HELP! my 7800 is getting very low 3D marks

[luusyphre]

I just bought an EVGA nVidia 7800 GS Superclock to upgrade my aging AGP videocard. The recent articles on Tom's Hardware reveiled 3D mark 2005 scores of 6638 at 1024x768 and 5662 at 1280x1024 with everything off. I installed the card, I used the drivers included with the card (forceware drivers online doesn't support this card yet), and ran 3D Mark '05 at defaults, and the score came out to be a pathetic 4370! that was at 1024x768. I then bumped the resolution up to 1280x1024, and the score dropped even lower to a horrible 660!!! that's right, three digits.

I understand that I'm not going to get the same results as the article, but I didn't expect anything this low, especially with the test on 1280x1024 resolution. Can anybody tell me if it's due to my current setup? perhaps there a bottleneck somehwere. Here are the specs I believe to be relavent:

CPU: P4 2.4 ghz
MOBO: Soyo SY-P4S-645DX DRAGON Ultra
MEM: 1.5 gb of PC2700

I also only have a 350 watt Emermax power supply, the video card requires a minimum 350 watt power supply, so i'm just barely hitting it. Can it be that my video card isn't getting enough juice?

Please help. If you need any more information about my system and setup, please ask.

 

[linux_0]

I don't mean to offend you or anything but I think your P4 is showing its age.

Also I think your motherboard is using an SiS 645 chipset which while not bad is not that great.

I'm not sure if you board supports AGP 8X... I do not recall. But that probably wouldn't make a huge difference.

If you were to upgrade to an AMD64 3200+ socket 939 + nForce4 or nForce3 even I'm sure you would be getting scores very close to ones Tom's got.

Granted the nForce4 boards have PCI-Express instead of AGP but the nForce3 boards still have AGP.

The ASRoc SATA2 Dual uses a ULi chipset but it supports both AGP and PCI-Express and should score much higher than your existing system.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813157081

Your PSU is a little weak but I am not sure that would affect performance - it might cause crashes however at high load.

 

[oompa]

They use top of the line RAM and CPU for their tests. Yuor P4 2.4 GHz isnt very great anymore.

 

[luusyphre]

Thanks all. I understand that my CPU is aging, and I didn't realize just how much those benchmarks relied on the processor. But I was still shocked to see such a huge drop (from 5662 to 660). That's almost a 90% difference!! I don't think that my entire system setup is 90% lower than the current zero point systems they use to benchmark. 50% at VERY most, wouldn't you say? Counting my new videocard. Perhaps the performance goes up exponentially with the technology, that may account for it.

I have accepted that my CPU is the main reason for my low 3dMarks, but I was told somewhere else that my 3Dmarks might not be completely indicative to real world gameplay, since games have a heavier reliance on the GPU instead of the CPU. I was told that Anti-Aliasing, AF, and all those bells wouldn't really be too affected by the CPU since they rely mainly on the GPU. Anybody know anything about that?

Also, i've read that my CPU can be overclocked to somewhere around 2.8 ghz. Anyone think that would be a worthy venture, or would it not make much difference?

 

[linux_0]

For about $90 for a new motherboard and about $160 for a new CPU you can enjoy much better performance

You could probably OC a bit... not sure how much... it varies from CPU to CPU.

 

[luusyphre]

Oops, I screwed up. At first when I was installing the card, I accidentally tried to install the 7800 GTX driver (I just saw 7800 and clicked it), and obviously it didn't detect. I had been running the drivers that came with the card, but I just installed the correct drivers from nvidia.com and my scores have improved greatly. I'm still no where near the zero-point Tom's Hardware benchmarks, but at 1024x768 I got pretty much the same as before at 4286, but at 1280x1024 it went up to 4112(!!!) on the "Performance" setting, but strangely enough, above 4200 on "Quality" setting, probably a fluke (but the higher score was probably not a fluke, unless it was two flukes in row). AND at 1280x1024 with 4xAA and 8xAF, i got 3826! Not too shabby, I was expecting ~2000.

