My Dragothic Dragon is unwell :(

[zakelwe]

I have been benching my 5800 with my new AMD64 chip and KV8 Pro mothberoard and although the scores for car and lobby are now higher and nature is about the same due to similar card clocks ( 500/1000) and drivers ( 44.03) my dragon has taken a nosedive both in low and high tests. Not just a little bit, but a lot

before

low = 380+
high = 220+

now

low = 320+
high= 180+

That is an awful lot of points to give away.

The interesting thing is that low is based on video card performance and high tends to also be affected by the system performance, but both mine are hit badly. By changing card clocks and system settings I can get it to go up and down, but not get back the massive drop. My nature and car are spot on, so I do not think there is a big problem somewhere ( like AA being applied by mistake, or running at 266 mem speed by mistake).

For comparison another user with 500/100 and an AMD64 at 220x10 got 350/205 which seems where I should be again

What I have done

1) Installed the software again, Windows 2000, Sp3, VIA drivers ( 2 sets of ) nvidia drivers 44.03 and 52.16. Didn't use DX9, just used DX 8.1b, tried both patched and unpatched new install of 3dmark2001SE.

2) Checked the BIOS settings, AGP is 8x , RAM is at 400 ( 1:1) and 2-5-2-2, no throttling etc etc etc.

3) Checked the card is not downclocking or having aftifacts by running at slightly slower speed ( just slight drop in performance). Made sure it is not in 2d mode. Fiddled endlessly with rivatuner and nvidia control panel.


I was up to 3am and had to get up at 5am to go to work but still my mind fizzles and pops on the subject. Has anyone ever seen a massive drop in Dragothic but no other of the tests ? If you have then I would be most thankful for any words of advice !

Tonight I am going to put in more memory and turn the memory used by AGP in the BIOS down from 128 to 64MB, will try another card to see if the same effect happens, burst into tears and get drunk.

Actually I'll get drunk first then do all the rest.

If the worse comes to the worse I will have to do a search on the futuremark forums, but I just do not want to see 12 000 threads all entitled " Why is my 3dmark2001 score so low ,? " .

At least mine here has a slightly interesting title :p

Please form an orderly queue of people with great ideas, no pushing at the back there Soulburner, you will get your turn...

Regards

Clueless of England

[Soulburner]

What LDT are you running?

[zakelwe]

Originally posted by Soulburner
What LDT are you running?

I was at 800 and then went to 1000 and no difference.

With such a large drop it must be something either very stupid or very strange I think, it is so strange that it is is just that test. Car and lobby are perfect, better than my previous score. Nature is slightly lower but that is because I am running the card slightly slower.

380 to 320 is a 20% drop in performance, my hope is that this is so unusual that someone out there will see this and it immediately strike a bell, ie a massive drop just in dragothic.

Unless the card has some very funny problem which does not effect DX8 nature but DX7 dragothic, hence I will swap it out. Swapping the card out, to a 5600U and keeping everything else the same should point to card or the system depending on whether the problem follws the card and disappears.

It's a shame as I am on target for 23k in our summer apart from this taking me to second spot, even without any volt mods which are yet to come + chilled water. But losing 60fps in low loses 600 points and 30 in high likewise .. 1200 points. In one game.

I still can't believe it.

Regards

Andy

PS Thanks for your suggestion Captain !

[Geforce4ti4200]

what changes did you make before the massive hit in dragon? can you try the newer drivers, perhaps 50s or something? oh and nice 18.8k ti4200 score you had there, I have been thinking about your score and how close I can get when I too go a64

[zakelwe]

Originally posted by Geforce4ti4200
what changes did you make before the massive hit in dragon? can you try the newer drivers, perhaps 50s or something? oh and nice 18.8k ti4200 score you had there, I have been thinking about your score and how close I can get when I too go a64

Hi GF4,

I got a new motherboard so the hdd got new drivers for that, but the rest of the hard drive files should hav been the same. Using the same optimised driver as I had before.

Didn't get time to look at it last night as was trying out my new Corsair XL Pro memory which was not happy, that performed poorly as well. I am going to order a different motherboard as I am not getting on well with this on the memory front.

When are you getting your AMD64 ? I was thinking I would like to get over 19k with that card as it is not yet volt modded and only coled by P4 cooler ..so maybe when you get your studff we can have a mini duel ! Would be fun, let me know.

