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innervision311

If you didn't know, 3DMark is the standard in gaming benchmarking. It tells you basically how well your computer can run games and puts your computer's power into a numerical score.

If you don't have it you can get it here

I'm running a relatively old rig in the computer world. AMD64 3000+, 6800GT 256MB, 1G Corsair DDR 400. My rig doesn't handle the tests very well I need to upgrade within a year. When I have enough money I'm going to get an entirely new system but that probably won't be until after this summer.

My system scores a 1614 which is pretty damn sad if you ask me. I need to do some tweaking to this thing because I know it can perform better.

I was inspired to post this because I saw a new Alienware rig reviewed in PC Gamer that gets 17,301 3DMarks. That shit is insane... It's this computer except it's hooked up with the following:

Intel Core 2 Quad Extreme 2.66 Ghz
2GB DDR2 RAM
Dual 768MB NVIDIA GeForce 8800GTX's in SLI config

It's a beast to say the least.

 

2point4

inner,

If you have a 939 and a PCI-E slot, why not just upgrade now? You could do it pretty cheap.

I think the 939 maxes out at the X2 4600(maybe the 4800). You'd be surprised at what a performance increase this can give you over your 3000.

As far as a video upgrade, I don't know if I'd throw an 8800 into an old(er) motherboard, but definitely a 7950GTX. The reason I say stay away from the 8800 is because your current MB probably wouldn't handle the card as well as you'd like. If you chose to do this upgrade now and save the MB and other stuff till later, by the time you get around to another upgrade, we'll be seeing the 9000 series come around...maybe even further out than that.

Anyway, you probably already know all this and have even probably considered it. I just like throwing my two technological cents in.

innervision311

I've got a 754 pin (max out at like 3400+) and no PCI-E slot

Frojoe

I ran it about 9 months ago and got 2130 3d marks. Thats on a laptop though, which explains the low score a little. It's an alienware m5700, my setup:
-1.7ghz pentium m
-1 gig ram
-nvidia geforce go 6800
-17" widescreen, 1440x900
-2 40 gig hard drives, RAID 0

Maybe I'll run it again tonight to see how much my computer has slowed down.

Darque Pervert

Crap. I sincerely doubt my system could even run 3Dmark2006.

I'm seriously looking into a PC upgrade, and relegating this box to household server duties....

__________________

Life is always a spiral. It's the choices of the individual as to whether that spiral is aimed up or down.

 

Equilibrium

i got a 416

__________________
A Restraining Order Against Satan's Daughter.

innervision311

'06 is harsh...

I remember when I got like 60,000 aquamarks in aquamark3 (now obsolete thanks to '06) and I thought my computer was the shizzle with fizzles. Now it just fizzles...

It's surprising to me that with a score of 1600ish I can run all games from 2005 and before in full detail and have totally kick ass graphics but because of the shader advances in 2006, I usually have to turn details down to medium just to get a smooth framerate.

Lately I've been playing Titan's Quest and it looks fantastic at medium detail and runs perfectly smooth. It looks the exact same at high detail (as far as I can tell) and I get like 10 frames per second or even less.

My videocard came out just before the "shader revolution" as I like to think of it. My card can push out some extreme graphics...as long as it doesn't involve a lot of pixel shading. New graphics cards are so much more advanced in the shader department that older cards are becoming obsolete so fast it makes me want to cry.

b1s8e3

I don't have 580mb left on my harddrive.
40gig ftl.

__________________
bis.

2point4

DirectX 10 makes me wanna cry.

No single product has ever obsoleted so many video cards in one fell swoop...or at least has attempted to. Let's just hope that the game makers stick around with us little people for a while longer and keep on keepin' on with some DX 9.

I have a 6600, which is a step below what you have, and I gotta admit, it rocks. I didn't expect so much gaming power out of a back then mid-range card. I think my next step is gonna be the 8800 series. I'll probably skip the 7000 series all together. I'm sure NVIDIA will come out with an 8600 model...probably like an 8650 GTS or GTX. But the 8800 will be the power house until the 8900 comes out. But even then, the 8900 will probably only have a feature available through the driver. Like how eventually they released a driver for the 6000 series that had Transparency Anti-Aliasing. That was the feature that was touted for the 7000 series that made it better than the 6000's. When all it turns out to be is a driver-activated feature.

Anyway, the 8800 GTX is gonna be the card to beat for a while. Too bad they'll never get $600 out of me for it. My principles don't let me spend more than $300 for a video card. Even then, I weep a little when the money leaves.

innervision311

I figured out why my comp is putting out such shitty numbers for the hardware that I have (I literally scored in the lowest 2% of people with similar rigs) and it's because my videocard is in a constant state of overheating.

The stock fan that came with my card (XFX 6800GT 256MB AGP) doesn't even come close to doing what it needs to do.

It was idling at around 88 degrees C. So I opened up my case and took an air duster and sprayed the dust off the fan and tried to remove as much dust as possible from the card. Now it's idling at about 93 to 95 degrees C. That makes a lot of sense...

My card automatically lowers performance when the core hits 120 degrees C and just booting up a game causes it go that high.

So I think I'm going to order this fan and see if I can install it without breaking anything. It looks like it should do the job well enough that I'll be able to run games without overheating and maybe even overclock a little.

I just checked my in-game temp and the highest temp that I saw was 138 degrees C, which is 280 degrees F. How in the hell does my card even run at that temp? I wonder if the fan died completely...