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3dmark - Page 2

post #21 of 31
12/30/03 at 4:44pm

I knew you could do it!

Quote:
Originally Posted by Craig
Thanks Brain. I guess a Moderator should be privy to such things eh?

I'm glad to hear you liked Call of Duty Time-Pilot. I just finished the single player portion yesterday. Driving a tank was sweet!

So anywho...here is the proof of my pudding. Just some tweaks and Powerstrip Overclocked pulled this off for me.



-Craig
I knew you could do it may want to change the name of that.jpg though should be 3217 not 3127. I'm playing CoD now and I agree I havenot gotten to the tank part yet just started with the brits! I been swinging back and forth between that and Max payne 2!
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post #22 of 31
1/3/04 at 6:57pm
Guys (and Gals),

I found this lurking on the Alienware forums. It is a great read from a very well educated tweaker. Keep in mind, the scores provided are from a desktop system, not a mobile.
Some Help with Better 3DMark03 Scores
Posted: 12-15-2003 10:23 AM
I noticed a lot of people asking about ways to improve their 3dmark03 score so I’m going to give a hand in it.

First off my personal 3dmark score is 8754. If you look at the top scores you'll notice VR-Zone people are on there. These are members of our 3dmark team. We just sit around and basically burn our money to get our pcs to run better. We know our stuff pretty well

First off you can gain far higher scores in 3dmark03 with just overclocking the video card. I would recommend either powerstrip or riva tuner (www.guru3d.com and its free). If you just want to see a 3dmark03 score then that’s all you really need. CPU overclocking doesn’t do much with this benchmark in anyway. In 3dmark01 it can help but 03 is starting to get to be the new standard and newer cups on 3dmark01 mixed with a good video card can obtain better then 20000 anyways.

You only need to run the 4 game tests!

ATI - ATI cards can push with low overclocking increments. Usually you can push around 10 to 25 MHZ on the GPU and MAYBE 5 to 10 on the memory itself. The best thing to watch for is small little white spots that flicker and flash on the screen. The new ATI Overdrive feature actually causes white spots, which it shouldn’t but stays within stability, and no real texture mess-ups.

You can also get a can of compressed air and while the benchmark is going you can spray the button of the card. This can help obtain a higher score but you’ll have to live with video corruption plus pushing too much may also damage the card.

Nvidia - Nvidia cards seem to overclock far better. Just remember the nvidia card doesn’t show as much corruption as an ati but it will just lock up. So no love there. Sometimes you can gain up to 100MHZ on the memory on newer model cards. Again use riva tuner with this card.

You can also come up with different cooling methods. More simple ones would fall with the alienice, which is just passive cooling however if you wanted even more you can opt for more! I use VapoChills, and Prommies as cooling on some systems. Costing well over $500 it just isn’t honestly worth it in the end.

For games themselves video card overclocking isn’t really all that great. The real world gain from video card overclocking in games cannot pick up enough of a score for anyone. More useless!

CPU overclocking is what makes real world games like dreams. Getting up to 200 to 400 MHZ on a cpu may also give you the ability of running a game with more graphics options turned on such as FSAA and AA. I noticed the best overclock for performance, stability, and reliability is 3600 to 3800. Both reachable numbers even with air-cooling on newer CPUs. On P4 3.2 motherboards you can set the FSB to 225, voltage to 1.575, and memory all the way to 2.85. Memory loves the voltage :P

Now most Alienware systems come with an Intel motherboard, which doesn’t have the overclocking options. Remember when you buy a high end Alienware your saving anywhere’s from $1000 to $2000!! So you can opt to buy a motherboard for $200. Changing it isn’t that hard either! Looks hard but it isn’t that difficult. The best motherboard is Asus P4C800-E Deluxe for Intel systems and overclocking. Alienware has great memory so no need to change anything else. The power supply also has great rails as well so power isn’t an issue.

Memory timings are also very important. If you want more overclocking set the memory timings to the highest numbers. Although it doesn’t seem wise the change will allow for more overclocking and the FSB numbers will make up the memory timings.

