I recently upgraded my old Socket A system
 
Athlon XP 2400+ oced to 2.1
xfx mach 4 kt400-anh motherboard
1gig kingston ddr400
geforce 6600GT AGP oced at 585/1100
2 IDE ata133 HD
 
to a
 
Opteron 165
Asrock dual-sata2
2gig OCZ DDR500 gold edition
geforce 6600GT AGP
2 sata 3gig hd (no raid)
 
Now without overclocking the second rig my scores were
 
3d3 - 7735, 7791
3d5 - 3255, 2933 (lossed points)
3d6 - wouldn't run, 443
 
Now as you can tell, I am unhappy about the performance gain with the CPU and Ram upgrade.  Now does the video card oced really play that large of a part?  Would I expect a decent increase in marks when I OC the card and CPU?
 
Also would like to note, the mb defaulted to 166 FSB and not 200, yet the opty stayed at 1.8 gigs.  Is that normal?  It should be 1.8 at 200 FSB.

those types of benches ..exclusive run on video card performance......so it`s logical....
 
your oc-ed scores should be a little higher.....because the sistem components are pushed to the limit....

that athlon 2400+, is very good cpu....i think the default speed is at 2ghz......

It is, but its also
 
L1 - 64+64
L2 - 256
 
It is also liek a 5 year old chip.  I thought adding a gig and upping it to DDR500 and a modern chip would give somewhat of a performance gain overall.

the cpu.....sure it`s a big step no doubt...but in games it`s not big improvement....the video card is the same ...
 
in modern games ..... the video card makes the difference ..not the cpu..

I think you weren't clear on what 3DMark measured... I'm not sure adding a GB of RAM affects 3DMark at all... and your new Opteron processor is actually clocked a good bit lower than the processor it replaced... the whole reason for getting a 165 is to overclock it... if you didn't get it for that purpose, you'd have been better served by a higher clocked X2.

I do plan to OC as high as I can at stock volts (it idles around 29-31 and afte 2 hour prime test, was at 35-36).
 
I guess I thought the cache and dual core would improve performance somwhere (game physics and such.  It even did poorly on CPU tests in.
 
I was using the free version so it was default settings.
 
I thought 3dmark benched all sorts of things, CPU, video, and sound.
 
Edit:  Any idea why it comes up at 1.8 as 166 FSB and not at 200.

Had the same problem with DualSata (look for my earlier post).  Download Riva Tuner or CoolBits.  My problem with the ASRock is that my gfx core was staying at 300 instead of the stock 500 (card uses diferrent settings for 2D and 3D).  Set the coard to "overclock" to 500 and your score should get back to where it was.
 
I agree that 3Dmark is 99% driven by gfx card, not memory or cpu.  Some games really take advantage of a better cpu and memory (BF2) and you will see a difference in those games in real life as opposed to a synthetic benchmark.

You should be looking at the 3dmark05 CPU score, not the total score.  The total score is based on mostly the video card.  If you want to see how much your cpu score improved you have to look at that.

I see.  Didn't right that down before switching .
 
So any idea why bios and windows is saying the cpu is 9x160 = 1800?
 
I said 166 early, but meant 160.

 
Well the cpu is 1.8ghz right?  Hence the 1800 (mhz)

I don't want to hijack this thread but I have a similar problem with my PC. 3255 on an Athlon XP @ 2.1Ghz is very good, especially with that card.
 
I have an AOpen EY855 SFF PC based on the Intel 855 chipset. It's running a Pentium M 1.7Ghz Dothan core at 2.28Ghz (134FSB), 1Gb Corsair XMS4000, ATi Radeon X800GTO and I'm barely breaking 3000 points. Are there usually specific reasons why this happens? I was getting 3400 on a GeForce 6800 (vanilla) beforehand. But I'm feeling my scores are very low for what is meant to be a powerful PC, seems people are now scoring so much better than this. I'm also having random restarts during 3D games and occasionally in 2D mode, does it sound like my graphics card is broken, or is it just possibly not getting enough power (275W PSU, but the rest of the PC is very efficient).
 
Anyway, back to the point in question, overclocking both the Opteron and graphics card would give a big boost. The dual-core has no effect in 3DMark or many games (not even with the physics engine).

 
Well the cpu is 1.8ghz right?  Hence the 1800 (mhz)
 
the CPU is 1.8 gig because the standard FBS is is 200 mhz.
 
9x200 = 1.8.
 
However, when you OC and UC your CPU you change the FSB or multiplier.  Since rarely will the multiplier be able to go up you overclock the fsb to get higher clock speeds.
 
So a FSB of 220 would be a clockof 1.98
 
So a FSB of 160 with a 9 multiplyer is 1.44.  As it stands, it should be clocked at 1.44, but it is clocked at 1.8 on a FSB of 160, not 200 with a 9 multiplier.