[pintofhooky]

Hi, not really a problem, just trying to get optimum performance.
Recently I upgraded my cpu from a p4 3.0e to a 3.4e as well as replacing 4x256 generic ram for a set of corsair twinxpc3200c2.
once I got the ram set up (which now gets very respectable read, write and latency scores) I had been getting 3dmark05 scores of 3015 pretty consistently, today I can't get the score above around 2550 the cpu scores are good but suddenly the 3d mark scores are quite a bit lower. Unfortunately I didn't save the set up information. my rig is as below, any suggestions would be appreciated.

Pint

 

[Luk07]

I say thats baffling!

This is a very strange problem to have, think back to the time when your scores were higher, what has been between now and then? It doesn't have to be a hardware change, it could be some newly installed software or something. Maybe even a driver update, i don't really know i'm just takin shots in the dark really but because you have no idea i just thought i would make you think about what you have done to your computer in this time. Come to think of it my performance on half life 2 changed a little while ago, a few months ago i had 60fps stable(full detail all bells whistes and twirlies 1280x1024) and now i get i get a really jumpy frame rate (from 10-300 sometimes ) and that is really annoying. Haven't found a solution yet but your situation might be different. So, could you take a look at task manager (straight after a reboot, THIS IS IMPORTANT!) and see how many processes are running and tell me, also do the things i said above, this should help me to help you. Need any more information? just ask

 

[pintofhooky]

well, the main things I did was:
changed graphics aperature in bios from 64 to 256 (this was kind of a guess as 64 is the default setting and the card is 256)
Set the video card voltage to1.6v
Also, I updated to the latest java which was a nightmare as wmp 9 would no longer play asf files as a result I had to update to wmp 10.
Other than that I just set ram voltage to 2.75 and set timings to 2-3-3-6 and max burst to 8.

would a report from eversest or sandra help? If so, I'll figure out how to save one hopefully that is not too long lol

 

[pintofhooky]

task manager

here's my processes

 

[Luk07]

so 43 running processes, with a gb of ram that shud be fine. but all those changes you madein the bios, sound a bit dodgy, why not try changing them back to stock? apart from the aperture of course

 

[pintofhooky]

Actually I tried that, I set the ram timings by spd, and read up some more on the graphics aperature, I incremementally brought the aperature size down back to 64 each time getting a slight improvement in benchmarks.
So now, I'm back to 64 on graphics aperature with scores of 2560 on 3dmark05.
My ram settings are back to 2-3-3-6, the ram performance had little effect so I set it back to where it benchmarks the fastest

 

[pintofhooky]

resolved

It seems that it was a driver issue, I had updated to the latest ati driver and also the previous one listed at windows update, mistake, both were slower than the previous one which was 6.14:10.6546. I couldn't find that one after a quick search, not a reliable download site at least.
I updated with the latest asus driver pack for the a9800xt and my last bench was 3182 on 3dmark08-5.

I am suprised that these "new" drivers had that much impact but they did, the only better score I've ever had was with my p4 3.0e overclocked 10%, now I don't have to overclock!

 

[Luk07]

nice to see you got it sorted, i wouldnt think that old drivers were better but there you go!