Lowest 3D Marks ever! PLEASE HELP ME!!!

[netwalker]

Ok, so I have two pretty l337 sounding computers, both with ATI cards, and neither of them are performing up to par!

Main System:
Enermax 431W
ASUS A7n8x-Deluxe
2800+ AMD Barton 333fsb
768MB PC3200 Corsair XMS LLPT
Radeon 9800 Pro 128
Game Theatre XP
Highest 3D Mark 2003 - Approx. 4300

Other System:
300W PSU
Abit A7N
2500+ AMD Barton
512MB PC3200 Corsair XMS LLPT
Radeon 9600XT 128
Highest 3D Mark 2003 - 3272

WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE??? I hear of people scoring up in the 18000's and I can't even break 5000? PLEASE SOMEONE HELP ME!!!

I have been searching and searching and everywhere I go people are like, "Make sure your drivers are installed correctly, blah blah blah." None of the drivers make that big of a difference! I have the latest Cats and the latest NForce drivers and the performance sucks!

Someone has to know what's wrong here! I have tried everything till I'm a nervous wreck and both systems still suck! I'm beginning to believe that it is ATi. These systems were the first one's I've ever experienced ATi's in and I'm beginning to think that this has to be the culprit.

PLEASE!!! I need help!!! I can't go on living this lie!

[paroxym]

Highest 3D Mark 2003 - 3272

WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE??? I hear of people scoring up in the 18000's and I can't even break 5000? PLEASE SOMEONE HELP ME!!!


Your scores are about right for 3dmark 2003. The 18000+ scores you are talking about were probably from runs in 3dmark 2001. :)

[TheSmJ]

Yeah, those scores look about right for your system.

[netwalker]

Ok, so I ran the 2001SE Benchmark on my second system. I scored a measly 11322... that's not too good.

I get really crappy game performance in most every game I play. Does anyone have any suggestions???

[edcentric]

There is a big difference between low 3D scores and bad game play.
The scores can be tweeked. Have you delved into advanced setting? Using ATITools or your favorite utility you can change a lot of settings.
Game play issues may also be related to your system.
I presume that you are running XP and that you have fast hdds. Have you played with memory settings?

[Shorty]

Vsync off. Bench at 1024x768 :)

[Caxus]

Yeah, what shorty said. Also make sure fastwrites are on. Make sure AA and AF are off.

[Komete]

Man there is something deffinatly wrong with his 9800pro rig. I get 4500 3d2003 off of my 9500pro with my system and card over clocked. On 2001 I get 15200ish on max over clock.

Make sure you got agp 8x is enabled in the bios. You should be getting mid 5500's on that 1st rig in 3d2003.

[entropy]

Yep, set both sliders to the center and try it. I get ~5,900 on my 9800 pro with the cpu in my sig, and 2x256 ram. There's definitely something wrong, I agree. I've never felt my card performed as good as it should, and I get that high of a score. Also, make sure you're not running anything, etc, yadda yadda. Make sure you don't have any nVidia drivers. Not sure what else to tell you :-/

[netwalker]

No nvidia drivers? What about Nforce2??? Do I not get those???

Also, the settings are correct. 8x agp, sliders in the middle. Could it be ATi's drivers? I have the latest ones but somewhere I read that they were rewriting the entire opengl coding... Who knows.

If HL2 comes out and I get 40 fps, I'm going back to nVidia cards.

[entropy]

No nvidia drivers? What about Nforce2??? Do I not get those???
I have a tendency to forget abou nforce drivers, and since we were talking about video card drivers, I assumed we would stay in that general topic ;). Those are fine, I meant old nVidia drivers can really mess up an ATi-based system.