3dmark 11 on homebuilt

[sniper2606]

First off my pc specs i built about 6 months ago

Windows 7 64 bit
XFX Black Edition XPS-850W power supply
4 x CORSAIR XMS3 8GB ram total
i7-950 Bloomfield 3.06GHz OC to 3.7
MSI Big Bang-XPower Mobo
SSD 256gb crucial m4
Prolimatech Megahalems Rev.B CPU Cooler
EVGA GTX 580 fermi

Alright so i ran 3dmark11 last night the performance test, and my scored was P5970.... i was under the impression that i could get at least 6 or 7, my friend with a similar rig but with i7 920 not oc gets P6540.... Do i need to tweak something on the BIOS? im very confuse on why i got that scored.. any suggestions?

ps. the OC is done with the OC genie button from the msi mobo

 

[whoareyou1982]

Might help to post your graphics, physics, and combined scores so we can see which particular component may or may not be performing. Do you or your friend overclock your video cards? Could be the difference.

 

[sniper2606]

Might help to post your graphics, physics, and combined scores so we can see which particular component may or may not be performing. Do you or your friend overclock your video cards? Could be the difference.

Ah crap ill have to re run it again i didnt save those numbers, but i did see that the Physics score over 7+ so we know thats not that issues, ill run it again when i get home later today. No neither one OC the video card, i also dont think i should OC the video card, its already a 580 should be good enough on its own i dont think the cpu could keep up with it if is OC

 

[sniper2606]

So i ran it again and its lower now... P5868

Graphics score 5566
Physics 8264
combined 5714

 

[whoareyou1982]

Sorry about not responding right away. Thought I had this setup to e-mail me, but I guess not.

Anyway, looking at your score and looking here: http://3dmark.com/3dm11/111478 I would say that your score looks to be about in the middle of the bell curve on that graph, meaning that your score is pretty average. That's good.

Your physics score looks fine and reasonable to me, so I don't think you need to worry about tweaking your overclock or worrying about ay BIOS settings; however, I just ran 3d Mark 11 at stock speeds on my GTX 570, and my graphics score was 5916. Still higher than your 580, which doesn't make much sense to me. My card is stock overclocked to 797mhz, up from the stock 732mhz, but I still wouldn't think it would be higher. I have a couple of suggestions:

1.) Open up something like MSI Afterburner, or EVGA precision and double-check to make sure you're running at the correct core clock, shader clock, and memory clock speeds. Possible, though unlikely, that the card is running underclocked for some reason. Never heard of this happening, but I guess stranger things have.

2.) Make sure you have the most current Nvidia drivers. They just released a driver update the other day and my overall score went up about 100 points. This program seems to be very sensitive to driver tweaks.

It is entirely possible that your buddy's rig has a higher score because he bought a factory overclocked card and you have a stock clocked one. That might be the difference in your scores. My stock run at 797mhz yielded a 5916 graphics score, while my 853mhz overclock yielded a 6313. That's almost 400 graphics points with just a 56mhz overclock. My suggestion is to compare those graphics and physics scores to your buddy's, and use one of those programs I suggested to take a look at what speeds his card is running at compared to yours. If you're running at the same speeds and have drastically different results, then there may be an underlying problem somewhere, but I suspect differences in clock speeds or driver updates are the culprit here.

 

[sniper2606]

Sorry about not responding right away. Thought I had this setup to e-mail me, but I guess not.

Anyway, looking at your score and looking here: http://3dmark.com/3dm11/111478 I would say that your score looks to be about in the middle of the bell curve on that graph, meaning that your score is pretty average. That's good.

Your physics score looks fine and reasonable to me, so I don't think you need to worry about tweaking your overclock or worrying about ay BIOS settings; however, I just ran 3d Mark 11 at stock speeds on my GTX 570, and my graphics score was 5916. Still higher than your 580, which doesn't make much sense to me. My card is stock overclocked to 797mhz, up from the stock 732mhz, but I still wouldn't think it would be higher. I have a couple of suggestions:

1.) Open up something like MSI Afterburner, or EVGA precision and double-check to make sure you're running at the correct core clock, shader clock, and memory clock speeds. Possible, though unlikely, that the card is running underclocked for some reason. Never heard of this happening, but I guess stranger things have.

