2x8600GT scores poorly in one rig, not another...

[xTr33m sammich!]

I have 2x 8600GT PCI-e vid cards, I have tried them on two systems.
SYSTEM A
DFI 680i SLI board with 2GB DDR2 800 and an E6400, stock clock scores (10500+ Single card) 17000+ 3DMark05 13000+CPU marks (6500 pts earned with 2x gpu)
SYSTEM B
ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe with 2GB DDR500 and an X2 3800+ stock clock (9500+ Single card) 10800+ 3DMark05 7000+CPU marks (1000pts earned with 2x gpu)

Frames are down on the the AMD system as well.. using current system drivers v158.22 vid drivers on a clean XP Pro install...
Am I missing something? Is this normal for a8n32?

[K404]

C2D whips AMD in 3DMark.... you should have seen enough evidence of that by now?

[shogo_ca]

3800+ cant compete against e6400, eventought there is a small 128mhz difference, the c2d architecute make it really faster. Also ddr800 vs ddr500...

[funnyperson1]

Guys, the problem isn't that the CPU isn't powerful enough, SLI doesn't seem to be working too well on the AMD system, he only gained 1300 points by adding a second card.

I would try different video and maybe even chipset drivers.

[K404]

CPU bottleneck. no question.

See the same thing with G80 GTX SLI paired with a stock X68.

[0DIGy]

+1 CPU limited...

[Chewbenator]

See what putting the DDR2800 into the AMD machine does in terms of score.

(edit: NVM didn't see that the AMD system used DDR, which also could have an effect)

[xTr33m sammich!]

Chew on this, overclocking the 3800+ to 2.5GHz gained another 3000+ video marks, it does indeed seem to be a CPU bottleneck, at least with 3Dmark... Problem is this particular 3800+ is not a great overclocker like the 3200+ single cored CPU it replaced was.. 2.3GHz not stable at all...

HL-2 runs 40-100fps with one card
70-200fps with two cards
100-250fps with cpu overclocked to 2.5ghz...

Definately working.

[Neuromancer]

CPU bottle neck might not be the GFX cards faults but 3d MArk software.

When they first came out over on OCF dominick benched some 8800s while on a stock then overclocked 6600.

His overall score went up but the shader model scores didnt. EDIT: They did but not a lot.. and in some case went down.. chalk it up to variations in the systems running condition I suppose)

Not 100% sure but that implies to me software is cpu dependent not the gfx cards... (06 does have CPU tests remember)

(So that 3800 might work fine with those cards in games especially when running over 1280x1024. If you have the fullversion of 3d06 try changing to max resolution and see if there is as much of a differnce).