Help!!! - X800XT with very low benchmark scores

[Bleachy]

Yes, I am probably a noob and have more money than sense but I really need your help. Ended up putting a PC together and then forking out for a Sapphire X800XT. Excellent, me thinks, Far Cry is gonna be awesome.

However, on installing the card I was a little bit disappointed with the result so I loaded up some benchmarks and found the following:

3DMark03 - 9'155

3DMark01 - 16'065

So there I am thinking these scores are okay until I read the X800XT Benchmark thread. WTF - not a single score under 26'000 for 3DMark01 and not a single score under 12'000 for 3DMark03, all at out of the box configurations.

Now I am no overclocking guru, in fact I know nothing about it and I am certainly not after achieving the greatest benchies ever posted in this forum. All I want is to just roughly get what I know the card can do.

The card is straight out of the box having had nothing done to it except install the CAT 4.9 drivers. It is being run on the following Spec:

P4 3GHz (800MHz FSB)
EPOX 4PLAI Mobo
1Gb PC3200 RAM
120 Gb Maxtor HDD
550W PSU
and loads of cooling.

Can anybody please please please help or at least make a few suggestions. Don't worry about talking to me like a first time amateur biff because I am one.

Cheers guys

[novajoe]

i dont know if its related but my 3dmark03 score went up when i increased the AGP aperture size O_o (in bios) my default was 64mb changed to 256mb (ppl say different things about what the size should be, so im not 100% if 256mb is correct but it works )

[yamangman]

Driver issue presumably, because I got a higher 3DMark2001SE (17,543) score than you with a 9800 PRO, and a lower 3DMark03 score (6,450).

Uninstall and reinstall your drivers, use driver cleaner if you think there may be some conflicting prior drivers.

You say this is a new machine so format and reinstall would be nice and easy. You want - windows - service pack - chipset drivers - graphics drivers then the rest.

[DR]

What drivers are you running?

- Make sure your memory is tweaked and running lwoer settings (in the bios)
- Make sure that you have all the Windows Updates
- Install Catalyst 4.9 Drivers and .net from microsoft.com
- 3DMark is not always the best thing to score by.

[kushtibari]

What performance/quality settings have you set in control panel? 01 is more cpu dependant than 03 but your scores are a bit below in each so maybe cards running a bit of AA/AF?

[DR]

Try running 03

[DaftpuNk]

No it won't be down to image quality settings, due to the fact that 3dmark disables them automatically, being a benchmark utility. When you install Windows, do you put on the latest motherboard drivers from Intel, Bleachy?

I think they refer to them as "Intel INF hardware update" drivers. This would be similar to installing nvidia nforce drivers on an nforce2 platform. The most important part is the AGP GART driver, (graphics address remap table) which improves host to GPU transfer performance and reliability.

By looking up your board on EPoX's UK website I found out it uses the i848P chipset and therefore under Windows XP it should be this file that you need:

ftp://aiedownload.intel.com/df-suppo...nfinst_enu.exe

To install them, uninstall all traces of your graphics driver, make sure your directx version is up to date (v9.0c latest at time of writing) and install them. Then reinstall your graphics driver.

Also, as novajoe says, the AGP aperture in BIOS should be set to 128MB or 256MB, either will do. You can also disable fast writes in the BIOS as ATi cards generally prefer to have it disabled. I doubt that it would influence the scores this much though.

Another option is to try omega's very good ATi drivers at http://www.omegadrivers.net/ Hope that little lot helps.

[kushtibari]

No it won't be down to image quality settings, due to the fact that 3dmark disables them automatically, being a benchmark utility.

It does not disable them automatically.

[Stephen B]

you sure you got your mobo inf drivers installed correctly?

[DaftpuNk]

Yes it does disable them, otherwise running 3DMark and doing the standard benchmark which is stated as having no image quality settings on, would not be truthful. That would then be the worst standardised benchmark in existence. (Well, 3DMark already is a random number generator in my eyes )

What are you basing your information on?

[BUFF]

kushtibari is right it won't disable them - you need to set your settings in Advanced Display.

[Allen]

Yes it does disable them, otherwise running 3DMark and doing the standard benchmark which is stated as having no image quality settings on, would not be truthful. That would then be the worst standardised benchmark in existence. (Well, 3DMark already is a random number generator in my eyes )

What are you basing your information on?

DaftpuNk, try setting your AA, AF, Image Quality and VSync settings to 4x, 8x, High Quality and On and do a benchmark. Then turn change to Off, Off, High Performance and Off and do another benchmark. Notice any difference? The 2nd result should be WAY higher!

3DMark does not disable your Performance and Quality settings in your ATi/nVIDIA control panel.

[DaftpuNk]

It's down to the fact that I bench'd with a useless driver version on an ATi card a while back. Its' control panel settings didn't affect benchmarks. Nevermind.

Very interesting that you're all so quick to jump in and try and disprove someone, yet not many are offering help for what this threads purpose is?

[BUFF]

The usual suspects had been mentioned & no feedback from the OP as to whether or not the various things had been done.

1 of the common reasons for people getting poor results is running with some level of FSAA or aniso enabled & as such it is always 1 of the first things suggested.
iirc you were the first person to contradict someone else & the weight of opinion is that you are wrong - unless you have "application preference" selected the control panel settings will be active.

[Allen]

It's down to the fact that I bench'd with a useless driver version on an ATi card a while back. Its' control panel settings didn't affect benchmarks. Nevermind.

Very interesting that you're all so quick to jump in and try and disprove someone, yet not many are offering help for what this threads purpose is?

kushtibari offered help and we've all agreed that he should try and disable all the settings in his Control Panel first. And you were the first to 'jump in' and try to disprove him...

[DaftpuNk]

the blame game is fun. But i was wrong, not to worry. Bleachy! Bleachy! You tried any of this lot yet? You've disappeared