also overvlocked the cpu a little bit by raising the multiplier at 15 from 13.5. Now it runs at 2.0 Ghz.

Maximum score I managed was 4194.

What really striked me though was your discussion about drivers. I use 52.16. Always thought that the newer are the best.

I think I'll try the version that came with the card but is there any way to tell which is the best driver for a given VGA ?

Thanks again :t