3D mark 06 Score low

[Dark Comet]

Hello,
I have built a system over the last few weeks and ran 3D mark 06 on it and only got about 7700. I have all of the options on the default (1280X1024, No AA).
My specs are;

Pentium Dual Core 1.8 GHZ (Q9450 on the way)
2GB RAM (800mhz CL4)
Asus Maximums Formula
EVGA 8800 GTS
160GB (7200RPM)

Looking at other people scores mine are very low. Is this normal?

 

[dagger]

It's due to the cpu. Test again after you got the quad core, and you should get the typical 14-15k for g92 8800gts, and 10-11k for g80 8800gts.

 

[Dark Comet]

Really, the CPU can add 6-7K more?

 

[dagger]

Really, the CPU can add 6-7K more?

It's not just cpu score portion adding to total score. Your old cpu is bottlenecking shader performance, thus, decreasing gpu score portion as well.

 

[Dark Comet]

Oh ok thanks i'll see what the score is when I have got the Q9450 on tuesday.

 

[Dark Comet]

Got new CPU and ran it. Only got 13K. My GPU is the G92. Should I have got another 1K?

 

[dagger]

Got new CPU and ran it. Only got 13K. My GPU is the G92. Should I have got another 1K?

If both cpu and gpu are at stock, it's normal. Overclick either and you'll easily reach 14k+. It's only benchmark, the in-game performance difference isn't very noticable anyway, don't worry about it.

 

[Dark Comet]

Oh ok thanks. Does RAM have an effect because i'll be upgrading from 2 GB (800 CL4) to 8 GB (1066 CL5)?

 

[dagger]

Oh ok thanks. Does RAM have an effect because i'll be upgrading from 2 GB (800 CL4) to 8 GB (1066 CL5)?

Minimal effect. The jump from 800 to 1066 gives very small amount of performance increase even in benchmarks, and completely unnoticable in most applications. Also, 8gb is not useful for typical tasks, at least not at the moment. 4gb is enough.

 

[Dark Comet]

So 2 GB to 8 GB will not effect the score at all. It will affect my FPS in games though won't it?

 

[dagger]

So 2 GB to 8 GB will not effect the score at all. It will affect my FPS in games though won't it?

2 to 4gb jump can affect in game performance significantly. 8gb, not so much. It will not affect 3dmark score at all, as they use little ram to begin with, unlike real games.

8gb of ram is like an extra wide highway, but few cars using it. If it's not used, you don't benefit from it. Typical programs today, including basically all games, do not use that much ram. It's fine as long as that highway is wide enough to handle the traffic.

There is no harm in 8gb though, other than costing more. Feel free to get it.

 

[Dark Comet]

Well I want to use all 4 slots and not have to upgrade again. So I thought might as well buy it all now. I mean if I got 2 X 2GB so I could add another 2 X 2GB in the future I would only be using two slots now. I'm sure that 8GB would be better because its using all the slots so the RAM will have more bandwidth? I don't want to buy 4 X 1GB as this would mean when I wanted to go to 8 GB I would have to buy all new RAM and not just add an extra 4 GB.