New rad 9800 pro :D

[Stylez]

Well this morning got my new card and am really inpressed with it and am loving the aa/af. These are my benchmarking results atm, without any gfx tweeking .

http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=7644118
or
http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=7644281

and

http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k3=2197698

These about right at stock? Also what are the best drivers for performance?

[Ravens Nest]

Read on rage3d that the 3.9 drivers are meant to be the best for performance in Direct 3D, cant remember what was best for Opengl though

They have also just released the Catalyst 4.3 drivers, but they are slower than then 3.9 drivers.

But really there is very little performance difference between the different drivers, just go with the latest as ATI drivers are designed for stability first and squeezing extra performance seems to be a side-effect.

Then use a tweak program to alter hidden driver settings.
I use rage3dtweak
http://www.rage3d.com/index.php?node=r3dtweak

And change these settings in rage3dtweak as follows.

DIRECT3D

Colorfill - enabled (Improve the colour saturation in games)
Enable wbuffer - enabled (Helps improve speed in Gothic2 on my pc)
Guard band clipping - enabled
W fog - enabled
Z compression - High (Setting this high improves perfomance but might cause artifacting)
Z fog - enabled
Z mask - enabled (Improves speed)

OPENGL

3Dnow! - enabled (Only for AMD cpu's)
Force 16bit textures - disabled (Obviously you want 32bit colour not 16)
SSE - enabled (Optimizations for P3 or above \ AMD xp or above)
SSE2 - enabled (Optimizations for P4 or AMD64)

Give these a try for increased performance, especially in opengl

[Stylez]

So these will help alot, also if they are changed and i need them back how am i supposed to do that?

[Stylez]

Also whats the best to of the latest to use either the omega 4.2's or the normal ones?

[Howard]

ARGH! The man has a FRIGGING DURON and is still beating me

WHY am I getting lower scores than EVERYBODY :cry:

[kushtibari]

no he doesn't - he's got a 2500 at 3000. 3d2k1 sometimes misreads the cpus as durons or even unknowns

[Howard]

Oh arse. That'll teach me not to read the description.

Maybe my processor is just crappy. Or needs more megahertz sqeezed out of it.

[CrapshoT]

if you can get your fsb to 200mhz the extra bandwidth lifts your score quite a bit as well

[Howard]

It is at 200MHz

[Ady168uk]

I also love my Sapphire 9800pro finally got my shuttle to bench over 18k

[Stylez]

Just formated because i had a few probs with stuff and alot of unwanted things installed, and now my 3dmark is better without any windows tweaks. Hopefully with gfx overclocking and tweaks i can get better.

3dmark 2001se - 17k
3dmark 2003 - 5.6k

[Ravens Nest]

So these will help alot, also if they are changed and i need them back how am i supposed to do that?

Im not sure if they will make a massive difference or not with direct3d (Except gothic2) but the OPENGL settings definetly increase performance with call of duty.

To revert back to default settings there is a profile within it that is called 'reset' that will revert the settings to default on your card

Also whats the best to of the latest to use either the omega 4.2's or the normal ones?

I used to use Omega's drivers up till 3.9 as they were faster, increased image quality and some games didnt work with the latest catalyst but worked with the omega version.

But now i just use catalysts as they now seem just as good as the omega's and i just do the tweaks i want with rage3d tweak.

[Korky]

Howard its a great mystery that some ppl get more marks with what looks like inferior or equal hardware, so many factors come into it, why does this guy get 20k with 11x210 and i need 11x235!!! thats wat i asked myself. Optimising the bios for 3d mark gains u marks, maybe ur 333mhz ram? slacker timings at higher fsbs etc.

and sorry for high jacking the thread going back to original post yes this is the norm score (16.5-17.5) for that mid range tbred b + 400-->ram + 9800pro that is prob the favourite amoung most.

[Howard]

Hmm it's all OCed to 400MHz, the FSB, RAM, everything. I'm blaming the fact that it's a Tbred and not a Barton like most people seem to have

[Korky]

ye bartons have a slight edge but u can beat a barton easy if u have a slight edge with overclocking.