New rig, poor 3dMark score

exactiv

Hi. I just put my new machine together. All shiny and lovely looking.

I downloaded 3dMark2006 to give the machine a good burn and I wasn't very impressed with the score (around 3000 ish).

The spec as follows:
GFX Card: Gainward GeForce 7950 GX2
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3800+
Motherboard: MSI K9N Platinum
Memory: 2Gb OCZ Platinum PC2-6400 EL XTC
HDD 0: 150Gb Western Digital Raptor (SATA)
HDD 1: 200Gb Samsung SP2004C (SATA)
HDD 2: 200Gb Samsung SP2004C (SATA)
CD/DVD: Plextor something or other

Any suggestions to improve the score would be most welcome.

Thanks, Ex.

Giblet

Try downloading the latest drivers for your video card.

K.O.Kiki

Then overclock

AnCapaillMor

3,000 yikes!!. has to be drivers, if you've got the latest try the previous. My mate got a card as of late and installed the new drivers and could'nt play games when the nvidia icon was on his taskbar, also kept getting some crap about sli being disabled(even he had only 1 card). He checked it out with Nvidia forums and there was a bug with the latest drivers. Also i heard something previously about certain drivers only recognising one of the GPU's on 7950's.

K.O.Kiki

3000 -- isn't that what 7600GT's achieve though?
The 7950 GX2 is 2x7900GT's...

AnCapaillMor

A mate of mine was getting 8,000 with the 7950.

8T8

3000 is a pretty low score, though if you check the Orb there are one or two entries around that same mark but a lot higher however it is tricky gauge what is the norm due to the vast amount of overclocking that goes on in the 3D Mark results database.

Can you post the link to your ORB results so we can see if there is anything up with the system.

Is the DDR2-800 running at the correct speed, go to the memory tab in CPU-Z and verify that it is clocked at 400Mhz.

Try posting benchmarks from something else like the inbuilt benchmark of F.E.A.R set everything to max but leave soft shadows and v-sync disabled then post scores with & without 4xAA/8xAF enabled.

exactiv

Right. I un-installed the GFX card and re-installed with the latest drivers.

Got a new score of 5526

Result: 3dmark.jpg

Registered with Futuremark as well. Link to details here: http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=410971

Still not happy with it though. The CPU test (CPU1 - Red Valley) wasn't even making 1 FPS!
Surely it should be higher? I'll be fairly pissed off if I can't get a higher score with a €570 GFX card & 2Gb of system ram!

8T8: thanks for the ram suggestion. I've checked the memory speed and it's correct. I only have the trial version of 3DMark06 so I can't run game specific tests.

AnCapaillMor

The cpu test is normal, i was getting around the same(1 FPS) with an X2 4400. try the previous drivers. I got 5625 with an x1900, you should be at least breaking 7,000.

8T8

Those new results look a lot better and more in line. If you limit the project search to Athlon 64 X2's between 1800 & 2100Mhz (your 3800 is clocked at 2Ghz) with the 7950GX2 you will see the results narrowed down. (If you are concerned about the other scores keep in mind there are a lot of oddities in many of those entries signaling various overclocking of components)

You should be aware though that because the 7950GX2 is just a 7900GT SLI on a card it really only stretches it's legs at high resolutions or where you pile on IQ enhancements.

Also I noticed you are using the 91.31 release you might want to try the 91.33 instead with an SLI setup this is the place you want to look at most often as new profiles are added into drivers for games, updated drivers will be posted.

The official drivers are only ever updated once in a while.

If you play older games then you will want to install the AMD dual core CPU patch well really you should as a matter of course anyway as it fixes a timing bug in XP to do with dual core CPU's.

The new NVIDIA control panel is a lot easier to use for messing with profiles as your going to want to pile on the IQ in games to make the most of your 7950GX2 but nHancer is still better in it's own right and worth checking out.

latest beta version of nHancer 2 - required if using 9x.xx driver
.NET 2.0 also needs to be installed

Some basic suggestions on Enhancements tab;
AA - Multisampling 4x
Gamma Correction Enabled
Transparency (supersampling) Enabled
AF - 16x

On Optimizations tab;
High Quality - Disables all texture/filter optimizations for the best possible image quality.
Quality - The default setting standard optimizations in place.

I wouldn't recommend messing with the existing SLI settings in the stock profiles but you can back them up in nhancer and create your own SLI profiles for games not supported yet by NVIDIA's drivers.

exactiv

WOW! Thanks for the extremely comprehensive reply 8T8

I'll take a look as soon as I get home from work. I'll keep this thread up to date with my progress anyway.

I didn't realise that nvidia.com didn't have the latest drivers.

Thanks. Ex.

PogMoThoin

The cpu test on 3dmark06 has a max of 2Fps so dont expect to get a high framerate. Most people tweak their rig for benchmarks, even turn off screensavers, wallpaper, Xp themes and settings and disable as many startup items as possible to achieve the highest score possible. Adjust your nVidia control panel to best performance for the best result also. Run the test twice also, you can achieve a higher score on the second run because some of the settings are cached.
Different drivers give different results. Personally i find XtremeG tweaked drivers give me a small increase in scores (50-100 points), but its up to you which driver you find best.
http://www.tweaksrus.com/index.php?option=com_docman&Itemid=41/

Cuddlesworth

Good guide that expands on what has been said above for dual core patching

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=81429

exactiv

After a quick discussion with a friend who's partial to a bit of overclocking we came to the worrying realisation that my motherboard is not an SLI board.... After a quick search online I'm still no wiser as to whether this will have a negative effect on performance. I just tried ringing Gainward Tech support in Germany, but they don't work on Wednesdays.... sent them off an email in the meantime... I'll keep you posted....

