is my system performing ok??

[5lab]

lo guys..

i've just put the gfx card into my shuttle (its been sitting here for 3 months with a radeon 7500 in it..), and i want to check i'm not majorly messing something up. i'm not to bothered about getting the maximum 5 or 10 % of performance out of it, but as long as its running at averageish speeds for games i'm happy. i've run 3dmark on it, and i would appreciate if you can comment as to whether the speeds seem ok

mobo : built in - to shuttle sn95g5
ram : single stick of crucial 512 meg pc3200 (i know 2 stick will speed me up, and i have a 2nd stick here, but its not matched. fortunately crucial are going to sort that out for me, bless em - that'll bring me up to 1024)
radeon 9800 pro - sapphire jobbie
amd xp64 3000 - a few months old, if that helps.

its all running at stock - i just bunged the latest drivers on and set off. 3dmark 2005 gave me 2522 marks.. is this any good? it looked pretty jerky quite a lot of the time, but i remember from when i used to be into clocking etc that 3dmark would generally not run smoothly on any hardware hte day it was released (and i accept you could have got this spec pc 12 months ago..)

here's a link to the compare thingy.. if theres a different benchmark i should run then let me know - again 3dmark heralds back to the heady late 90s when i was more into this sorta thing.. http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm05=997445


one final note - i'm running windows xp 64bit, rather than the normal breed. is anyone else doing this for games, or am i crazy? i seem to remember thinking it should technically make stuff run quicker...

ta for any help..

[StormPC]

2005 is going to look jerky with all but the fastest of systems. With your rig 2003 is a better benchmark.

Games won't run any faster really unless they are 64 bit games. Actually some programs will run a little slower, and some will run a little faster but not much.

AND, you could have gotten that machine almost 2 years ago.

It should be just fine for most games. You may need more RAM to make some games smoother but overall you have a nice gaming rig there even now.