Worst bang for the buck......

[Mau]

Hello everyone. I finally got a 9800 PRO last week and my score jumped from 2431 (Gforce4ti4600) to a scorching 4212. This is with no other changes to my system. Well, this got me all excited so I decided to replace my aging 2100 XP and sprung for a $140.00 2700 XP. I anxiously ran 03 mark again to find my score had only jumped a lousy 192 points to 4404. All this talk about 333 FSB and synchronus mumbo-jumbo and and additional 440 Mhz and this is all I get????????
Then again my 01 mark score jumped from 12898 to 15015. Why is 03 mark so hard to please???

[dod]

03 is designed to test the graphics specifically. Cpu only has a smallish impact.

01 was more of a system test

theres a pdf in this link which is worth a read

3dm2003 specifications

[marcofra2000]

Some people were trying to revive 3DMARK01 down is futuremark forums using the default settings like: same resolution but with 8X FSAA and 8 AF while the rest is maxed out so no tweaking involved.

[robbie]

Mine was probably the Iceberg water cooling kit that I got. I kinda figured it would be somewhat of a let down. I was running an Athlon 1.4 (ONE OF THE HOTTEST CHIPS I've EVER HAD!!!) But I knew it would help me move into water cooling and get rid of the really loud fan that I had.
Rob

[cloasters]

Welcome to AOA's Forums, Mau!

It's a bit difficult to change gears from 3DMark01 to 3DMark03. 4404 is a very good score in '03. It's mooted that 3DMark03 only makes high end ATi Vidcards look good. For example, I don't think my XP 1800+ and Ti200 rig would even reach 1000 in '03.

[dj_billz]

i know how it feels to be dissapointed. I was getting about 12400 in 3dmark01 with my 512mb of OCZ Ram. I went out and bought another 512 expecting this to have a huge impact on my score but alas, it gained me a meer 300 points/ so there you go

[Staz]

You guys may not want to hear this but useing a synthetic bench mark is a silly way to test "Bang for the buck". Your score may not go up that much on 3Dmark. I wouldn't expect it to. What I would expect from that added cpu horsepower is for you to be able to turn up setting like how long wall marks stay and how long corpse stay, also you will get less lag when there are a large number of NPC or other players on the scene. Things like that.

[piccoLEW]

Originally Posted by cloasters

I don't think my XP 1800+ and Ti200 rig would even reach 1000 in '03.

my tualatin 1.4ghz (@1.56) and my ti200 reached over the 1000 mark 1019 i think, but it had some artefacts so i turned the memory speed down a bit and i had v. few artefacts if any during the test and ended up with 1013 i think it is.

[Aedan]

Originally Posted by Mau

Why is 03 mark so hard to please???

One of the design goals for 3Dmark 03 was to try to eliminate the effect of the CPU on the graphics card. As such, it'll try it's hardest to ensure that only graphics card performance is benchmarked, rather than CPU and graphics card.

[Pitch]

Use PCmark04 to test your full system, then you can decide if the added CPU power is worth it.