If I can sort out the above and the memory first of course.

Regards

Andy

[Geforce4ti4200]

what new motherboard did you get? I am getting the chaintech nf3 250 mobo. I have heard things about the corsair XL ram, they say itll do about 220fsb at 2-2-2-5 or 240-250fsb at 2.5-3-3-7 but dont you have ram that did 235fsb at 2-2-2-5 on a 3200+ clawhammer using a via kt800 mobo? Is it true the via mobos are a little faster than the nf3 150s? I will tell my dad to order an a64 tomorrow and when I get back from the vacation to Alaska in a week, my mobo and cpu should be here along with a copy of farcry(free!) nearly all a64s now are newcastles so your 1mb cache clawhammer is gonna be worth 100-150MHz on top of my newcastle. Then my ram is corsair value that does about 225fsb at 2-2-3-7 timijngs. the ras-cas of 3 will eat a few hundred marks, no idea how much, maybe 400? I can buy a 256mb stick for below $100 just for 3dmark then resell it for a small loss when im done. I will have much to learn about HT, fsb, T1 and T2 command rates and ram divisors. I have done a mild vmod to the core but it only gained 10MHz. how good is the TT copper cooler? what coolers will fit a ti4200? I also havent vmodded the ram but its my experience that the core matters much more anyway. I hope to get like 360/730 clocks. However I doubt I can match you on the cpu side. Id say 18.5k would be realistic with the 2800+ newcastle im getting, but then I am cheap and do not wish to spend another $100 on a 3200+ which is probably just a higher clocked newcastle anyway. any tips for me before I get the a64? I got some tips: disabling fast writes gained me 100 marks. setting the agp speed to 85MHz got me another 50. I also run 3dmark many times till I get a good run. Did you do any windows tweaks and how much did that help?

[zakelwe]

Originally posted by Geforce4ti4200
what new motherboard did you get? I am getting the chaintech nf3 250 mobo. I have heard things about the corsair XL ram, they say itll do about 220fsb at 2-2-2-5 or 240-250fsb at 2.5-3-3-7 but dont you have ram that did 235fsb at 2-2-2-5 on a 3200+ clawhammer using a via kt800 mobo? Is it true the via mobos are a little faster than the nf3 150s? I will tell my dad to order an a64 tomorrow and when I get back from the vacation to Alaska in a week, my mobo and cpu should be here along with a copy of farcry(free!) nearly all a64s now are newcastles so your 1mb cache clawhammer is gonna be worth 100-150MHz on top of my newcastle. Then my ram is corsair value that does about 225fsb at 2-2-3-7 timijngs. the ras-cas of 3 will eat a few hundred marks, no idea how much, maybe 400? I can buy a 256mb stick for below $100 just for 3dmark then resell it for a small loss when im done. I will have much to learn about HT, fsb, T1 and T2 command rates and ram divisors. I have done a mild vmod to the core but it only gained 10MHz. how good is the TT copper cooler? what coolers will fit a ti4200? I also havent vmodded the ram but its my experience that the core matters much more anyway. I hope to get like 360/730 clocks. However I doubt I can match you on the cpu side. Id say 18.5k would be realistic with the 2800+ newcastle im getting, but then I am cheap and do not wish to spend another $100 on a 3200+ which is probably just a higher clocked newcastle anyway. any tips for me before I get the a64? I got some tips: disabling fast writes gained me 100 marks. setting the agp speed to 85MHz got me another 50. I also run 3dmark many times till I get a good run. Did you do any windows tweaks and how much did that help?

It's an Abit KV8 Pro board but it is really hard on memory, my old KV8 MAx3 would allow 240+ 2-5-2-2 and this board allows 217 because the VBT voltage drops like a stone.... so my new cpu speed is all but wiped out

My Corsair does 215 at 2-5-2-2 and 225 at 2.5-3-3-7 so either I have a bad stick or it is the motherboard again.

/me waves goodbye to the motherboard

Via is faster than nforce but more trials and tribulations to overcome. If you are macci you take the nforce and just bend it to your will with volt mods, myself I will take the VIA route and hope for the best

I don't really tweak the operating system, at the end of the day it all boils down to Mhz on the graphics ( both gpu and memory ) and MHz on the cpu and memory. So to get those you need volt modes and cold cold cooling. When you have those you can forget, to some extent, trying to gain 100 points through some obscure tweak.

Regards

Andy