4850 3DMark06 Scores - disappointing?

[stabgotham]

Just popped in my new 4850 and ran a 3DMark06 run in XP on DX9. I'm kind of disappointed with the results:

TOTAL SCORE: 10067
SM 2.0 Score: 4340
SM 3.0 Score: 5035
CPU Score: 2238

I have the following specs:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+BE @ 3.0GHz
MSI K9A2 Platinum 790FX
Corsair HX520W
Visiontek HD4850
4GB OCZ SLI-Edition DDR2 800

I expected something more around 12,000 or so with such an amazing videocard. On the Return to Proxycon test, frames dipped into the 20's on several occasions. The CPU tests have never been good. What I found baffling regarding the CPU tests is that my old Athlon 3700+ Sandy @ 3.2 scored around the same as my OC'd 5000+ BE. To me that seems odd.

I can't even beat a stock E8400 and an 8800GT according to Futuremark bench results. That can't be right....can it??

Temps for my 4850 idle at 71C and reach 85C under load, which seems in line with everyone else. I just really expected higher scores. I'm gonna run Vantage in Vista later to see how that fairs.

 

[romulus47plus1]

Those scores looks very low to me, lower than what the card can do...

 

[stabgotham]

Yeah...I agree. Not really sure what to do here though. Any chances the card isn't getting enough power from my Corsair HX520W? The PSU has three rails, each at 18amps.

 

[Sined]

CPU bound more or less, on my 8800GT i get 11k with an e2180 at 2.8ghz
7500 at the stock 2ghz.

 

[romulus47plus1]

Yep, I agree with the Forum Resident.
What about FPS in games?

 

[modtech]

Who cares? It's 3dmark, the world's most irrelevant benchmark. Try the Crysis GPU test.

 

[duzcizgi]

Hehe...
Stabgotham, this is a DX 10.1 card. It's meant to be used under Vista and DX 10.1 not XP and DX 9.
The shaders are optimized for DX 10. Try on Vista and see the results there.
On the contrary with the previous DX versions, DX10 is NOT backwards compatible with DX 9. Because of this reason, the cards performance DX 9 is limited.

 

[pcgamer12]

Who cares about benchmarks. Your CPU is holding back the score. My E4600 @ stock and 8800GT @ stock don't break 10k. Just a couple hundred below it.

 

[randomizer]

My scores with an E6600 @2.7 and 9600GT moderately overclocked to 750MHz on Vista:

3DMark score: 10227
SM2.0 score: 4863
SM3.0 score: 4585
CPU score: 2325

Notice that my SM2.0 score is alot higher than yours. I would think that the CPU would be more of a bottleneck in the SM2.0 tests because they are less stressful, and my CPU is probably better than yours at 3DMark. Also notice that you scored better in the SM3.0 score than your SM2.0 score... alot better. This is quite unusual.

 

[randomizer]

Because of this reason, the cards performance DX 9 is limited.

That's why DX10 is so much faster than DX9 eh?

 

[DeafB4Dishonor]

Hehe...
Stabgotham, this is a DX 10.1 card. It's meant to be used under Vista and DX 10.1 not XP and DX 9.
The shaders are optimized for DX 10. Try on Vista and see the results there.
On the contrary with the previous DX versions, DX10 is NOT backwards compatible with DX 9. Because of this reason, the cards performance DX 9 is limited.

LOL. And that really explains why 3dmark scores are higher on xp

 

[randomizer]

LOL. And that really explains why 3dmark scores are higher on xp

Funny thing is DX10.x doesn't have anything to do with 3DMark06 :lol: Now maybe if it was DX10 Vista would pwn XP!

 

[xenios]

Short story:
Check your BIOS version

Long story:
Had a similar problem with MSI K9A (580X based) 5200+ (@3GHz) and an X1950XT.
I had consistent results around 6K with Vista and 6300 with XP.
Then suddenly they fell to 4K.
I removed (Cleaned) Catalyst, installed previous versions, newer, Omega's etc but nothing.
I fell back to XP from Vista and from XP to Vista but nothing changed.
Then I thought that before this happened I had flashed the BIOS. I flashed an older version and problem was solved.
Of course I communicated the problem to MSI and as far as I know all further versions for my board are good.

 

[duzcizgi]

Well guys, my 2600 XT also showed that strange behavior on my computer. Maybe it's because of my computer's configuration:
2GB DDR2 800
Athlon x2 4800+ (2.5 GHz)
HD2600XT 512 MB

I have both Vista and XP installations. On XP, my graphics card shows about 10% less performance than on Vista. So I have had the conclusion that it doesn't support DX 9 as well as DX 10.
Please don't kill me OK?

 

[randomizer]

In what applications? I highly doubt the applications you were using were DX10 anyway, or they would have crippled your card.

 

[duzcizgi]

In fact it's Crysis
It works terrible on XP (non playable) with medium settings, but works pretty fine (playable) on Vista with the same settings.
Resolution for both are 1280x1024.
Sorry don't ask me framerates, I didn't measure.
Just on XP I wasn't able to aim the gun before being killed by Koreans and on Vista, I'm about to finish the game.
I'm not too much of a gaming enthusiast. It's my first graphics card which I can consider "up to the time".

 

[xx12amanxx]

Honestly i think it's your processor.

 

[monst0r]

Did you do a full reinstall of the OS when you put in the dual core processor?

 

[Sined]

I dont know why he would do any of that, Crysis is optimized like summer tires on snow. crytek even said that themself, i dont know why people keep going "Check crysis (insert random stuff here)" Sure, the game requires a good comp.. but its not optimized at all
Anyways, theres nothing wrong with that score, for an AMD dualcore thats actually pretty good.

 

[stabgotham]

Short story:
Check your BIOS version

Long story:
Had a similar problem with MSI K9A (580X based) 5200+ (@3GHz) and an X1950XT.
I had consistent results around 6K with Vista and 6300 with XP.
Then suddenly they fell to 4K.
I removed (Cleaned) Catalyst, installed previous versions, newer, Omega's etc but nothing.
I fell back to XP from Vista and from XP to Vista but nothing changed.
Then I thought that before this happened I had flashed the BIOS. I flashed an older version and problem was solved.
Of course I communicated the problem to MSI and as far as I know all further versions for my board are good.

I'm currently running the latest BIOS v1.4.

 

[stabgotham]

Did you do a full reinstall of the OS when you put in the dual core processor?

Absolutely!

 

[stabgotham]

Honestly i think it's your processor.

I think you may be right, but what really bothers me is that it's a dual-core processor that has been overclocked to a nice number. The processor was released how long ago...what October of last year, right? When was 3DMark06 released? 2006. How come my dual-core processor cannot score any better than my single core processor?

 

[stabgotham]

Does seem a bit low.
Ive got my cpu at 2.8ghz right now because of the summer heat. This is what I score with my 256mb 8800GT.

3Dmark 9870
SM 2.0 4550
SM 3.0 4286
CPU 2362

Vista 64

I re-ran again after posting that first post and my scores dropped by 500. Down to around 9500 which is below your score....wtf?

 

[teeth_03]

Thats just the Demo,btw

 

[bpogdowz]

Here is my 3D mark Q9450 @ 3.9Ghz w/ 8800GT SLI @700/1750/2000

hope it helps



I'll run one with a single 8800GT enabled for you guys give me a few minutes.