Why does my 3DMark score suck (relatively speaking)?

[fatchicken]

I have a fairly new system that I just finished overclocking.

GA-965P-S3
E4300
OCZ Platinum XTC Rev2 PC2-6400 2GB Ram
Seagate Barracude 7200 320GB
BFG GeForce 7600GT OC 256MB GDDR3 (driver 9371) Core Clock 578MHz/ Mem Clock 722 MHZ
Dell 2001FP (running at native 1600 x 1200)

I recently overclocked my system to 3.0 GHz.

I just ran the 3DMark and got the following scores
3D Mark 3487
SM 2.0 Score 1355
SM 3.0 Score 1230
CPU Score 2527

It ranked me around 34 out of 45 or something against similar systems.

Any idea why I would be so low against similar systems? Any ideas how (or if) I can improve that?

Does the fact that the test doesn't run at my monitors native resolution affect things?

 

[trinitron64]

I assume/hope we are speaking 3DMark06?

 

[lordaardvark2]

I have a fairly new system that I just finished overclocking.

GA-965P-S3
E4300
OCZ Platinum XTC Rev2 PC2-6400 2GB Ram
Seagate Barracude 7200 320GB
BFG GeForce 7600GT OC 256MB GDDR3 (driver 9371) Core Clock 578MHz/ Mem Clock 722 MHZ
Dell 2001FP (running at native 1600 x 1200)

I recently overclocked my system to 3.0 GHz.

I just ran the 3DMark and got the following scores
3D Mark 3487
SM 2.0 Score 1355
SM 3.0 Score 1230
CPU Score 2527

It ranked me around 34 out of 45 or something against similar systems.

Any idea why I would be so low against similar systems? Any ideas how (or if) I can improve that?

Does the fact that the test doesn't run at my monitors native resolution affect things?

really the ONLY thing that i can see is your GPU, its not hard to imagine the people you're competing against having better ones. not to say that yours is bad or anything, thats a respectable card ('specially compared to the shit that i've got=9550 agp)... there's just better. and because you posted your SM 2 and SM 3 scores, i'm assuming that you ARE comparing more than just CPU.

i can't be sure though. it does seem like that nice oc would bring you up

p.s. i wouldn't think that the resolution would mess you up too bad... if any at all... i'm not exactly the 3DMark master tho.

 

[blade85]

I assume/hope we are speaking 3DMark06?

your assumption would be correct since its only 3dmark06 that has shader model 3 support (he posted sm 3 results)


Im not quite sure what the average result for the 7600 is so cant really comment on it. But id personally say it may be around the right range??

Are your games running ok? cause 3dmark can be misleading.

 

[chuckshissle]

I think that's 3DMark06 alright. But it is kind of low score. I have an Gateway with Pentium D 820, 4x512 of regular DDR2 533 and 7800GT stock and scores over 4000 points on 3DMark06, with the free version running it at 1280x1024 and stock settings.

Benchmarks is just that, it is not accurate to how system plays games. As long as you get smooth gaming then you're on the right track.

 

[angelkiller]

I hope we're talkin '06. I think the reason you get such a low score is because of graphics horsepower. Yea, your CPU is overclocked, but you still have a 7600gt, which isn't "fast". (It's a great performance to price ratio though). And I don't believe any of that "your system is .... compeered to similar configurations". To judge performance, just compare the raw score. (In your case, 3487) If you want to improve your score, get a new graphics card. X1950pro's are decent DX9 cards. X1950xt's are faster, and the 8800GTS 320mb is really really fast for the price.

 

[sirheck]

sounds about right to me.

i scored a 3200 with a 3700 amd and a 68gt.

 

[lordaardvark2]

I hope we're talkin '06. I think the reason you get such a low score is because of graphics horsepower. Yea, your CPU is overclocked, but you still have a 7600gt, which isn't "fast". (It's a great performance to price ratio though). And I don't believe any of that "your system is .... compeered to similar configurations". To judge performance, just compare the raw score. (In your case, 3487) If you want to improve your score, get a new graphics card. X1950pro's are decent DX9 cards. X1950xt's are faster, and the 8800GTS 320mb is really really fast for the price.

yeah, exactly. well put. and thats not to say that a 7600 isn't just what you need... i'm looking to build and i'll get that if not something close to that, most likely.

its like the others said, if you run games well (and i bet you do because my 9550 still does OKAY), then who cares about the numbers?

they're mostly for bragging rights anyway

 

[sirrobin4ever]

Make sure that you have the newest graphics drivers installed.

 

[fatchicken]

Okay thanks all. Yes it is 3D Mark06, and I have the latest driver.

I agree that the real benchmark is it how it performs when you are doing something real with it (i.e. games), but I was using the benchmark to see if there was room for improvement (not that I would know how to improve). What I am gathering from the responses, is that the score is probably what I should expect. Anyways thanks everyone for quick replies.

As a weird aside, I went to the NVidia Control Panel and clicked on the 3D MArk06 setting. I thought it would tweak the card so that it would give an artifically higher number - which kind of defeats the whole purpose. But exactly the opposite happened. The score dropped to 3100, and I haven't been able to bring it back by resetting the parameters to the default. Should have let well enough alone - but that's not my nature. :roll:

 

[theworminator]

I win! I score (I'm not joking) about a 200-300 on 3DMark05 with my rig .

P4 2.8 Ghz
768 megs of DDR 400 Ram
Nvidia FX 5200

Edit: my ASCII arrow thing didn't work. So I killed it.

 

[lordaardvark2]

Okay thanks all. Yes it is 3D Mark06, and I have the latest driver.

I agree that the real benchmark is it how it performs when you are doing something real with it (i.e. games), but I was using the benchmark to see if there was room for improvement (not that I would know how to improve). What I am gathering from the responses, is that the score is probably what I should expect. Anyways thanks everyone for quick replies.

As a weird aside, I went to the NVidia Control Panel and clicked on the 3D MArk06 setting. I thought it would tweak the card so that it would give an artifically higher number - which kind of defeats the whole purpose. But exactly the opposite happened. The score dropped to 3100, and I haven't been able to bring it back by resetting the parameters to the default. Should have let well enough alone - but that's not my nature. :roll:

hahaha nice one

yeah, you shouldn't worry too much about it, and it doesn't sound like you are. just be glad that your compy is worlds ahead of mine...! :lol:

 

[spanner_razor]

Your shader marks are quite low: mine were

2.0 - 1488
3.0 - 1317

I've got a factory oc 7600, also a lot of the scores on that table will use sli, if it's like double your score then they'll be using sli, which if you look at the details it will say co-operative adaptors = true or some such.