New Core 2 E6400 Build - Performance Seems Average So Far

[Zog]

So I finally finished the purchase and build and now I am starting to fine tune.

Comment / advice welcome (needed).

Specs:
> ASUS P5W H Deluxe
> Core 2 E6400 (OK, I should have waited for the E6600 but was to impatient....can still overclock a heap if I really need to).
> ASUS 7600 GT
> 2GB GSkill DDR2 800 4, 4, 4, 12
> 74 GB Raptor 10000 rpm SATA II - Primary Drive for OS
> 320 GB Barracuda 7200 rpm SATA II - Swap and Storage
> Lian Li P70
> Coolermaster 600 W
> BENQ 19 inch 2 msLCD
> MS Bluetooth Elite KB and Mouse
> Lite On Burn All - DVD RAM Drive
> Lite on DVD ROM
> Running XP SP2 with all the patches.
etc....

Had a couple of silly issues on setup:

> RAM was identified by the BIOS as 667 so had to mannually switch to 800 (also had to adjust from 5, 5, 5, 15 to the above).
> USB Controller identification on boot seems really slow (probably the MS Bluetooth dongle that goes with the keyboard).
> Had the 0701 bios on the P5W but this did not pose a problem and everything posted well first go. Have updated to 1101 since which seemed to slow down the USB identification ?? but otherwise OK.

My initial Benchmarks with 3dMark2005 are not so great, 6777, but I am pretty sure its my graphics card (Chosen as a cheap option with D10 cards coming soon).

Don't get me wrong...this is a really quick system but I expected a bit more from the standard setup despite the graphics card.

Looking forward to everyones remarks.

Zog.

 

[nikolokolus]

Well . . . you're GPU limited; its without a doubt your bottleneck. 3D apps are always most dependent on the GPU; but on the plus side, when you actually upgrade to a really fast video card you won't have to worry about your CPU, RAM, or Motherboard hamstringing it.

Bottom line: Are you happy with your performance in games? I wouldn't worry too much about synthetic benchmark utilities like 3DMark, except as a means to identify problems with your configurtion by comparing your performance to similiarly equipped computers.

If you are experiencing "problems" then make sure your drivers are up to date, tune BIOS settings, use Msconfig to turn off non-vital startup programs, etc.

 

[nukemaster]

The raptor should be a faster swap drive.....

All in all the system seems to be doing what it should...

 

[Crashman]

LMAO! d00d, 3D Mark 2005 really doesn't care what processor you use. 2x the speed only gives you like 5% better "marks". Try something else, something that's not specifically designed to test your graphics card.