3D Mark Results on an "Old" System

[TheMailMan78]

I just ran 3dMark06 on my system and it scored 8252. My system specs are in my profile and I was curious when you guys think Ill have to upgrade before I cant play the latest and greatest anymore on high settings. I am more concerned about my CPU than anything considering it got 1577 and sadly I have a 939.

 

[candle_86]

your CPU won't be to big of a hold back if the Radeon Physx drivers arrive anytime soon

 

[spud107]

id say oc it a wee bit but its an hp board lol,

edit - had a look through the bios and feck all to unlock there sorry

 

[TheMailMan78]

Yeah my bios is locked. I used to have an app that allowed me to OC via software but it doesn't work in XP nor can I find it anymore. So Im screwed then. Over all is that a bad score considering the hardware?

 

[InnocentCriminal]

Was that ClockGen?

What RAM configuration d'you have? If it's odd, and it's disabling dual channel you may see an increase from removing a gig. For example...

... if you've got 2 x 1 GB and 2 x 512MB then you'd be running dual channel as all the DIMMs are filled. However, if you've got 2 x 1GB and 1 x 1GB you'll limiting yourself to single channel. People could argue it's a minimal difference in performance, but give it a try if you do find yourself operating in single channel.

I'd be interested to know tbh.

Oh, and if you can afford a dedicated sound card, that should help relieve load on your CPU as well. I managed to get about 5FPS in games and a couple of hundred marks in ePenis06 due to changing from on-board audio to a dedicated one.

 

[CrackerJack]

Yep, your cpu is holding you back. I've got a 939 x2 4200+ and it bottleneckings with my 2900gt (single) There's alittle bottleneck even with my 1950 512mb pro on the same cpu.

 

[TheMailMan78]

Na I have 2 x 1 GB and 2 x 512MB so we are Ok there. As for the sound card I used to have a X-Fi but when I got Vista I sold her. Never did work right and I got sick of waiting for drivers. Never bought another one because I wasn't sure what would be equal to the X-Fi.

Also how is the CPU holding back the GPU? I ask because most games dont even require a 4200+ yet. Please explain.

 

[InnocentCriminal]

Imagine a wine bottle, the big bit of the bottle is your GPU working all the game info out and sending that data back to the CPU however, as the CPU is slower and can't work all the data out as fast, it has to queue all the data up before it can't process it all, so the neck of the wine is the information slowing down so that the CPU can make head & tail of it.

It works both ways as GPUs, CPU and all that guff are multi-directional.

 

[CrackerJack]

Also how is the CPU holding back the GPU? I ask because most games dont even require a 4200+ yet. Please explain.

What games are you playing? So of the lastest games are wanting 5400+ or higher. But there's a few that ask for quads. Now on the bottlenecking, the closer the scores are the less bottleneck.

 

[TheMailMan78]

I only know of maybe two games that ask for more than a 4200+ currently and thats Frontlines and Crysis. What game asks for quad??

InnocentCriminal how would I go about seeing if I am getting bottlenecked?

 

[CrackerJack]

Most bottlenecks that you will see, is only in benchmarks. Most games you can't tell, games are more gpu demanding than cpu. But it does help to have a decent cpu to back it up.

CPU Bottleneck: CPU score is really low, compare to GPU score

GPU Bottleneck: GPU score is really low, compare to CPU score

 

[InnocentCriminal]

I only know of maybe two games that ask for more than a 4200+ currently and thats Frontlines and Crysis. What game asks for quad??

InnocentCriminal how would I go about seeing if I am getting bottlenecked?

As CrackerJack pointed out the bottlenecks in benchmarks, it's easier to see where bottlenecks are. Which is another reason why using 3DMark can be a good thing and not just a random number generating benchmarking malarkey.

However it's extremely more difficult to know what is bottlenecking your system within a game. As the symptoms for bottlenecking could be the same for both CPU and GPU. So you could quite easily mis-diagnose a stuttering system in say, Half-Life 2 as a slow GPU when in fact the CPU is the bottleneck, therefore hampering the GFX card. (GPU).

I hope that made sense. I'm tired, just had to help an ex-colleagues husband get rid of 54 viruses. Took me over 4 bloody hours.

 

[TheMailMan78]

What I dont understand is when I look at Alcpone's Official 3DMark '06 Compilation I see people with 3850 with higher scores than me. Could the CPU be THAT much a bottleneck? I mean a 3850 is nothing compared to a 4850. I'm confused!

 

[InnocentCriminal]

It could a whole lot of things. Your memory timings for a start, if you're using a load of mis-matched RAM then it's more than likely the timings for them might be a little of so the board has to do what it can to make them work properly.

Another thing is, which I should have asked from the beginning, are you running 06 at default settings, as in resolution (1280 x 1024)?

Is your CPU at stock, if so then yes, it could very well be bottlenecking that much. 06 is extremely CPU reliant compared to previous versions of 3DMark apparently.

You can use CPU-Z to check all you need to know about your CPU, a little bit on your motherboard and your RAM.

Feel free to PM me if you need too.

 

[BarbaricSoul]

I only know of maybe two games that ask for more than a 4200+ currently and thats Frontlines and Crysis. What game asks for quad??

InnocentCriminal how would I go about seeing if I am getting bottlenecked?

try changing your resolution to higher settings. If your FPS stay the same with the resolution increase, that means your gpu is keeping up, but the cpu is maxed out with handling the game's physics. Rising your resolution to higher levels ought to drop your FPS, but won't if your gfx card is keeping up but your cpu is lacking. Easiest way I know of to tell if your experiencing a cpu bottle neck.

 

[InnocentCriminal]

I was cut short with my other post sorry. Use GPU-Z to see if your PCIe slot is funny at full speed and to find all the info about your card out as well, but like I said, fill me in with your RAM details and we'll try and figure something out. ^^

 

[Polarman]

The highest CPU you could get for a 939 is a FX-60 (2.6Ghz) wich are virtually impossible to find anymore. Ebay perhaps.

 

[TheMailMan78]

I was cut short with my other post sorry. Use GPU-Z to see if your PCIe slot is funny at full speed and to find all the info about your card out as well, but like I said, fill me in with your RAM details and we'll try and figure something out. ^^

First off thanks for the help thus far.
My Mobo doesn't allow OC in the bios for the ram or CPU. The ram I have is PC3200 and I really don't have anyway to adjust the timings so Im stuck at whatever their default is. The best I could do was to make sure everything matched so they would at least run duel channel correctly. Honestly from what Iv been reading Im pretty much screwed. Heres my Mobo...
MS-7184 (AmethystM)

 

[Widjaja]

BIOS is locked?
Have you tried CMOS reset the motherboard?
Or is your motherboard one of those ones which are permanently locked.

Don't worry about the 3Dmark.
I get 9100 at 2.4Ghz and a bit over 10k at 2.7Ghz
It means squat when it comes to games.
If a game has lag spike when you are getting high frame rates then it's an un optimized game.

I've decided to run my CPU at stock since I can't see any difference in games as the highest OC I can get on this CPU is 2.7Ghz.
2.4Ghz-2.7Ghz the games still hitch if they are un optimized.

Unfortunatley the higher end CPU's are known not to overclock as high as the lower end.
Most of the time a X2 3800+ will overclock higher than a X2 4800+.

Just ask yourself, is what I'm seening when I play games poor or good performance.

My rig seems to play games best at 1280x1024 which what my native res is.