What is wrong with my system?

[SecretIan]

I recently bought a new Sapphire RADEON 9800 pro graphics card. After I installed it I ran 3dmark2001 and 3dmark2003 with decent scores (14,445 and about 5400) but when I ran my real world game test I got very dissapointing scores. Here are my benchmark scores and system specs:

System Specs:
ASUS A7V8X-X Mobo
AMD AThlon XP 2500+ (Barton)
512 Mb DDR400 ValueRAM
RADEON 9800 pro

3dMark2003:
3DMark Score 5399 3DMarks
GT1 - Wings of Fury 148.0 fps
GT2 - Battle of Proxycon 38.3 fps
GT3 - Troll's Lair 33.4 fps
GT4 - Mother Nature 34.4 fps
CPU Score 447 CPUMarks
CPU Test 1 50.2 fps
CPU Test 2 7.9 fps
(All tests done with driver sliders all set to "high performance")

3DMark2001:
3DMark Score 14445
Game1 Low Detail - 189.3 fps
Game1 High Detail - 60.2 fps
Game2 Low Detail - 285.5 fps
Game2 High Detail - 145.3 fps
Game3 Low Detail - 157.2 fps
Game3 High Detail - 68.6 fps
Game4 - 132.2
(All tests done with driver sliders all set to "high performance")

Unreal Tournament 2k3:
-1024x768-
4xAA and 8xAF = 83.7 fps flyby, 49.0 fps botmatch
noAA and NoAF = 167.0 fps flyby,54.5 fps botmatch
-1280x960-
4xAA and 8xAF = 95.2 fps flyby,48.3 fps botmatch
noAA and noAF = 156.2 fps flyby,54.2 fps botmatch
-1600x1200-
4xAA and 8xAF = 50.2 fps flyby,24.8 fps botmatch
noAA and noAF = 120.7 fps flyby,53.6 fps botmatch
(All tests done with driver sliders all set to "high quality")

I was thinking it might be the mobo but I dunno. I'm pretty sure it isnt the vid card b/c the game4 scores are pretty good, and so are the ut2k3 flybys. What do you gusy think?

ANy help with this would be greatly appreciated, this problem is driving me crazy. Thanks alot in advance.


-"Shoot coward, you will only kill a man"-

 

[ChipDeath]

WTF?

You seem to indicate that you think all these scores are ok...

What do you mean by <b>'my real-world game test'</b>? What's dissapointing?

Benchmarks have their uses, but people get far too obsessed with them if you ask me.

Actually, your 2001SE score <i>does</i> look a bit low, to be honest. Are you sure your system is running at the right speeds? (FSB/RAM) If you check your BIOS, is your CPU running at ~1.83 Ghz?

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The end is nigh.. (For this post at least)

 

[SecretIan]

I'm not happy with the ut2k3 botmatch results, and unfortunately that benchmark also represents the rather poor gameplay I experience in ut2k3.

Yes I am sure that my cpu is running at the proper speeds. I even oced it by about 250 mhz just to see if it would make much of a difference, and it made like less than 5 fps difference...

-"Shoot coward, you will only kill a man"-

 

[ChipDeath]

Have you installed the latest Chipset drivers for your mobo and Gfx Card?
What card did you have before the ATi card? I've seen plenty of people say they have big problems switching between Nvidia and Ati (and Vice Versa) unless they fully uninstall all the old drivers first (so gfx card is 'Standard VGA Adapter') then install the new ones - you could try that.

What OS are you using?

A Machine capable of those 3dMark scores, but still is not nice in UT 2003, sounds like some sort of slow HDD problem to me. Check if your HDD is running in DMA mode or not.
Also, try a different IDE cable if you have one kicking about. It's possible you've slightly damaged your current one when installing your new card, (not incredibly likely, but you never know) and it's defaulting to PIO4 mode or something equally crap (rather than ATA100/133 etc)

HTH.

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The end is nigh.. (For this post at least)