WTF: 1692 only has 1100 points???

Hi there

I bought a Acer Aspire 1692 with X700 / 64Mb RAM and I only get 1100 points in 3D mark 2005 when everything on maximum. In all the reviews there is said that 2500 is the 3D mark 2005 result most are getting :-(

And ideas?

 

Well, those people had a 128MB X700 who got the 2500.

I get about 1211 with my 64MB X700. I suggest going to www.omegadrivers.net and downloading the modded ATi Catalyst 5.7 drivers - they enable hypermemory, have a few other optimizations, etc. Get those, and you should be able to increase you score by 50-100 points.

I havent had a problem with the 64MB in games so far...but then again I only play CS:S on it. I use my desktop whenever I'm home - the 256MB 9800XT in there is much more enjoyable to play on

 

Ohh, I see... So the 64Mb vs 128Mb is 50% slower? Or is that just the result of the synthetic tests and in real like the difference is not so big?

Yours

Jerry

 

The difference is probably more than 50%, but yes, the higher RAM card is much better for gaming.

 

Well, I think the difference if mostly synthetic - I can play games at mid-high settings with the textures on low (due to low vram) just fine!

 

again, it's not how much you have memory on your x700... 128mb model has 128bit memory bus, and 64mb model 64bit memory bus. that's the problem.

 

if you are getting 1200 scores in 3dmark05 then it does sound unreasonable for an x700. i have an x300 with omega drivers that get 1100 without O/C in 3dmark05.

 

I checked with Everest and other tools, I have 64Mb memory and 128 Bit interface.

 

The 64MB X700 does have a 128bit bus.

Personally, I dont use my X700 for gaming. I use my desktop 9800XT 256MB for that. The X700 does an excellent job with multimedia apps, such as video (especially hi-def!), visualizers, and DVD watching (they are clearer than they were on my GF4MX)

 

Jerry2,

If you're getting 1100 with all settings set to max, what numbers are you getting if everything set to defaults? Aren't most tests run with default settings?

-Vb-

 

Yes, I did the tests on default setting in 3D mark, 1024 X 768 screen.

Jerry

 

everest and atitool tells me that i have 64bit SDR...

 

Hm, and I have 128-bit memory bus but lousy result.

 

hmm... weird...

 

And how much do you have in 3Dmark 2005?

 

overclocked i got something around 1400. did some tests and noticed that core clock can be lowered a lot before it starts affect to 3dmark scores... if you increase mem clock only it affects 3dmark scores a lot more. that means that mem bandwith is the biggest problem... i'm getting pissed with this 64bit bus. it really sucks.

 

wow...i was also plannin to get toshiba tecra with geforce 6600 64 mb.... think i'll go for the m40 with geforce 6600 128 mb now

 

Jerry,

What drivers are you using?
You're using 3DMark05? Is it the free on on their site?

The reason why I'm asking is because my HP nx8220's ATI x600 w/128MB is pulling in 1578 (faster if I use tyhe newer Catalyst drivers). I don't overclock, so I'm gonna assume it'll go even faster if I did.

The 3DMark05 is the free one from FutureMark's website and I just ran the default tests.

The display drivers I had on my system when I ran the test was the ATI Catalyst 5.5 drivers directly from the ATI site. I used the ATI Mobility Modder I downloaded from www.DriverHeaven.net/patje to allow the install. Below is the like for my review of my nx8220 where you can see the results and setups I used. All settings in Display Properties (ATI Control Panel/Catalyst Control Center) were all left at default.

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=2397

I tried using the 5.6 drivers at a later time and found that the performance jumped even faster. I believe it was around the 1600+ area.

You may want to try the official ATI drivers without the overclocking and see if it helps you. Since you have an ATI Mobility x700, you may want to try the ATI Catalyst Mobility drivers directly from ATI (designed for notebooks). If not, just download the 5.8 Catalyst drivers and use the modder and see what happens.

-Vb-

 

I'll try that. I am using the default drivers that came with the notebook (5.7 I think). Yes I am using the 3Dmark free version I dl from their site. Everything on default.

 

Ok, I've tested the situation now. First of all I had 3Dmark 1.0.0 instead of 1.2.0. That made a difference! I now have 1596 points in 3D mark. I installed 5.8 drivers, no difference. I overclocked the Radeon to 400Core / 383 Memory and got 1700 and something. I set FSB from 133 to 166 using 2.1 GHz instead of 1.7. Everything worked OK, but I still got only 1873 points.

I realy can not understand why others using 64Mb memory more with same bus width do get 2500 points using a non overclocked machine :-(

 

what do you get in 3dmark03? i did some tests and noticed that lowering resolution doesn't help almost at all in 3dmark05... i think it's 64mb is not enough for 3dmark05... maybe.

 

I am not sure about the 3dmark2005 score but I have an Acer TravelMate 4401LMi, 1.6 ghz Turion system with a x700/128-bit/64mb and score just about 4150 points in 3dmark2003. I've seen benchmarks where the same x700-based systems with just 128 mb ram score in the 6000-6500 range. Actually, x600/128mb is almost level in performance with x700/64mb series Since I have 1gig system ram, I'd be happy to spare as much as 256mb from the system memory and pour it over to the video ram but the crappy Phoenix Bios I have does not support the agp aperature option. If only there was a utility which could tweak the video ram allocation...at least I can hope that there will be a BIOS update which will allow it.

 

The latest ATi drivers (5.7 +) enable HyperMemory on all 64MB and 128MB PCI-e cards. Get the modded ones from omegadrivers or just download the modding tool and install the ones from the ATi site.

 

When I try to install the Omegadrivers it says "INF driver not found". Looks like my make of X700 is not supported When I run the Aticatmw tool for Mobility Driver update from the ATI website, it says "unfortunately, this software cannot be installed on your system blahblahblah"?! I am starting to wonder whether I do, in fact, have a X700 in my laptop as advertised.

 

You can always find out what GPU you have by going into Desktop>properties>advanced.

I'm pretty sure that Acer puts in DDR memory, not GDDR3. That's why the memory is clocked at 330MHz, because it uses DDR.

 

thanx for all the advice, I really appreciate it. In the end I managed to install the modded 5.8 Catalyst Drivers but could not find the hypermemory option anywhere in the control center. Any idea?

 

How do you installthe 5.8 drivers, i downloaded the diagnostic software and it said that my 1691 was not compatible. Also on the Ati site the x700 is not listed in the technology - Hypermemory section although this seems strange as the x600 is

Dave

 

Download the stock 5.8 catalyst drivers. Extract them to the desktop.

Download the modding tool from driverheaven.net

Read the instructions on that page on how to mod the drivers.

Then, the rest is pretty straitforward. Have fun!

 

I modded the Catalyst Drivers with Patje's Dhmodtool2.2 (you can get it at http://www.driverheaven.net/patje/ ) and it worked! As said though, I could not get the Omegadrivers to work. I'm not completely sure but I think hypermemory is a supported feature of the PCI-E bus regardless of the fact whether you have a X600 or X700. After installing the new drivers I ran 3dmark3k and the detailed report listed the following for my 64mb card:

Total Local Video Memory 128 MB
Total Local Texture Memory 128 MB
Total AGP Memory 246 MB

My score increased from 4150 to about 4400. Still a far cry from the 5000-6000 range I hoped I would be hitting with the 128-256mb ram I guess there must still be a big difference between the native on-chip vram and the one added thru the hypermem feature.