Is my 3DMark2001 score a bit low?

[quarryman]

Just received and assembled my Shuttle and ran 3Dmark2001 and got the following:

Shuttle SB61G2 20th Anniversary Ed.
P4 2.6GHz 800 FSB
2x256MB OCZ 3200
TYAN 9600 Pro
80 GB Seagate 'cuda IV


My 3Dmark score: 11043

I'm a bit disappointed, was expecting something near 14K maybe? This is straight out of the box so i have only installed the drivers with the pack. Directx 8.1b i think. and the drivers for the 9600 pro are whatever was in the box. not sure what they are.

Will updating the drivers help much though. I would agree that you shouldn't flash the bios if everything is working but it might help here?

Any advice would be great. i'm gonna try avoid o/cing for the time being.
TIA

[streetster]

have a look on the forums for information about the omega catalyst (3.7 i think or maybe 3.8) drivers, as these should give a performance increase aswell as allowing you to overclock the card.

also make sure antialiasing and antistrophic filtering is off, and close any programs in the background i get 13xxx with a geforce4ti4200 so you should definately be getting more than me

mark

[Austin]

No need to flash the BIOS with 9600 cards, but it is VERY wise to install either the latest ATI CATs or Omega drivers. Also best to ensure you have the latest drivers for all your hw (esp mobo). Updating to DX9b is well worth doing too. Other than that 11000-12000 is roughly normal for a non-o/c'ed 9600PRO ... expect great boosts from o/c'ing as you should get from 400/300 to around 530/360.

[quarryman]

xpect great boosts from o/c'ing as you should get from 400/300 to around 530/360.

will do. the Tyan has a great hardware monitoring program that allows you to vary fan speeds and temperatures etc. I know there's 3rd party programs to do this stuff but its good that it is provided by the manufacturer. Gives an indication that it is probably good for o/cing.

also make sure antialiasing and antistrophic filtering is off, and close any programs in the background

well actually i just let it run the 17 tests - i didn't think i had a choice whether i ran AA or not. will try again later.

ATI CATs or Omega

this is my first ATI card (my last one was an Nvidia TNT2 ) so i'm a bit clueless as to the drivers available. I'd always thought there was one type only ie Catalyst. Going off to have a look now. I'll get dx9 as well. I tried morrowind to test it and it crashed as soon as i moved to go outside the boat. The screen went blank and the monitor went into standby (there didn't seem to be any signal coming out)
That had me worried so i rebooted and it seemed to work ok. Tried NWN and that seemed fine so it looks like a have a few patches to pick up.

Thanks.

[Enverex]

Originally posted by quarryman
well actually i just let it run the 17 tests - i didn't think i had a choice whether i ran AA or not. will try again later.

He doesn't mean changing the program settings, he means making sure AA and AF are turned off i nthe drivers (Display Properties >> Advanced >> Direct3D). You can also set that to "Best performance" to increase your score a little more.

The I got a 51 point increase going from the 3.7's to the 3.9s with my Radeon 9700 so you should be ok just to grab the latest 3.9 Catalyst of ATi's site.

NS

[Austin]

Official drivers are from ATI ...

http://www.ati.com/support/drivers/w...=17&submit.y=7

Here's the less official but more tweaked and o/c friendly(ier) drivers based on the CATs known as the Omega drivers ...

http://www.omegacorner.com/ati.htm

With the latest drivers and DX9B installed you should find everything goes swimmingly. If you still get problems try to ensure all your hw has the latest drivers but if you haven't done a fresh OS install (or at least reinstall) since upgrading you could still have issues.

When you game you really do want to use at least 2xAA+4xAF to 4xAF+8xAF but for benchmarking (esp 3Dmark) you should ensure it is all disabled (both in the driver panel and 3DM itself). Still for stock running your score seems about right, you should push 13000-14000 once your gfx card is o/c'ed (but ensure everything runs stable at std speeds first). TBH 3Dmark03 is a better benchmark for modern DX9 cards, 3Dmark2001 really doen't push modern cards ... well unless you start using AA+AF and pref a higher res but then it's hard to compare results.

[chrisf6969]

OC a little!! I've seen a lot of people can get their Shuttles clocked up to 250Mhz FSB!!
I'd shoot for something simple, like 3Ghz.

Change ratio to 5:4, FSB to 230, NB strap: 800, CPU vcore to 1.55v and you should be good to go.

ram settings can probably be more aggressive than by SPD since you'll be running at 184Mhz instead of 200. But you will probably get the same(for memory) and much higher in most benchmarks b/c of more FSB and greater CPU clock.

[quarryman]

3GHz would be great. i'll aim for that. the RAM i have is supposed to be good so i should be able to manage something decent

OT: those shuttles are soo cramped inside. very little room for air flow. i'll have to watch my temps!

[Austin]

You'll know when your temps are too high as you'll experince instability. I would advise the safer o/c'ing method of upping the FSB gradually rather than taking a leap and only add 0.05v at a time and only when you reach the o/c limit. Adding voltage will have a very big effect on your temps. So IMHO set the RAM ratio to 5:4 and then try a few FSB mhz at a time testing throughly you are truly stable. O/c'ing the gfx card will EASILY bring you the best returns in gaming perf but it does of course make sense to get that CPU/FSB faster too. First thing you need to do is get the latest drivers and ensure everything runs perfectly stock first.

[chrisf6969]

Originally posted by Austin
First thing you need to do is get the latest drivers and ensure everything runs perfectly stock first.

TRUE DAT

P.S. I used to get 15,223 with my ti4600 @ 320/720 with a 3Ghz P4 & IC-7 and not even the best 44.03 drivers. see it here...
http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=6721489

[kingabs]

iam getting like 13,000 ish from my 9600 card running in my shuttle running 2800 xp 512mb corsair ddr 3500!

[bouncin]

careful with ur ambient temps aswell dude not just ur chip as shuttles hold a lot of heat and this could be key to lowering ur cpu temps but tbh i dont think 3.0 ghz will be a problem for ya

good luck m8y and may the force be with you

[gamezfreak]

I'm getting 10043 on my system. Which I think is a little low for my spec.

But I am using the drivers that came with the card (catalyst 3.6) and I only built the system a few days ago. I did try and update to Catalyst 3.9's but they make my games hang and crash.

[Austin]

Seems a little low gamezfreak, I'd imagine 11000-12000 woud be more like it for your setup. You should still gain more by o/c'ing gfx and ideally CPU but I'd ensure you have the latest drivers (esp mobo & ideally BIOS). CAT3.6 aren't far behind CAT3.9, CAT3.7-3.9 have been more about patching and design than perf gains. You should still find the CAT3.9 work though (certainly if your card is stock), are you removing the old drivers before installing the new?

[Rabs]

I get just under 12000 with my Powercolour 9600 Pro in a shuttle XP2500+@3200+ system.

The question is are you really unhappy with speeds and framerates in your games etc? I personally wouldn't bother overclocking your gfx card... your cpu etc is another matter though

[Austin]

For gaming you'll see by far the biggest gains by o/c'ing the gfx card. P4C 2.6ghz is one heck of a powerhouse stock. Of course the best gains will come from o/c'ing both CPU and gfx card as both have a lot of headroom in them (though are still great stock) ... however where gaming is concerned o/c'ing the gfx card will easily have the most significance.