So I still think you guys were right, my CPU is the main bottleneck, but when it comes down to pure graphics processing there's seems to only a be small difference. Also, I did get a chance to run the Doom 3 time demo, and I got a rather poor average FPS of 41.8 on High Quality-1280x1024, compared to TH's average of 81 Oh well, hopefully Doom 3's performance isn't totally indicative to the performance of other games. I’ll probably make a motherboard and processor upgrade in the future when I need a boost, although I'll probably try overclocking first.

 

[Scratch]

yeah man, thats some seriously low scores u got there. i got my 2600+ and bfg 6800GS OC and got 4660 on 3dmark 05!! just squeezed out 10011 in 03.

so at the end u got 4800 right? im sure that u shud get wayyy more than that, as your 7800gs costs like 100 pounds more than my card!!!

Try Aquamark 03. This shows VGA scores and CPU. i got 8000 for VGA and 6500 for CPU, in total 50,000 if i can remember correctly.

 

[sojrner]

True, his card is higher than yours, but if you are running an nforce2 mobo (assuming that was a 2600 athlonXP you have) with ddr400 ram then you have the better balanced system. With that in mind I dont think his new scores are all that far off of what they should be.

Even if you have 333 ram, the athlon mobo chipsets are a touch better in games, especially the nf2. He should be alright now though.

And no, luusyphre Doom3 is not indicative of all games. It runs OpenGL where as most other games run Direct3D. Nvidia however traditionally shows better performance in GL than other cards. Take that for what its worth.

 

[enewmen]

I have a Pentium 4 HT 2.8 and a GF 6600GT.
Get the same kinds of numbers.
Time to get new everything !!

By October I should know what (CPU/GPU) is best for me,

 

[Wapas]

I am sure that most of the lag in performance is not the CPU, but the MB. That 645 chipset is about the worst thing you can run. I remeber AMD was using this board to test P-4 against their CPU on a Nforce chipset. if you run your P-4 on an 850e or a newer high end chip, (maybe the 925 chip is on boardsthat will run a 478 Pentium) the thing will fly. my old p-4 with an 850e chipset (asus, p4T533) still rocks.

 

[VChuck]

Yeah Well at least you have the 645DX chipset that will allow for alot more settings that actually work than my shitty old sis 645 providing that your p-4 and ram can handle it, (man thats just a sin having that nice 7800 on that ancient mobo) wanna buy a MO stepping 2.4b 30 capper?hehe!

 

[linux_0]

Oops, I screwed up. At first when I was installing the card, I accidentally tried to install the 7800 GTX driver (I just saw 7800 and clicked it), and obviously it didn't detect. I had been running the drivers that came with the card, but I just installed the correct drivers from nvidia.com and my scores have improved greatly. I'm still no where near the zero-point Tom's Hardware benchmarks, but at 1024x768 I got pretty much the same as before at 4286, but at 1280x1024 it went up to 4112(!!!) on the "Performance" setting, but strangely enough, above 4200 on "Quality" setting, probably a fluke (but the higher score was probably not a fluke, unless it was two flukes in row). AND at 1280x1024 with 4xAA and 8xAF, i got 3826! Not too shabby, I was expecting ~2000.

So I still think you guys were right, my CPU is the main bottleneck, but when it comes down to pure graphics processing there's seems to only a be small difference. Also, I did get a chance to run the Doom 3 time demo, and I got a rather poor average FPS of 41.8 on High Quality-1280x1024, compared to TH's average of 81 Oh well, hopefully Doom 3's performance isn't totally indicative to the performance of other games. I’ll probably make a motherboard and processor upgrade in the future when I need a boost, although I'll probably try overclocking first.

OC'ing will probably not help much if it helps at all.

I believe you chipset is more of a factor.

The best way to correct that deficiency is this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813157081

+

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103535

OR this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813123263

+

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103535


$166 for the CPU + $70 or so for the board = $236 before shipping

You will be able to reuse your AGP card and you should be able to use your PC2700 RAM which even tho not ideal should work fine (AMD64 CPUs work best with 2 matched PC3200+ sticks).

Later on when you can afford it you could get a PC3200+ Dual Channel Kit.