Low 3DMark06 Scores

I recently decided to test my system's performance, so I ran 3DMark06 and compared my results to those in the GPU Charts. I am kind of surprised with my results because I thought my comp was pretty decent. I'm kind of new to system building, but I had an experienced friend help me pick out some of the components. I have considered OCing, but I feel that with this low score I should iron out my stock problems first. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

My scores:
3DMark06: 13931
SM 2.0: 5318
SM 3.0: 6685
CPU: 3966

GPU Chart:
3DMark06: 19305
SM 2.0: 7949
SM 3.0: 7944


ASUS P5Q SE/R
Intel Q9400
ZALMAN CNPS9700
MSI HD Radeon R3870X2
8GB Crucial Ballistix DDR2-800
600W OCZ StealthXStream
Vista 64-bit

Your score should be around the 17k mark.....

Have you checked your ram timings and voltage?

Use CPU-z to make sure your ram is running at it's rated speed. You can also check your CPU clock as well.....

I'm so sick of seeing "my 3dmark score is low".

You have to understand this is purely for e-penis.

Kids highly overclock their video cards and cpu's and try to get the best score of anyone with the same hardware so they can have a big e-penis.

So its no wonder your stock cpu and stock clocked gpu is scoring lower.

Besides, in your other thread you said your system is completely unstable and bsod's and restarts constantly. So until you figure out your pc's problems, why are you running 3dmark and asking "why is my score low"??

my cpu speed drops to 2GHz idle...but with programs open the multiplier increases to 8x bringing the cpu speed to 2.6GHz

about the RAM, can I adjust the timings directly from my BIOS? if so, how do I then determine if its stable? should I run prime95 or something like that?

That score ir Ok for your computer, if you want to get a better score OC yor CPU, but first solve any unstablility problems you have now.

You need to find out what your ram voltage is supposed to be. It says right on the sticker on the ram. Then you need to set it to that in the bios.

I cant for the life of me figure out why you would be 3dmarking your pc and complaining of a low score when at the same time you say its completely unstable and bsod's..............

I know...this is my first build and I've been looking around for whatever help I can find to improve my comp. Obviously stability is most important, but if you read my posts (and I send you a PM, btw) its not a frequent problem with BSOD's...it happens maybe once a week at most, and I play games on it several hours a day, so it doesn't seem as bad as you're making it sound...although its not a good thing by any means...

I digress. The reason I was using 3DMark was to get some sort of idea of my computer's overall performance. If you have a better way to test it I would be more than happy to try it.

Dont try anything until you get the instability fixed.

You still have not answered whether your giving your dimms the correct voltage or not.

just go and look below the TRC value and you should see the TRFC, change it to 24, save and boot.....