PiLsY
01-23-2003, 08:22 AM
First off I apologise for the scrappy format, this was originally for a PM, but thought I may as well paste it here as well.
If anyone else has any other tweaks theyd like to share please post them up below.
If we get enough input in here it may be worth stickying.
As for 3dmark secrets, all I do is minimise my windows install, install SP1 before anything else. Motherboard inf drivers next. Graphics drivers last. Remove all pci cards(60 points). Disable all onboard stuff (most noatble USB) including the FDD, IDE channels (i use raid) and com ports. Everything I can (210 points). I also do a fresh cmos clear (worth about 70 points) and unplug the monitor from the back of the gfx card (gives about another 80 points as well). The only thing apart from windows on my HDD is sandra, super pi, pifast and 3dmark. I use a partition thats almost at the start of my drive. I have a 508mb partition first of all for my swap file at the very beginning of the drive (gives much better day to day performance, no diff in 3dmark score, just faster loading times) set to fat32 file system. I run fat32 on my 3dmark partition too. That is a 2048mb partition (so I can use a large cluster size). After installing XP i disable the swap file and then remove everything I dont want in. I then reboot into safe mode and defrag. Another 6 normal reboots so the prefetch sorts itself out and then into safe mode and defrag again. Install SP1, reboot and then boot into safe mode and defrag. Install 3dmark, reboot and then reboot again into safe mode defrag. Same with sandra. I use the 6193 radeon drivers as they gave me best performance. I patch 3dmark to build 300 as well, as this seems to give me 200 points or so extra (all on car low - an extra 20fps as the car seems to usually miss that barrel on the first corner for some reason when its patched). I have the main slider at the top of D3D options set to max performance, then adjust the other 2 sloders to max performance as well. Disable truform and vsync. I force my monitor to 60hz, set desktop res to 1024 x 32bit and remove every single special effect XP has. I install rage3dtweak and let it use its 3dmark profile. I use it for overclocking as well. Powerstrip gives me better performance when overclocked (about 20 points) but having it load before I run 3dmark always nulls this increase. Whenever I run 3dmark I do a fresh boot and then load 3dmark. I set its priority to realtime and end any running processes I dont need. I then leave it at desktop for about 15 mins so it sorts out its system cache. I dont run any desktop wallpaper and have active desktop disabled. I also use tweakui to remove all desktop icons. I have quicklaunch and the clock turned off also.
All in all compared to a normal install this gains me roughly 900 points on a 3dmark run.
Hope it helps some of you get those last few points :).
PiLsY.
If anyone else has any other tweaks theyd like to share please post them up below.
If we get enough input in here it may be worth stickying.
As for 3dmark secrets, all I do is minimise my windows install, install SP1 before anything else. Motherboard inf drivers next. Graphics drivers last. Remove all pci cards(60 points). Disable all onboard stuff (most noatble USB) including the FDD, IDE channels (i use raid) and com ports. Everything I can (210 points). I also do a fresh cmos clear (worth about 70 points) and unplug the monitor from the back of the gfx card (gives about another 80 points as well). The only thing apart from windows on my HDD is sandra, super pi, pifast and 3dmark. I use a partition thats almost at the start of my drive. I have a 508mb partition first of all for my swap file at the very beginning of the drive (gives much better day to day performance, no diff in 3dmark score, just faster loading times) set to fat32 file system. I run fat32 on my 3dmark partition too. That is a 2048mb partition (so I can use a large cluster size). After installing XP i disable the swap file and then remove everything I dont want in. I then reboot into safe mode and defrag. Another 6 normal reboots so the prefetch sorts itself out and then into safe mode and defrag again. Install SP1, reboot and then boot into safe mode and defrag. Install 3dmark, reboot and then reboot again into safe mode defrag. Same with sandra. I use the 6193 radeon drivers as they gave me best performance. I patch 3dmark to build 300 as well, as this seems to give me 200 points or so extra (all on car low - an extra 20fps as the car seems to usually miss that barrel on the first corner for some reason when its patched). I have the main slider at the top of D3D options set to max performance, then adjust the other 2 sloders to max performance as well. Disable truform and vsync. I force my monitor to 60hz, set desktop res to 1024 x 32bit and remove every single special effect XP has. I install rage3dtweak and let it use its 3dmark profile. I use it for overclocking as well. Powerstrip gives me better performance when overclocked (about 20 points) but having it load before I run 3dmark always nulls this increase. Whenever I run 3dmark I do a fresh boot and then load 3dmark. I set its priority to realtime and end any running processes I dont need. I then leave it at desktop for about 15 mins so it sorts out its system cache. I dont run any desktop wallpaper and have active desktop disabled. I also use tweakui to remove all desktop icons. I have quicklaunch and the clock turned off also.
All in all compared to a normal install this gains me roughly 900 points on a 3dmark run.
Hope it helps some of you get those last few points :).
PiLsY.