Higher 3DMark2001SE Score But Worse FPS?

[Rodion]

Let me start off by saying that I am not a serious PC gamer. My system is not that great. I basically play GTA3 and Vice City, and occasionally BF1942. My specs are as follows:

PIII 933mhz
384mb SDRAM
Visiontek Xtasy 9100 128mb DDR PCI
Onboard sound

I just recently upgraded from a PNY GeForce2 MX400 64mb PCI to the Xtasy 9100 PCI. I don't have an AGP slot on my mobo, so I was limited to PCI cards only. I'm not interested in upgrading my mobo or CPU, and the Xtasy 9100 is supposedly the best PCI card currently available.

So anyway, I ran 3DMark2001SE before I installed the new card, and afterward. My score with the GeForce2 was (don't laugh please) 1858. The score after I installed the new card was 4864. I thought, wow, that's a 262% increase. Vice City should run great now.

But after firing up GTA Vice City with the new card, my FPS were actually somewhat worse. I had around 25-30 FPS before, but it would get really choppy at times and drop down to around 15-20 FPS. I figured the new card would get me a solid 30 FPS, which was all I really cared about. NOT SO! My FPS are actually worse now that I've upgraded my video card.

Has anyone seen this before where the 3DMark score went up considerably while FPS in your favorite game actually went down??? What's going on here???

 

[endyen]

Let me be the first to ask. Did you do a complete os install with your new card? While it may be possible to run an Ati card while some part of the old detonator drivers remain, it will affect how well the Ati card runs.
This is even more true when going from Ati to Nvidia. The only sure way to tell that all the old drivers are gone is with a total clean install.

 

[rubikian]

Your MX400 is a DX 7 card while your R9100 is a DX8 card. So, for DX8 card, it runs an extra test in 3Dmark2001 so the calculation gives it extra marks. On your GTA VC, I'd think it's more due to your processor speed. I've seen it running smooth on a P4 1.5G with GF 2 MX400.