Low HD3870 3dmark06 Scores, a little help?

[xxaimpiratexx]

Hello,

I Recently built a budget gaming system about a week ago, and I am still trying to get the last major tweaks out of the way to find that "sweet spot" for my 3dmark06 scores. As of right now, my average is about 7.5k on 3dmark 06 trial. I've read up that many of the HD3870 scores on average are about 9-10k. I am not certain, but I believe the bottleneck could be caused by the bios settings, possibly not completely properly configured. Here are the system specs:

--Windows Vista Home 64-bit
--AMD Athlon 64 X2 2.6GHz 5000+ oc'ed to 3.0GHz stable, never seeing above 55C
--2GB Dual Channel Gskill DDR2 400MHz timed in at 5-5-5-15
--Sapphire ATI Radeon HD3870 512 MB with latest graphics drivers oc'ed to 645MHz CPU clock stable, Factory memory clock at 1126MHz
--Asrock ALiveNF6G-VSTA nvidia northbridge chipset, with updated bios and chipset drivers
--500 Watt PSU
--Excelseor(sp?) 160GB SATA hard drive

Everything at steady temps, Good airflow in the case.

I know this problem could be caused by a variety of different things, but in your opinions, do you believe that 7k on these specs is average?


Thanks for your help!

 

[xxaimpiratexx]

Bump

 

[godless]

did y9u say that your hd 3870 is OVERCLOCKED to 645 mhz? that doesn't make any sense. the stock hd3870, which i have is 776mhz. maybe your lower clocks explain your lower score. try oc the card with ati tool to 776 mhz. or even 800mhz.

with my hd3870, phenom 9500, 500gb 7200.11 seagate hd, 700 ocz psu, xp sp2 and 2gb of ocz platinum ram, i get a score from 10k and up. that depends on how much i'm ocing the card. and i think that you should be getting a score similar to mine. can you write down what ur getting under all the subscores?

 

[vegie]

only thing thats good in that system is ur vid card.... because i have it.. lolz i get 13k for my pc so ur doing fine for that cheap computer... if it does what u need then all good.. dont look at these silly numbers!!!

 

[vegie]

oh and look at my vid card clocks lolz

 

[xxaimpiratexx]

did y9u say that your hd 3870 is OVERCLOCKED to 645 mhz? that doesn't make any sense. the stock hd3870, which i have is 776mhz. maybe your lower clocks explain your lower score. try oc the card with ati tool to 776 mhz. or even 800mhz.

with my hd3870, phenom 9500, 500gb 7200.11 seagate hd, 700 ocz psu, xp sp2 and 2gb of ocz platinum ram, i get a score from 10k and up. that depends on how much i'm ocing the card. and i think that you should be getting a score similar to mine. can you write down what ur getting under all the subscores?

Alright, I'll make sure to do that. Obviously wasn't overclocked if 776 was the stock clock settings. I was definately confused there. Let me run 3dmark06 once and get you those scores.

 

[vegie]

what psu do u have eg brand?

 

[xxaimpiratexx]

Yeah, Once i tried going to the stock clock settings, i think it overheats...after changing the settings, I go in game, and after about 5 minutes of gaming, im seeing the short burst of artifacts followed by a black screen...and then the UI reloads with a message at the bottom right saying "Your Video driver has stopped working, and successfully recovered." Apparently it was the ATI driver...i was told by someone that the nvidia chipset drivers normally interfere with ATI drivers...but ive read alot of different experiences.

My PSU: http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?item=N82E16817148027

 

[basketcase]

Are you certain you have an 3870 and not a 3850?

My x2 4000+ and 8600 GT score 6281. That is with mild OCs to the cpu and gpu, but nothing crazy.

 

[babybudha]

I see 3 potential reason why so low (may be a combination of these):

1) Using Vista
- generally lowers your score a bit

2) Your processor
- usually AMD processors don't do so well against Intel

3) Videocard clocks may be wrong

I personally think it's affected more by 1 and 3, and a little of 2.

 

[emp]

DDR2 400 as your memory? AMD CPUs are very memory dependant unlike intels, and their true performance can only be seen with at least DDR2 800, The simple fact of using DDR2 667 over 800 will cause a 5-15% performance hit on games (not synthetic benchmarks) depending on how CPU dependant is the application. I honestly can't imagine what DDR2 400 would do.

