some (windows) 3dmark tweaks

[lawrywild]

These are my collection, I will add more when I find more. 2 or 3 tweaks were taken from the original sticky at the top. A couple things I took from various topics I managed to dig up.

I didn't "make" these tweaks, so credit goes to everyone who found these tweaks and not me.

Windows Tweaks by lawrywild (using Dothan and 7800GT on XP Professional)

1. Disable all services that you can possibly disable (start, run, msconfig), you do not need any internet services etc, scores can be uploaded from the .3dr file on any PC/partition.

2. Disable any unnecessary startup items.

3. Disable the nVidia Display Driver service.

4. Disable any unnecessary items in device manager such as USB peripherals, COM ports etc.

5. Go to add/remove programs -> removes windows components and remove most accessories and games except paint and maybe calculator. Remove msn explorer, windows messenger, windows media player and other unnecessary items.

6. Runregedit and go to: HKLM/system/currentcontrolset/control/session manager/memory management and set the disableexecutivepaging(This has caused bootproblems for some members, be aware) to =1,

7. Largesystemcache=1(this has also caused problems for some members, be aware),

8. IOpagelocklimit=16384 in decimal,

9. Secondleveldatacache=2048 or the same as your L2 cache size in decimal. (this has lowered HouseERaT's x1900xt score, so check it is an improvement after setting it)

10. Reboot and run regedit again and go to HKLM and turn off the fileprotection: Software/Microsoft/windowsNT/currentversion/winlogon and change the value of SFCDisable to REG_DWORD “ffffff9d”.

11. Use win2k (with dx8.1 for 3dmark2001) with AMD processors, XP pro or win2k for Pentium M (doesn't really make much difference), winXP pro for p4

12. In system.ini , add the following line under 386enh: ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1. (N.B. may cause decrease in scores!)

13. Always run Realtime when benchmarking, this can be set easily from processes in task manager.

14. End all unnecessary processes before running any benchmarks.

15. End explorer.exe before running any benchmarks, this can easily be started up again by going to task manager -> file -> New Task -> explorer.

16. NEVER change cpu clockspeeds whilst 3dmark is running, it will void your score and you won’t be able to publish.

17. Spend some time working out an optimal order to run 3dmark2001se, it will really push up your marks. I use DL, LL, CH, DH, LH, NATURE, CL, repeat CL up to about 15 times, the FPS varies considerably with this game test, if you’re lucky you can gain about 500 marks just from getting a good CL run, though it could happen you won’t gain any marks because the first run was the fastest already. Best to make sure it is though, eh?

18. Spend time working out optimal LOD settings for each test, this again is worth the effort if you’re really serious about getting all those extra marks.

19. Place swap/paging file on a separate hdd. The beginning of the hdd is where it’s accessed fastest, so you want to place it in the first partition on the hdd.

20. Set paging file to 100-200% of your system’s ram (system properties -> advanced -> performance settings -> advanced -> virtual memory -> change).

21. Set resolution to 1024x768 and colour depth to 16bit. Set windows classic mode, using no screensavers and no backgrounds.

22. Go to system properties -> Advanced -> performance settings -> adjust for best performance.

23. Because, for XP SP2, A64 will start to run "noexecute" once boot in windows, it will mark up some memory address that cann't be executed, e.g. preventing buffer overflowing by default, it will give some loads to the CPU, so by disabling it, the CPU can be o/c a bit higher for extreme overclocking. Edit the boot.ini, noexecute=AlwaysOff, reboot after edit.

24. "Ricky Tweak" - Control panel -> system -> hardware -> device manager -> expand computer -> right click "ACPI uniprocessor PC" -> update driver -> don't go to MS update, chose to install from list, select "ACPI multiprocessor PC" -> install -> reboot. (this is only really useful in 3dmark2001 and can increase temps by up to 10'C, can be good for preventing against coldbugs etc though)

Hope they are useful :thumbsup: