3DMarkScore Went Down...

I ran it a few days ago and got the the 3DMarks6 score that is present in my signature but I just ran it right now and it went down almost 200, it is at 3,494...

All I've done since then is unistall Norton and Student Office trials, if anything it should be a bit faster...

 

Make sure your video card didnt downclock itself by ...say 40mhz.

Monitor your clocks and temperatures. Ambient temperature can also play a small but significant role (can make laptop overheat which results in GPU downclocking).

Report back after youve done those.

 

You'll need to clean the registry, uninstalling stuff leaves a lot of junk behind.

 

After I uninstalled everything I ran CCleaner and cleaned registry.

I'm still a complete idiot when it comes to this laptop gaming, etc.

How do I find out if it dropped to 40MHz?

 

Will this help overclock my system properly? http://game.amd.com/us-en/drivers_overdrive.aspx I don't know if it will work or help at all...

 

Don't overclock your laptop... They already have heating problems, and you'll just make it worse

Get a program called "gpuz" to monitor your GPU clock.

 

Ok I downloaded gpuz but what do I look for and what do you need to know?

 

Here is what GPUz shows me.

Under POWER OPTIONS it is on balanced will it improve performance if I switch it to HIGH PERFORMANCE, my performance goes up but battery goes down.

Also under Virtual Memory it says total paging for all drivers 1,024MB is that right?

 

GPUZ's must have some sort of incompatibility with your drivers, it's reading clocks that are way off of the default. Try using a program such as RivaTuner and see what it reports. Also, you can edit your previous posts, you shouldn't double post.

 

This is silly.

Truth be told, if you are a laptop neophyte you should do more reading and more learning before overclocking as it requires knowledge, some TLC, and temperature monitoring.

Laptops are indeed more susceptible to heat issues, but a good user who monitors their heat is probably going to do less damage to their laptop with overclocking than an average user does with not knowing when their fans quit working well.


And yes... you want it in PERFORMANCE mode for both benchmarks and gaming when plugged into AC power.

Balanced and Power saver are for when you are on battery.

 

I changed my Mobile PC Battery stuff to High Performance and ran 3DMark again and it still winds up being lower than when I first ran it but it went up to 3,620.

 

I really need help updating my drivers, I went to ATI's website and I checked Vista 64 > Mobility > but my 2600 didn't show up so then I did Vista 64 > Radeon > and it said 2600 PCle? It says the most recent update is Catalyst 8.7 but how do I install it and how do I check if I already have it installed?

 

Good ole 3DMark06. I've seen it described as a synthetic benchmark. I understand what that means by using the definitions of the 2 words but exactly what it means I don't know. Here's my 3DMark06 story, take it as you will.
I've lost almost a whole month of gaming on my laptop because I was so upset about this 3DMark06 score. I've reinstalled the OS over and over again, installed drivers from OEM's (Intel, Realtek, etc) for my machine and also from the manufacturer itself (Gateway obviously). Different order(s), SP1 here, windows updates there, every flavor of Nvidia drivers from LV2G, xfastest, blahblahblah, I've just been a wreck trying to get my 3DMark06 score as high as possible.
What it boiled down to, and what may have said before, the real brass tacks are how do your preferred games play? If they are fine and your happy with them it really doesn't matter what your score is. After AT LEAST 100 hours over the last month my final install of Vista looked like this (all at 1280x854):

1. Vista Gateway HP install, Gateway drivers, SP1, ran VSP1CLN, DirectX install, 3DMark06 install, configured high performance, eliminated system restore and remote access.
3DMark06 - 6959
SM2.0 - 3249
HDR - 3387
CPU - 1455
2. installed Office 2007, Office 2K7 SP1, MS Updates (minus the Nvidia update driver - kept Gateways driver)
3DMark06 - 6961
SM2.0 - 3262
HDR - 3374
CPU - 1456
3. installed WinRAR, CCleaner, Vista Codecs, Adobe, Vista Advanced Optimizer, Everest, fraps, CDisplay, PerfectDisk08 (cleaned and defragged drive)
3DMark06 - 6948
SM2.0 - 3246
HDR - 3386
CPU 1449

This was about 10 days ago with these results. I haven't ran 3DMark06 since because I'm busy playing Half-Life 2 (never played before and boy this game ROCKS!!). Anyway, my frames in HL2 are never below 35-ish and at times top out at 60 (I have everything maxed with V-sync on).

In a nutshell this is my 3DMark06 saga and why I have given up on being so obsessed with that number.

 

You have to realize that 3dMark scores aren't going to be the exact same everytime you run it, there can be a margin of error.

 

That's a little contradictory dont you think?
Basically it means that its a fake way to benchmark your system; just because because you 3dmark06 score beats mine, that doesnt mean youll get better framerates than someone else, or that it will do as well as other games with similar scores, though at the same time, generally the higher the score, the higher the performance of the machine. One of the main reasons is because the score is 'boosted' by the CPU which in many games, doesnt do TOO much, while the GPU takes on the workload; so in 3dmark, youre getting more points than youre supposed because of your processors score.

 

Ditto. I ran the 3DMark06 score about 3 times in the span of an hour. My score ranged from a difference of 0-400, if i remember correctly.

 

When I run 3DMark06 the GPU parts I run ok except the first test but when the 2 CPU tests come on I don't even get 1 frame rate... That hurts my overall score a ton...

 

^^Thats normal ( 0-1 ) fps

 

even a [email protected] won't get over 3fps. +/- 200 points in 3dmark06 are perfectly normal. That's happens to me all the time.

 

Yeah, 200 3DMarks is about standard deviation in my experience. I recommend running this code in the run prompt:

Code:

rundll32.exe advapi32.dll,ProcessIdleTasks

That will close down idle threads. Run the benchmark after putting that command into the run prompt and waiting about 5 minutes.

 

I always run 3dmark around 3 times...

like my score right now...
first i had 5050, 2nd run i had 5101, 3rd run 5095, 4th run 5100