Another thing, you are most likely OC'ing the 2D clocks on your card, since it throttles down when not in a 3D intensive app, so you're basically just wasting more electricity and seeing no gains from it. My advice would be check on the RAM to see if it's what it's causing you problems and for pete's sake stop worrying so damn much over a 2 year old synthetic benchmark and try to play so games to see how it runs.

 

[jimmysmitty]

Post a screen shot!!!!! Use GPU-Z to confirm the 3D settings as when in 2D mode they are down clocked to save power. I freaked out when I first saw my HD2900Pro coming at 507MHz GPU and 514MHz memory. Almost fainted. But thats the 2D speed.

 

[xxaimpiratexx]

Yeah, my video card clocks are currently at stock settings, 776MHz core, and 1126 MHz memory...seriously, im thinking its probably the cheap mobo. I hear that ASrock people have good experiences with their mobo's if they know how to configure the bios perfectly...me, im not too advanced when it comes to bios configs, but i know the basics. Also, its nvidia chipset with an ATI driver...someone told me that the drivers like to interfere with each other alot.

And yeah, im using DDR2 800 memory.

 

[blotch]

That score doesnt seem too low looking that that setup. Around 7K seems about right with that CPU...its kinda old.
For starters its not Vista, my 3dmark went up with Vista not down, Vista was problematic when it came out but that was over a year ago and the performance is up to par now. Make sure your GPU fan is pluged in and spining. You may need to download Rivatuner 2.06 and increase you GPU fan speed to keep the temps down if they are exceeding 90C while gaming. Make sure you have CAT 8.3 drivers from ATI. The Nvidia chipset wont interfere with you GPU so dont worry about that.

Those average scores you are reading about, are they with your CPU or are they with a core2? The Core2s are significantly faster.

 

[xxaimpiratexx]

That score doesnt seem too low looking that that setup. Around 7K seems about right with that CPU...its kinda old.
For starters its not Vista, my 3dmark went up with Vista not down, Vista was problematic when it came out but that was over a year ago and the performance is up to par now. Make sure your GPU fan is pluged in and spining. You may need to download Rivatuner 2.06 and increase you GPU fan speed to keep the temps down if they are exceeding 90C while gaming. Make sure you have CAT 8.3 drivers from ATI. The Nvidia chipset wont interfere with you GPU so dont worry about that.

Those average scores you are reading about, are they with your CPU or are they with a core2? The Core2s are significantly faster.

Yeah, temps are fine, drivers are up to date.

No, not a core2duo, the same processor that I have. Mostly, I've compared 3dmark06 scores with other user's scores with the exact same specs as my own and have seen a pretty big difference...some people going above and beyond 10k. I dont remember specifically...but I definately saw a higher margin of score with 4gb of memory compared to only 2gb. Alot of factors play into it..I just want to get the most out of the 760 bucks i paid for my computer

 

[stridervm]

Hmm, I think I've seen that happen to mine. First, I used CCC/Overdrive to overclock my video card. First, I noticed that in CCC/Overdrive, my 3850 was only running at 335Mhz core (I think). And I couldn't even overclock it past 500Mhz without it failing tests.

Then I used Rivatuner and noticed that it detected my video card running at 669Mhz, and I could overclock it up to 750Mhz core.

So I guess what happened is, you didn't really overclock for 3D games, as CCC/Overclock detects the vcards speeds on Windows, and not on games........ So by using Overdrive to overclock it, you're actually "underclocking" it?

My suggestion is to use Rivatuner for overclocking, overclock it and then try in 3DMark06. My system is similar to yours except I got a Radeon 3850 and I got 9000+ in 3DMark06.

http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=5307453

 

[amd_fanboi]

i have just over 10k on my rig -> E2160@3ghz, and the HD3870... youre scores are too low

 

[basketcase]

Mostly, I've compared 3dmark06 scores with other user's scores with the exact same specs as my own and have seen a pretty big difference...

I noticed the same thing when I was benching my system. I have an x2 4000+, 2 gig DDR2 800 and an 8600 GT. With mild OCs to both the CPU and the GPU, I got about 6200 points in 3DMark06. That is at default settings and 1280x1024 resolution. When I went to their website, I looked at similar systems, and people with the same card and CPU were getting over 9-10k, which seems almost impossible. I can only assume they are doing some insane OCs are are tricking the website. My other question is whether or not they are all using the standard settings and resolution. I couldn't find anything about what settings everyone was using. For all I know, they had everything set as low as possible, like 640x480 resolution or something.

