6970m glitchy under 3d mark 06

Hi guys

Strange question, but in the opening scene of running 3d mark 06 'Return to Proxycon' what frame rate do you get? On my 6970m (2820Qm sandybridge) the frame rate flits between 124 - 128 fps in the first few seconds.

Often I don't want to run the whole 3d mark benchmark so just run the first couple scenes to see if the card is working to expectation. Generally when I do leave it to run & finish I get a score of 19600 - 19700 which is about normal. However those fps in the first scene do baffle me. Like I say mostly flits between 124 - 128 fps but on occasions it will suddenly spike down to say 115 or 120 for the briefest of moments. Most of time it's fine and it only really does that spiking in the opening scene. I am on 11.6 but it did do the same under stock. In fact the spikes only really started the occasional hiccup after updating to iTunes 10.4 - now I can't believe something separate like iTunes would/could have any effect so I guess it's just a co-incidence. Although cover flow on iTunes now runs pretty sluggish compared to iTunes 10.3. Can't see anything in processes hogging CPU resources.

Also GPUZ reports my idle temp is about 57C, under load using 3d mark 06 it gets as high as abput 81C - is this ok? Googling around there are so many conflicting reports as to what is an ideal temp.

Thanks,
Wayne

 

as far as I know, benchmarking programs put your comp under high stress, much as running a demanding game as crysis and such.

So the temp is normal, don't worry. You'll have to worry if it breaks the 90C, and really worried if it hits 95C

 

That's normal. 3dmark06 is more cpu bound. Fluctuations like that are normal and part of the stress load testing of the benchmark programs.