3D WinMark and NVidia drivers

[RavenPrime]

As I have made updates and changes to my system to get it running as optimally as possible, I ran WinBench and 3D WinBench from Ziff Davis to measure my progress. I thought some of you might be interested in the results so I am posting them. I will post my system and comments in a response to this post to keep it from being too long.

Driver---------------WinMark--1280x1024x16bit--1280x1024x32bit (frames per second)
16bit 1024x768 Runs
ELSA v2.04 OC---------154--------147-------------80.3
ELSA v2.04 OC CAS3*--153--------146-------------80.3
ELSA v2.04 OC FW*----154--------147-------------80.3

D3 v6.34 BIOS 1004d---158--------134-------------90.0
D3 v6.34 BIOS 1005a---158--------134-------------90.1
D3 v6.34 OC-----------174--------153-------------99.4

D3 v6.49 OC-----------175--------154-------------101

D3 v7.17 OC-----------169--------154-------------100

32bit 1024x768
ELSA v2.04------------90.9--------128-------------68.3
ELSA v2.04 OC---------103--------147-------------80.4

D3 v6.49--------------117--------134-------------86.2
D3 v6.49 OC----------132--------154-------------101

D3 v7.17--------------130--------153-------------101

*FW=AGP Fast Write in BIOS. CAS setting adjusted in the BIOS as 3. CAS set at 2 unless otherwise specified.

WinBench---CPUMark
CAS3--------82.3
CAS2--------83.6

Continue next post.

😎 James

 

[RavenPrime]

My system:
A7V 128MB CAS2 PC133 SDRAM
900MHz T-bird [300W Powersupply] No CPU or FSB overclocking
Elsa Gladiac Geforce2 GTS 32MB AGP slot
Kingston network 10/100 network card slot3
SB Live Xgamer slot4
Firewire card slot5
30GB IBM Deskstar 75GXP in master primary ATA/100
Toshiba 12X/10X/32X DVD master primary IDE
LS120 slave primary IDE
Smart and Friendly 2/2/24 CDRW master secondary IDE
USB mouse, keyboard, joystick, strategic commander, and HP printer
WinMe
Via 4in1 v4.25a
ATA/100 controller v16 build 25
SB Live drivers for WinMe v4.12.01.0801

In the BIOS I have the AGP at Optimal and the AGP fast write on.
I have disabled system restore and removed all the startup files from my registry.

Overclocking, OC, of the video card was done using the Elsa driver for the v2.04 tests and using PowerStrip with the Detonator 3 drivers which do not have an overclocking option.

My system was stabe and able to complete all the tests without crashing.

Comments to follow.

😎 James

 

[RavenPrime]

Someone in the board asked about benchmarks for CAS2 vs CAS3 which made me curious. I don't know how legitimate it is to simply change the settings in the BIOS from 2 to 3 but you can see there is no significant difference in the 3D benchmarks and I am not sure that a difference of 1.3 is all that significant in the CPUMark either. But again, I am not sure that simply changing the BIOS setting is legitimate.

There was no difference in upgrading the BIOS from 1004d to 1005a or turning on the AGP Fast Write. I think it is good to know that there is no performance loss with 1005a since it has the advantage of being more stable with my system.

There was a big improvement going from the ELSA driver to the NVidia detonator 3 drivers. There is not a significant difference between v6.34 and 6.49, but you can see there is a small loss with v7.17.

I hope this was useful or at least interesting.

😎 James