OP, you should see some better performance with a 3870 than what you got. I already asked this one, and it is not meant to be annoying, but are you 100% certain you have a 3870 and not a 3850? GPU-z could verify this really quickly. I could see this sort of "mix up" happen if you ordered a premade system and the mfg mistakenly advertised or mistakenly chose the wrong card when assembling it. Most likely this isn't the case (you probably built the PC yourself), but you never know.

 

[xxaimpiratexx]

I noticed the same thing when I was benching my system. I have an x2 4000+, 2 gig DDR2 800 and an 8600 GT. With mild OCs to both the CPU and the GPU, I got about 6200 points in 3DMark06. That is at default settings and 1280x1024 resolution. When I went to their website, I looked at similar systems, and people with the same card and CPU were getting over 9-10k, which seems almost impossible. I can only assume they are doing some insane OCs are are tricking the website. My other question is whether or not they are all using the standard settings and resolution. I couldn't find anything about what settings everyone was using. For all I know, they had everything set as low as possible, like 640x480 resolution or something.

OP, you should see some better performance with a 3870 than what you got. I already asked this one, and it is not meant to be annoying, but are you 100% certain you have a 3870 and not a 3850? GPU-z could verify this really quickly. I could see this sort of "mix up" happen if you ordered a premade system and the mfg mistakenly advertised or mistakenly chose the wrong card when assembling it. Most likely this isn't the case (you probably built the PC yourself), but you never know.

Yeah, 140% sure its a HD3870. Says it right on the box. lol. And on the website that I ordered it from. Nah, I didnt order a premade...all custom order. It was my first own custom build, thats why I still feel a little skeptical about the scores I'm getting right now. I feel like there could be one thing that could be changed that would fix the whole thing. I'm still working to pinpoint the exact problem, but its a pain.

Oh, an update to everybody, I loaded up the new 8.3 drivers the day before I wrote back on this post..ATI overdrive is now locked in at 776MHz stock settings. And also...playing WoW, If I turn the AF up to 8x, I see alot of weird renderings. Alot of things will be transparent, some faces of different toons wont even render at all, but instead leave a black spot where the skin on their face is supposed to be.

I have a feeling it has something to do with either the bios, or for all I know I could have a defective card...I might seek professional guidance on this and take it in to a shop for an evaluation/tune up.

 

[xxaimpiratexx]

Hmm, I think I've seen that happen to mine. First, I used CCC/Overdrive to overclock my video card. First, I noticed that in CCC/Overdrive, my 3850 was only running at 335Mhz core (I think). And I couldn't even overclock it past 500Mhz without it failing tests.

Then I used Rivatuner and noticed that it detected my video card running at 669Mhz, and I could overclock it up to 750Mhz core.

So I guess what happened is, you didn't really overclock for 3D games, as CCC/Overclock detects the vcards speeds on Windows, and not on games........ So by using Overdrive to overclock it, you're actually "underclocking" it?

My suggestion is to use Rivatuner for overclocking, overclock it and then try in 3DMark06. My system is similar to yours except I got a Radeon 3850 and I got 9000+ in 3DMark06.

http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=5307453

Yeah, I tried running rivatuner on vista 64 bit...couldn't really get it to work :-\. Also, you have 2GB more memory than I have...I think that could also be a reason why I'm scoring low. Not sure. I do have cheaper computer parts as well...man troubleshooting is a pain :lol:

 

[basketcase]

Oh, an update to everybody, I loaded up the new 8.3 drivers the day before I wrote back on this post..ATI overdrive is now locked in at 776MHz stock settings. And also...playing WoW, If I turn the AF up to 8x, I see alot of weird renderings. Alot of things will be transparent, some faces of different toons wont even render at all, but instead leave a black spot where the skin on their face is supposed to be.

I have a feeling it has something to do with either the bios, or for all I know I could have a defective card...I might seek professional guidance on this and take it in to a shop for an evaluation/tune up.

I am leaning towards a defective card or a PSU that is not performing up to it's specs. Can you return the card and get a new one?

 

[xxaimpiratexx]

I am leaning towards a defective card or a PSU that is not performing up to it's specs. Can you return the card and get a new one?

I think so, newegg has some great RMA policies. IDK if i want to return it just yet...im sure theres a bottleneck in the system somewhere. If all else fails, ill RMA it for an Nvidia 8800GTS or something like that.