2.) Make sure you have the most current Nvidia drivers. They just released a driver update the other day and my overall score went up about 100 points. This program seems to be very sensitive to driver tweaks.

It is entirely possible that your buddy's rig has a higher score because he bought a factory overclocked card and you have a stock clocked one. That might be the difference in your scores. My stock run at 797mhz yielded a 5916 graphics score, while my 853mhz overclock yielded a 6313. That's almost 400 graphics points with just a 56mhz overclock. My suggestion is to compare those graphics and physics scores to your buddy's, and use one of those programs I suggested to take a look at what speeds his card is running at compared to yours. If you're running at the same speeds and have drastically different results, then there may be an underlying problem somewhere, but I suspect differences in clock speeds or driver updates are the culprit here.

Hmmm well the strange thing is that i ran Crysis 2 with the dx11 patch and high text on Ultra and the game runs very smooth, battlefield 3 everything ultra same smooth, idk if this is a 3dmark issued or what? but im going to contact EVGA and see if they can find out what the issue is, its very strange that your 570 its beating my 580

 

[sniper2606]

So i called EVGA.... got some prick on the phone bragging about hes pc, and that if my games are running fine i shouldn't worry about the benchmark... the only thing he suggested was to check on the BIOS if the Intel speedstep was on, if it is to turn it off and it will help the benchmark.... idk

 

[whoareyou1982]

Yeah, sounds like he was less than helpful.

I agree that my 570 shouldn't be beating your 580 in this program. The only thing I can think of is maybe 3dmark is really sensitive to overclocking. You could try overclocking your card if you aren't happy with the score. Your i7-950 will more than keep up with it. Up until a couple weeks ago I was running this 570 with an old Q6600 oc'd to 3.5 ghz and the CPU never caused a bottleneck in a game. Some games were getting close, though...

I am curious to see what the issue is, though. Like I said earlier: see what your buddy's card is running at when you have the time. This could all be due to clock speeds.

 

[FinneousPJ]

No, there must be some problem if you're scoring lower than a 570.

 

[sniper2606]

http://3dmark.com/3dm11/2114023?show_ads=true&page=%2F3dm11%2F2114023%3Fkey%3DCSCzJ0yArcPPR4q9YP1SjA

 

[sniper2606]

I also noticed something strange, when i opened MSI afterburn the shader clock is at 1544 stock speed on the evga gtx 580 box its clearly states shader clock of 1710... whats with that?

 

[sniper2606]

hmmm check this out, i ran FRAPS on crysis 2 (with dx11 patch,high texture patch) everything on extreme performance 1920 x 10800 i get a solid 50fps rarely drops, same thing with battlefield 3 setting on ultra 50 to 75fps rarely drops... wrap your head around that one... i think 3dmark11 has some issues with the new nvidia driver

 

[whoareyou1982]

Indeed. Well this could totally just be a 3dmark issue. You could try running other benchmarks like the heaven dx11 one or ones that come up with games like Metro and compare them to your buddy's as well, but it sounds like it's running fine in other programs so there's probably not much to worry about.

Only other thing I can possibly think of: I looked at your mobo info and it looks like it has several pci express slots. Maybe you have your vid card plugged into one of the slower slots? You've probably done this, just a thought, but make sure it's plugged into one of the x16 speed slots.

Other than that, if you were really concerned you could try plugging your card into your buddy's rig and see how it does. Since it's another gtx 580 you wouldn't even need to uninstall drivers or anything. Kind of a hassle, though.

 

[whoareyou1982]

Also. Food for thought: http://www.evga.com/forums/tm.aspx?m=813710&mpage=1

 

[sniper2606]

Well i install my buddies gtx on my pc and same result... so he suggested reinstalling windows.... believe or not now i get a normal score of 6541... crazy how reinstalling windows can fix things

 

[whoareyou1982]

Awesome. Glad to hear you got it working like it should.