Unexplainable Benchmarks

I recently unlocked my 7900GS (in my inspiron 9400), and have it running comfortably at 450/1100 @ 1.24v ...

By comfortably I mean the MAX temp under full load (using ATITool Find Max Core) is 78C
(which I know is high, but this is a stress test afterall ... it would never be running this streseed under normal circumstances)
with 0 artifacts over 4 hours of running ATITools ...

I went to benchmark with 3dMark 06, and my score is 2551 ... WTF?????

Now, I am a vista (x32) user, and recognize there has been evidence that graphics performance under vista is slightly lower then in XP ... but 2551????? Thats a ridiculously low score

I ran 3dmark with no tasks running at all, and when I as afk

Does anyone have any clue why my 3d mark score is so ridiculously low?

If its of interest to anyone, i'm using Forceware 173.65 drivers from the good folks at laptopvideo2go (with the modified INF)


And my laptops specs of relevance are: T2550, 2gB @ 667

Any advice anyone can provide would be greatly appreciated

Thxs

yes

my laptop never runs on batteries

(and by never I mean that I have never unplugged my laptop from the wall since the day that I bought it)

ill tell ya, I just watched some of the tests in 3d mark, and damn they are slow .. like 8-15fps ... i could never play a game as they were being rendered in those tests.

After overclocking there is a noticeable difference in WoW, but i mean, thats WoW, hardly the GPU intensive game ... i'm very frustrated and confused !!

As far as I can surmise powermizer is off. I have made this conclusion because I've been running GPU-Z every time I run WoW, or 3D Mark (because I was getting frustrated, and eventually paranoid since ATITools would reset my clock speeds to 100/200 as soon as I launched it ... I wanted to make sure it was indeed changing the clock to 450/1100 when I launched a 3D application, indeed it is changing to the correct clock).

I have been OCing (desktop PCs) for years, and I would NEVER EVER run a chip at "105-109C under full load". No I am not kidding you Master_Axe, you can do what you want, but i'm comfortable with my 78C, i'd rather not go over anything higher then 85C, as a matter of personal recourse. Regardless, you'd expect an overclock from 375/1000 to 450/1100 to generate some positive result in 3D mark, not a negative one

WoW does not run slower, please reread my post, I said
" After overclocking there is a noticeable difference in WoW"
Noticeable difference meaning it ran noticeably smoother then before I OCed the card

Thank you for fixing my thread title :P

I am overclocking through the bios (I was unaware you could overclock without reflashing ...). I saved my 'stock' bios, and tried JuanLu's bios(es). Unfortunately I was only able to unlock the GPU clock with one of his bios(es) in windows using ATITools or RivaTuner (I have the 01 rev of the card, so I was able to succesfully overclock GPU (but not memory) ... strangely ... with his 791GSNNN.ROM, I say strange because his 791UNN.ROM and 791UNV.ROM wouldn't allow me to overvolt, or change the GPU or memory clocks, but the NNN did ... odd (yes I know UNN = unlocked GPU/Mem, and UNV = unlocked GPU/Mem and unlocked overvolt to 1.24v, either way, neither of these bioses worked) ...
So, I tried one of Stormlifter's bioses ... and it bricked my card. Thankfully I was prepared for such an occurance, and just flashed my card back to stock off my thumb drive (now i know what its like to be blind ... sort of :P). I assume this was because his bioses were written for the rev 0 of the card, but I don't know, and don't enjoy bricking my card, so out went his bios roms :P.

... so, I used NiBiTor to change the voltage and clock speeds of the 'stock' bios I had saved (since effectively thats all that Stormlifters bioses did), since I was unable to overclock the memory otherwise. Doing this I was able to set the memory clock to whatever, but could not change it from whatever I had set it to in the bios in windows (which is fine, at least now I can actually change it), I could still change the GPU frequency up to a max of the frequency I dictated in my customized bios, as well my GPU voltage is 1.24v now.

I've done all the hunting I can for a solution, and unfortunately i've come up empty handed, 3D mark still acting this way (after a defragment ... yes I am becoming that desperate :P)

Thanks zzpulp,

I was never too worried about temps, as I said, i'd rather get a modest OC at an absolute safe temp, then the absolute max OC at temperatures which are unaaceptable (to me).

I was also never aware that nVidia had thermal throttling on their cards.

When I first unlocked the card I tried for hours to get/use the old nVidia control panel, most of the time spent researching, unfortunately I couldnt really find much information, and I still don't know how to install it in place of the crap new one. Coolbits didn't do anything. ... thats why i went to ATI Tools.

Any suggestions on how I might get the old control panel installed/working? i'd appreciate it.

I'll run 3dmark at stock sometime today and report back

Thank you all for your help, I appreciate it, hopefully I can figure out this anomoly before I pull all of my hair out