I just ran 3d mark 2006 on the system in my sig. except only using one of the 7900 gt cards, I got a 4679 using the basic edition and default settings. Does that seem low? As far as drivers and stuff I've only installed the latest motherboard drivers from nvidias site (smbus and ethernet, not ide or nv firewall/active armor)and the latest graphics card drivers. Anyone have some ideas on things I could check?

That is not low.
3dmark 06 is very demanding.

Hrm ok... maybe people were running earlier versions of 3dmark or something? Could swear I saw someone posting that they got 9000 something on a similar system.

yeah.
Get your self one of 05,04,03 and try
In 05 you will probably hit 9000 or more.

ppl say that futuremark is far beyond his time.

Now is time for you to do some overclocking for a greater score.

And we all do that Even when sleeping

The best comparison is game for game.

Two thirds of the 3DMark scores are extreme overclocks, that yes, while they do 'pass' the test and generate a score... the test was just garbled 3D images, and hypercolour textures, with registry hacks to lower texture (and possibly 'new' FSAA pattern) quality so low the whole polygon is just one blur of colour.

Until they build an artifact tester into 3DMark, it will be less useful for comparisons using the Online Result Browser.

Even now websites only use it for 'system to system' comparisons and do not use the results in ORB.

Is the system slow in the games you play ?, or do people these days have a 3DMark 05/06 server they join so they can sit around 'benchmarking' [cough Futuremark cough] while not engaging in tactical combat ?

It is for these reasons Futuremark has shamed ORB, while 'MadOnion' tried to make it something useful.

The system runs great so far... sometimes when the hard drive is being heavily accessed it lags up but that's all I've noticed so far. Thanks for the info on 3d mark though, I was giving it too much credit.

Hmmm.... I recently put together a system that is oddly very similar to that.

ASUS A8N-SLI Premium
Opteron 165 (OC to 2.5)
2 gigs GSkill Extreme series ram (Same as I got)
Raptor drive. (one difference)
XFX 7900 GT Extreme (520 Mhz) Same cared, but only running one.

And 3dmark06 came out to be around 5100.

So if you are running duel 7900 GT cards, i would think you would score higher....

/shrug, hard to believe the chip OC made more difference then running two video cards in SLI

see sig for 05