Ram Holding Me Back?

[guzzidom]

Athlon64 2800 @2.15 ghz

Radeon 9600xt 256mb

512mb pc2100 ram

 

3Dmark 2001 = 11433

3dmark 2003 = 3099 (!)

 

Do you think it is the crummy ram holding back the scores or are these typical for this system spec. Does ram speed come into the 3D mark test or is it purely a test of CPU and graphics card?. please help, it actually staggers a bit in HL2 with 2 x AA!.

[k1e1v1i1n]

have u checked against other 9600xt's with procs ur speed . i think that would b the best way to tell . but that dose seem like some old ram

[guzzidom]

I seem to be about a thousand low in 2001 and 700 low in 2003 against similar systems running stock speeds!, sucks a bit

[k1e1v1i1n]

I seem to be about a thousand low in 2001 and 700 low in 2003 against similar systems running stock speeds!, sucks a bit

386369[/snapback]

 

thats not that big of a diff that diff could b caused by many things the other guy could just have a better o/c or a cooler system . anyways ur ram is old if i was u i would look into some new stuff .

[guzzidom]

I was given both these ole sticks of pc2100 (I had to bend one straight!) lol, Mind you they are happily running at 151mhz (up from stock 133), spose I'd better get my cash out then as I have been taking my comparisons from benchmarks taken on STOCK machines, quite often with slower cpu's, I would really have expected about 14300 on '01 and 4500 on '03 at the very least considering my O/C (hence my disappointment)

[kewlboxer2]

i also have a 9600xt 256mb...it blows. no overclockability. now if i were to have a 9600xt 128mb version. their clock speeds are like 5x faster, and overclockclock nicely. i wish i could return it for a 12mb version.

[k1e1v1i1n]

bending it straight nice ! i dont know what ur fsb is on that chip but i have a 3200 and my rams runningn at twice urs so it might b time to upgrage from the bendy ram

[guzzidom]

Yep new ram time methinks, and yeah the 256 on the radeon is a bit of a waste of time as apparently the (only) 4 pixel pipelines wouldn't allow the card to use it all because the bandwidth is too narrow (I got mine because Valves ideal spec for HL2 mentions a 256mb card), though I think the overclockability is more down to the chips on the card than the qty of ram, ie Powercolor do a 256mb XT with Samsung Tinybga chips which overclocks like hell, mine, sadly has generic crap that falls over at about 5%, sounds like yours does too. Some 128 cards seem to have the same prob.

[r_target]

It looks like the RAM holding you back. When I had a 9600XT, scores were~14,500 for '01 and ~4300 for '03. It was also a poor overclocker.

[guzzidom]

Yeee haa, screwed it now!, clocked the ram up to 166mhz and froze the system (had to take one of the sticks out to get it to post again, oddly not the bent one) set it back to where it was before and my 3D01 has now dropped to a measly 9000 (I used to get better with my GF3 ti200!), mind you still shows 512mb with both sticks in WHATS GOING ON? have I cooked one stick a bit?