ANYWAYS just ask questions :P I can’t just generalize 3 years of overclocking in one email so if you have questions ask.

EDIT IN - Some other small things to note.

For 3dmark03 scores just overclocking the GPU by 5MHZ till you see graphics corruption. Memory by 3MHZ till you notice the same. Memory overclicking will cause more texture corruption in the 3dmark03 system more so then the GPU. With a prommie I was able to ge the gpu upto 515 which it would run the entire test HOWEVER you can see a damned thing :P its just all messed up.

Other more extreme things include VOLTAGE mods on the memory which can produce far greater memory timings. If you recall i stated the system memory loves as much voltage as you can toss as it. The video card memory is the same and adding more voltage to it means far higher memory overclocking. Though none of the above listings are the easiest things in the world to do it is the extreme end of getting a better performing system.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thanks,

 -Craig
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post #23 of 31
1/3/04 at 7:04pm
Powerstrip.....How safe is it?

Is it possible to fry something or does it have something that will bring it back down to a normal speed if it gets too hot?
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post #24 of 31
1/3/04 at 8:02pm
lets put it this way, it will not prevent an idiot from frying his machine.
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post #25 of 31
1/3/04 at 8:06pm
Craig, those of us receiving notebooks, im not sure how much information that quote provided that would be useful. A lot of the recommended clocking settings were meant for desktops, and are not accurate with notebooks.
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post #26 of 31
1/3/04 at 8:07pm
Hence my second sentence where I stat that exact same thing.

and it was not meant as a "how to exactly" overclock. The poster obviously has extensive working knowledge of such things and makes many good techy points that if you're "in the know" are very good to...know?

-Craig
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post #27 of 31
1/15/04 at 12:42am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Craig
So anywho...here is the proof of my pudding. Just some tweaks and Powerstrip Overclocked pulled this off for me.

-Craig
Hey Craig, may I ask, what kind of score do you get with just the tweaks and not the OC'ing? And could you maybe pass on those tweaks?

I'd also be interested in seeing some scores from other more "conservative"-types who don't overclock--your lowest scores, as well as the high ones--just to find out if I'm truly at the bottom of the pack...
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post #28 of 31
1/15/04 at 5:20pm
My basic 3d mark 2003 score was 2597.I overclocked big time and got 3023 as my best,but got some graphical problems.The best with performance and graphics was 2813,which is what i use most of the time now.By the way i run full res and full spec on all games and don't have any probs.
Call of duty,Knights of the old Republic,Max payne 2,Unreal 2,Neverwinter nights and Medieval.I can run all of these on basic powerstrip settings and full spec with no real slow downs!!!Got to be a good system to do that,don't worry about 3d mark too much,if you can run games at full spec and no slowing then who cares what score you get!!!!!After all,it's about gaming not scoring,right?
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post #29 of 31
1/15/04 at 5:30pm
8600
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post #30 of 31
1/16/04 at 1:58am
Quote:
Originally Posted by citizen
Hey Craig, may I ask, what kind of score do you get with just the tweaks and not the OC'ing? And could you maybe pass on those tweaks?

I'd also be interested in seeing some scores from other more "conservative"-types who don't overclock--your lowest scores, as well as the high ones--just to find out if I'm truly at the bottom of the pack...
If I'm not mistaken, my default 3dMark Scores (Keep in mind: these are in now way and indicator of how your laptop will play games, especially with the Omega drivers) was approx 2600.

Head to this link to see some of the tweaks I'm using: http://notebookforums.com/showthread.php?t=12105

Be sure to check your system's performance in games more so than in benchmarks. Real world apps are surely the best approach to "benching" your laptop.

Let us know how it goes!

-Craig
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post #31 of 31
1/16/04 at 4:37am
I realize these scores don't mean a whole lot, and I'm not so interested in the actual scores per se. What puzzles me though is the _difference_ in scores between people having the exact same computer.

I top out at around 2500. But I've seen posts from people getting 2800 or more. Why 300+ points difference from the exact same hardware?
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