Can You Explain Benchmark Score

Looks a bit low, but it may be that your CPU is bottlenecking the cards, 2 6950s is a lot for a PII x2 @ 3.3GHz.

As for the ram, did you set the speed manually in BIOS? AUTO wont automatically set higher than 1333MHz on most boards, so if you want them set to 1600MHz you will have to do it manually. The reason it says 667 is thats the clock speed, the transfer speed is twice that because its DDR.

Ok Ill check the BIOS and see if I can change to 1600mhz. About the processor. Someone told me I may be able to open a 3rd core by overclocking? is this true? and how would I do that.? Would like to take a shot at it if it will speed everything up.

Not by overclocking, by unlocking. The success rate is about 30-40% so dont bet on it. What motherboard do you have? On older style boards it can be done using ACC, on AM3 boards ACC isnt needed so they renamed the feature core unlocker, if you set that to three or four cores, see if you can boot up and then run prime 95 or something similarly CPU intensive to make sure that your cores are stable.

Another option is just to increase the multiplier to boost the clock speed, this wont give you extra cores, but for games that only use two cores it will help.

Yea i put this rig together for gaming solely. Im not very tech savvy so im scared ill mess something up by trying to unlock a core. if I had a quad core processor would this fix my problem? How would i increase "the multiplier". thanks

Looking at the score, it's actually about right on the graphics side. Your graphics score is proper. It's the CPU that is holding back the overall score. Actually, looking at it again, you had two in CF. Your score is about the same as you'd get with 1, obviously you are bottlenecked by the CPU.

Ok this is sad new for me. I guess I can sell my processors used on ebay and recoupe some money. What AMD processor should I buy in order to be at optimal running speed with the rest of my equipment. Thanks for everything.

I'm not all that up to date on my AMD CPU's. There may also be an issue with your motherboard. When in CF, what speed does your PCIe slots work at? The problem could be the slot more than the CPU it self.

I did look up your motherboard listed on the furmark site, you should be running at x8/x8, which should be fine.

i think blew up my computer. I went in to change the 667mhz to 1600mhz and not my computer wont start and now has started a repair program. i thought all i had to do was change that and my ram would be operating at optimal speed, am i incorrect about this?

pull your motherboard battery for 30 seconds, put it back in and your BIOS will be reset to default settings, that should solve that issue.

Thanks i got it working again properly, just not sure all the things i need to change in the bios to get it working at 1600mhz....i think im in over my head at this point. My fault i guess, this is my 1st computer build and had no idea i was gonna have to change all this to make it work at the proper speeds, im just not that tech savvy. thought i would already be done and all i had to do was pop in the parts. Anything you have for suggestions would be great. thanks

Changing memory speed will require manually changing voltages and timings for the RAM.

understand that much, m problem is I dont know what to change and how much to change it  

Memory speeds are insignificant for gaming performance. I would not bother trying to change them.

but do you agree that I need to get a quad core instead of dual core in order to keep vid cards from bottle necking?

I was trying to find some comparisons for x2 and x4 CPU's and couldn't. The best I found was a Phenom II x2 with a single 5850. The score was 11k. A single 5850 in a 4 core i5 will get about 17k.

I believe there is good reason to believe the problem is your CPU. I'd probably look at Phenom II x4 955 or 965. I'm not all that familiar with your options, but those seem decent. You might have to overclock the CPU a bit for best results, but those should be decent even without an overclock.

When you speaking of score are you speaking of 3D Mark score, Graphic Score or CPU Score? mine were as follows:

http://3dmark.com/3dmv/2871765

i made changes in my bios but dont think It caused any performance changes. looks about the same as my 1st benchmark. I think my main issue is the fact I dont know enough to manually manipulate the MOB BIOS off of factory settings up to a median level and the 2nd thing would be upgrading to a quad or six core processor so the cards aren't bottle-necking. If anyone can help walk me through BIOS setting to get them off factory settings I would be most appreciative! thanks for all.

I was speaking of the 3D mark score.

The way I understand it, RAM works by a multiplier, like the CPU.
666x2=1333mhz, the standard for most motherboards. Try setting the ratio to 1:4 instead of "Auto". That made my 1333mhz back to the marketed 1600mhz ^_^


I mean, I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure in the BIOS my RAM clock is at 800mhz, but if I look into computer specs, I have 1600 mhz