Poor 3dmark06 Results HELP!!

[reflex]

Hi all,

First post in this section, hopefully it is meant to be here...

Anyway this is part overclocking part benchmarking.

My system:

AMD X2 4200+
MSI K9N Ultra (AM2)
2GB Apacer DDR-800
MSI 8800GT OC (690/1650/1912)

Ok, I have my CPU running at 2497MHz (227x11) Ram set to down to 667 (set to 667 with 4-4-3-6 1T) HT link x4

When I run 3dmark06 on this setup I get 9300marks.

So I heard that running a higher FSB will make your computer generally faster. So I increased my FSB to 277x9 giving me 2493MHz. I reduced the ram to 533Mhz and kept the timings the same.

When running 3dmark on this higher FSB I immediately noticed about a 20fps drop in the first and second test. I cancelled the test as I knew the results would be poor.

Any ideas why my FPS drops so dramatically with a higher FSB(everything else seems fast, windows in general)

Thanks in advance for any advice
Now

[stangracin2]

well for 1 you took away 500 MHz of processing power

[WrigleyVillain]

well for 1 you took away 500 MHz of processing power

He did?

Anyway a 20 fps drop is kind of strange, your RAM was slower but 06 is so heavily GPU bound that you shouldn't notice that much difference. On that note, in this situation (testing various fsb and ram speeds for the effect on 3D performance) I would run any 3DMark version other than 06 as they are all much more sensitive to overall system speed, ram timings, etc. Especially 3Dmark 2001.

[stangracin2]

He did?

sry read that wrong try upping the memory speed

[CraptacularOne]

First of all your score of 9.3k in 06 is not poor for your system, That is about what you should expect with a 2.5Ghz AMD X2 CPU and an 8800GT, so I'm not sure what you're even worried about.

[stangracin2]

man i see you problem your only running a 300 MHz OC bump it up another 300 and you might like it

im getting 9800 with my rig

[Metz]

With my setup and 1 8800 GT i was scoring 9.8k. Adding my second card only got me up to 10,500, but the increase in actual game performance is very noticeable. Your cpu like mine is bottlenecking & limiting your cards true performance, every mhz you can pump out will increase your score. 9.3k is normal for your setup and clocks.

[WrigleyVillain]

These guys are all right on. Of course you'd still want to test further with other benches and actual gaming runs to find the fastest stable combo of cpu, fsb and ram clocks on your setup.

[SocketMan]

Yea they all right I can only add a few pointers:

1.
Higher FSB (aka HTT) = better applies for Intel rigs mostly
2.
Try a different driver, some will give you slightly higher fps
3.
Open the NV control panel and set 3d settings for the 3dmark2006 to "high perf"
4.
Changing cpu multi will change your RAM speed, you want higher frequency more then tight timings
5.
2T + Higher(ram) Mhz=More RAM bandwidth then 1t and low (ram) freq.

[reflex]

Thanks for the replies guys, I am just finding it weird that there is such a performance drop when I raise the fsb while keeping the cpu clock at 2.5GHz

This is my everyday setup (2.5GHz) but for benchmarks I usually push it up to about 2.8GHz. Anyway, I need better cooling for that :(
I am going to experiment today wih higher ram MHz with looser timings and lower MHz with tight timing and see what happens.

Thanks again

[loonym]

3dm06 will care very little either way for tighter or looser timings or oc ram or even dual vs single channel. The gains in 06 will be from processing power and vid card clocks.

[ymer]

I say the scores are all right for that system.