Anyone have any idea why I'm getting such low points in 3DMark 2001?

[debs3759]

I have been running 3DMark 2001 SE on a Rampage IV Extreme with 3930K at 4.6 GHz andGTX 570 @ 1030 MHz. My scores are in the region 63K to 64K, which is among the lowest scores for a GTX 570. Has anyone got any ideas what might be causing such low scores? It's the same GPU that got me some pretty high scores when used with a 2700K and other 3D tests.

[maverik-sg1]

Is it CPU MHZ, ram timings or maybe LOD?

[debs3759]

The CPU is at 46 x 100 MHz (with 6 cores and HT). RAM is at 2133 MHz, 9-11-9-27. I tried LOD 0 and LOD 20, both gave roughly the same score. The lowest scoring GTX 570 at hwbot with clock at 1000 MHz and higher scored over 80K, and even that looks low. Normal should be over 100K.

[maverik-sg1]

Set it to realtime priority and affinity just to a core? Disabled HT? Installed on separate disk to OS and Cache?

[ScunnyUK]

Perhaps the cpu is bottle necking ?

Are all the C1 , C3 , speed step and any other power saving / cpu throttling options all disabled?

What O/S are you using?

[vento1]

Im with Scunny which O/S are you using and what version ? Also try with riva tuner and use overrider.

[debs3759]

It's on Windows 7 64-bit. Apps and OS are on a SATA III SSD, so that's not bottlenecking anything. All power saving is disabled (one of the first things I do when setting up a system). CPU priority is set to very high. I'll try installing process lasso and see if I can get any improvement using that, but with an overclocked SB-E I can't see that causing my results to be at 60% of what they should be.

If I don't figure it out by tomorrow night, I'll probably just leave it out of my list of benches for this system.

[ARandomOWL]

01 needs the highest CPU MHz possible, system memory also plays a part. SB is probably a better choice then SBE for this bench.

If you used LOD and did not get a higher score, then something is not right. The bench should look blurry and pixelated if LOD is applied correctly.

D3D overrider also gives a boost. As does running the tests in certain orders, you can find some info on this at OCX and XS. There may also be some info in the team room here, can't link as I don't have access anymore.

Edit: Just noticed you are using Win7. You need to run 01 on XP or don't bother at all

[debs3759]

Thanks. I'll install XP when I'm done running other benchmarks with the pile of cards I have Good thing I don't need to run every bm on all the cards

[maverik-sg1]

Here's a quick run on a SB 2500k @ 4.8ghz gtx 570 run at 750mhz, 16mb ddr1600 ram win 7 x64 premium, no optimisations on current whql drivers, everything running in background and all tests run in "auto" - I dont have SDD's, but on my 3 HD's I have OS, TEMP and 3dmark on separate drives....PS: My machine has not been swtiched off for a week.... just thought i'd post it up for comparison

It reminds me of the times when I was flashing GPU bios's with tweaked roms, even tightening the ram timings on the GTX7900's as well as forcing a max overclocked state with volt modded gpu's. all good tips from above, I recall using different LOD's per test, running each test individually and if I recall one test was so random (might be the first or the last one?) that I had to run that one test over and over just to get the best score, affinity and priority tweaks.

Running order if I recall was dragothic, nature, chase, lobby some discussions about it (some put nature first), but I must of tried every permutation and discovered a broad range of randomness, I think this is what I settled on... back in 2006 Kenny is the master of all this, as I am sure he has a journal/spreadsheet of all the optimisations, where as I just run things on the fly.

XP has no trim support for the SSD, not sure if that has any relevance?

[maverik-sg1]

Also - does your MB allow you to disable cores and HT? some people get higher clocks on the cpu doing this and as has been already said, cpu mhz (and tight system ram timings) wins the day on this test.

PS: I am sure you already know this, but make sure that you take a screenie of your best scores, because every re-run test can go down as well and up and it's frustrating to find you peaked but forgot to screenie it.

[ARandomOWL]

Car chase low is the "random" test you are on about Mav. You can leave it till last and run it a couple of time, saving a screenshot each time of course. Your score should jump up a couple of thousand after 2nd or 3rd run usually.

[debs3759]

Also - does your MB allow you to disable cores and HT? some people get higher clocks on the cpu doing this and as has been already said, cpu mhz (and tight system ram timings) wins the day on this test.

PS: I am sure you already know this, but make sure that you take a screenie of your best scores, because every re-run test can go down as well and up and it's frustrating to find you peaked but forgot to screenie it.

I hadn't thought about that. I'll start taking screenies when I start getting scores that earn at least one hardware point (after I install XP).

I never realised how much work could go into one benchmark

[maverik-sg1]

Thanks for the extra info ARO.

System restart after every successful run is useful too - although I think some might of just run task manager, shut down explorer.exe and run it again from task mgr - this 3D benchmark above all other 3D benchies has an element of luck in the absolute best score.

[debs3759]

Dammit!

I spent a couple of hours installing and updating XP64 on my SB-E rig, and ran 3D01 on a GTX 460. The score was higher than with Win7, as expected. The problem came when I tried to run CPU-Z - it's always run without problems on every computer and with every OS I have run it on. Not this time. As soon as it starts to read the SPD info from my memory, the system crashed! So, I set the ram speed to auto (so 1333MHz) instead of the 2133 it was at. Still the same problem!

I'm part way through installing XP32 now to see if everything runs better under that on this setup. I hope so, I want to bench the 8800 Ultra I bought for this months hwbot comp and I don't have much time left

If one of my ram sticks turns out to have died I won't be at all impressed! I can afford to replace it, but 'd rather not have to buy a quad channel kit right now