Haven't had time to apply any dual core patch or alternitave drivers yet, but I'll run another test as soon as I do.

Thanks. Ex.

8T8

The motherboard being of SLI kind has no bearing on the operation of the 7950GX2 it will work in a non-SLI motherboard just the same.

The card works on the principal of that is is two 7900GT's joined together via an onbaord PCI-E bridge on the card which splits it into two x8 lanes for each card then this works through the single x16 slot of the motherboard.

Just to reiterate an SLI motherboard in not a requirement for the 7950GX2.

AnCapaillMor

SLi won't matter not unless you got 2 X 7950's. Check your boards manufacters site, there should be some indication on whether your mobo will take a 7950 or not. Just thinking a lot of Dell systems required a bios upgrade to get the full capabilities of 7950's. Current board bios up to date?

BTW don't want to freak you out about gainward but it took them 2 1/2 months to return my card.

exactiv

Thanks for the replies again lads. I just got an email back from Gainward. I sent them my query at 10:35 and I got a reply at 10:41.. fairly decent response time!

anyway, here's my email, followed by the reply:

exactiv wrote:

Hello. I have just purchased one of your 7950GX2 cards. I have installed it on an MSI K9N Platinum motherboard. This motherboard is not SLI enabled. Will I get full performance from my 7950GX2 with this motherboard or will I need an SLI capable motherboard?

Thanks.

Gainward Support Germany wrote:

Hello, this card is an SLI system, you don´t need SLI board. but don´t use the nvidia forceware 91.31. this is a bad one full bugs. Better inst. the newest chipset drivers and forceware 91.37 http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=1456. Make sure that you have a good PSU from Enermax, Tagan,Bequiet...

Best regards

Uwe Hebestadt
Technical support
GAINWARD Europe GmbH

I like the way he says make sure you have a good PSU...

So 8T8, seems you were spot on with the driver idea. I'll sort that as soon as I can and I'll post up a new 3dmark score.

AnCapaillMor: I updated the BIOS the day I put the machine together as the PSU was extremely unstable beforehand. (Antec NEO HE 430)

Nice one. Ex.

exactiv

Right... I'm a bit happier now. Managed to get out of work early to try the new drivers out. Installed 91.37 drivers from Guru3d. My 3dMark score went up to 6298 (orb link)

Problem is, after the test finished, the system restarted itself.... anyway... I'll see if updating everything else helps...

Cuddlesworth

The 7950's have a pci-ex switcher chip on-board which shares the bandwidth over a single socket, much like the switcher chip on the boards chipset itself, which does the same job. This allows sli to run in any pci-ex slot and proves that only the drivers are holding back both crossfire and sli from working on each others boards.

8T8

New driver specific to the 7950GX2 is out includes fixes, new profiles and Quad SLI support.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_2k_91.45.html

Anti

K.O.Kiki wrote:

3000 -- isn't that what 7600GT's achieve though?
The 7950 GX2 is 2x7900GT's...

Hang on lads. the 7950 is not 2 7900gts as far as im aware. to my understanding it is 2 geforce go 7900gtx's

Am i wrong ?

PogMoThoin

anti wrote:

Hang on lads. the 7950 is not 2 7900gts as far as im aware. to my understanding it is 2 geforce go 7900gtx's

Am i wrong ?

I think youre wrong there. It's promoted by nvidia as being 2x 512mb Geforce 7900gtx's but slightly slower. check it out below.

http://www.nvidia.com/page/7950_faq.html

Its a monster of a card. i can only imagine what quad sli would bench like. bit over the top if you ask me unless you can afford the 30" apple lcd.

8T8

The GPU's present in the GX2 are roughly equivalent to the 7900GT but with slightly faster GPU clock speed, slightly slower memory clock speed and double the amount of RAM per GPU.

7900GT -- 7950GX2
450Mhz - 500Mhz [Core]
660Mhz - 600Mhz [Mem]

The Quad variant is only worth it if you fall into the following scenarios;
Want to game with 8xAA & 16xAF with texture optimizations turned off at lower resolutions
Want to game at native resolution of 30" displays with AA/AF enabled.

NVIDIA have said there are limits in the Direct3D 9 API that means the Quad setup will never be able to achieve it's true potential, OpenGL is unaffected and so is Direct3D 10 [part of DX10] not that the card can ever make use of DX10 so your left with OpenGL and DX9.

Personally I cant see the worth in the Quad setup with the Direct3D 9 limitation given so many games use Direct3D 9 engines.

Anti

thanks for clearing it up for me

exactiv

Just installed the 91.45 drivers and I got a marginal improvement (6319 3d Marks). Had a little instability with the 91.37 drivers. All seems well now though, and BF2 is running lovely at 1280*1024@85Hz 4xAA and everything set to Max or High. Happy out now.

Blazer

krazy_8s wrote:

The 7950's have a pci-ex switcher chip on-board which shares the bandwidth over a single socket, much like the switcher chip on the boards chipset itself, which does the same job. This allows sli to run in any pci-ex slot and proves that only the drivers are holding back both crossfire and sli from working on each others boards.

yep..two 7950G2's on ATI's upcoming chipset RD600 will be absolutely sweet...here's to wishful thinking:mad:

ran 3dmark with new 91.45 driver..nice increase in score over previous 91.33 driver. cheers 8T8 for the link..

3dmark score 7117 for 7950GX2 with P4 D960

Takeshi_Kovacs

Can't wait to get my rig up and running.. i tried out 3dmark 06 on my current pc, and got a score of........... 81....

Anti

Sheesh. thats a speedy pc you must have there