AquaMark3 - Post your TRISCORE ! (PC specs also, please)

Zakhary said:

Thanks, all good info. However, I'm gonna a do a very carefull & modest OC.
I don't think I'm going to even up any of the voltages.

Click to expand...

Thinking of OC'ing the Athlon 64 3000+? To what end; Gaming, encoding, etc.?

Post your exact system specs and I'll help you research viability if you want.

Good luck, in any event

Yeah, I've got an Athlon 64 3000+ winchester - which is very responsive to OC.
I've also got a MSI K8N Neo4 Ultra mobo - which is an excellent OC board.

My ram is buffalo DDR400 - that is 200mhz.

So.. The 3000+ winchester is running at 1.8ghz default with a 9x multiplier.
That is the base HT clock (200mhz) times 9 is 1800. The HTT Bus is at 5 * 200 = 1000mhz at default.

Now, I want to up the base HT clock to 240mhz (in small increments obviously), which would mean
a cpu running at 2160. Also, I'll drop the HTT Bus multiplier from 5 to 4x that would
make the HTT bus run at 960mhz.. as I understand the HTT bus must be kept below 1000mhz at all costs. I'll also drop my mem divider from 200 (1:1) to 166 which would make the DDR clock run just below 200.. something like 199 with a base bus clock of 240mhz (which is the target).

I'll also lock the PCIE to 100mhz obviously. And cool n quiet function will be disabled from the bios.

From what I've read an 3000+ winchester running at 2160mhz is a piece of cake, should be doable with a stock voltage and a stock cooler with no trouble at all.

The only question mark for me is the DDR timings... I'll up them a bit (that is slow them down)... I think.. Ill need to experiment.

Also, the SATA ports. Are they affected by the changed bus baseclock somehow, and if so, how?

I have run into some trouble. I can't seem to get the base clock above 216.
If I set it to anything above that the system won't post and I'm forced to reset the CMOS.

I think I got everything covered ( as in I'm not doing anything horribly wrong).
I am suspecting two things:
One thing that might be the cause of this is my chieftec PSU, It's only 400w.. I have always thought of it as being high quality but I guess it was pretty cheap..

The other possibility is that I'm being too conservative in upping the voltages.
I guess I'm gonna have to bite the bullet and up the voltages somewhat and see if that is the problem. However.. there are the Cpu voltage, Ram voltage and the Chipset voltage.. Wonder which one of these is not getting enough juice... Ah well.

EDIT: Yep! The CPU just needed a bit more juice. Vcore is now at 1.54v which should still be quite safe. I'm running some torture/stability tests for 225 x 9 = 2025 as we speak.

Zakhary said:

The only question mark for me is the DDR timings... I'll up them a bit (that is slow them down)... I think.. Ill need to experiment.

Also, the SATA ports. Are they affected by the changed bus baseclock somehow, and if so, how?

Click to expand...

Yeah, the timings and Vdimm will always be a 'need to experiment' item in my experience. You said no messing around with V though so you'll likely end up slowing it down.

As for the SATA ports, make sure you can lock them or find out which ones are so you don't have trouble.

Looks like there are quite a few success stories out there with your hardware and a lot of those are on air. Good luck and post back to let us know if it went well and if it was worth it

Edit: Ah, just saw your other post. Yeppers, Almost always have to nudge Vcore and Vdimm in my experience.

Im at 260 * 9 = 2340mhz now. Think I'm gonna stop here and start doing some
heavier stability tests. I've gained 540Mhz.

Core2 Duo 6600 @ 2.4Ghz
8800 GTX 768MB
2GB ram

My score was:

Gfx: 27.456
Cpu: 14.409
Overall: 140.611

Ok, I think I'm done. At least for tonight. It's eleven PM here.
I ended up with an base clock of 250mhz.
I gained 450mhz. My RAM is running just a bit above 200mhz.
And I'm very satisfied with the results. It's running with low voltage,
low temperature and it's as stable as ever. The HT Link was left at 750 mhz but I have read that this does not affect performance, I verified that to be true with aquamark3.

So, lets see the results:
- My previous score 67k. As can be seen, I gained almost 10k with a very simple OC operation.

E6600 Duo Core
nVidia 8800 GTX
2GB RAM
no overclocking

GFX 26,865
CPU 14,131
Overall 137,762

I'm gonna try overclocking my videocard

I finally decided to try out one of those Nvidia 8800GTs that have gotten the spotlight over the last few months. So here's a bit of comparative numbers.

2.4 GHz Core2 Duo
2GB RAM
Nvidia 7900GS 256MB

Aquamark reports:

GFX 19,218
CPU 14,012
Overall 114,008

After major brain surgery to rerun all of the power cables in the box, since the 8800 is an inch or two longer than the 7900 -- the cabling in this box is way too tight, Aquamark reports:

2.4 GHz Core2 Duo
2GB RAM
Nvidia 8800GT 512MB

GFX 26,835
CPU 14,146
Overall 137,703

...hmm, almost exact match for Eliaures's GTX...

By that score, you'd think the 8800GT is only 25% faster than the 7900GS. I did a couple quick tests with DX2 and Oblivion (yes, I reinstalled just for this), and I'm seeing at least 50% higher FPS in DX2, and I can smoothly run Oblivion at the default "High" setting without any tweaks.

More meaningfully, I ran some tests with my own home-brew game engine. There I see FPS almost double across the board. Nothing like exploring a dungeon at 1,500 FPS... at least until the physics breaks (note to self: "Fix the time step").

For some extra comparison, I put the 7900 back my previous dev system:

3.6 GHz P4
2GB RAM
Nvidia 7900GS

GFX 12,165
CPU 10,092
Overall 75,892

I didn't expect the GPU performance to drop that much. For all of the CPU intensive tests I've done between the two systems (mostly with ray tracing), the Core2 comes out only 10% faster than the P4.

I had also planned to run Aquamark on the first-gen 6800GT spaceheater that I was using in the older system. But I forgot, and was too cranky after screwing around with cases by that point to swap things back again. The older system is a 3-year-old high-end Dell gaming system XPS something or other. It also has the flimsiest construction I've ever seen, and plastic pieces literally fall off when touching it. Working in that case is like trying to play Jenga while a herd of kittens attack the pieces -- you need ten hands to hold everything in place. And then something you weren't even looking at falls off, and you have no clue where it came from. That case made me swear to never buy Dell again.

PS: Nvidia, I hate your product naming/numbering scheme.

For giggles...

Intel G33 Integrated chipset
2.66 GHz Core2 Duo
2 GB RAM

GFX: 1,473
CPU: 18,188
Overall: 14,148

Maybe there's some truth to Tim Sweeney's complaints about embedded graphics functionality being a bit lacking.

AMD 3800+ (939)
8800 gts (640mb)

GFX: 13.623
CPU: 9,375
OVERALL: 78,913

I'll probably build myself a new system in a few months. This one I put together on the cheap with old memory and stuff.

Bad news: I can't use the aquamark on my new pc -> VISTA 64 bit edition just won't play it. I think my system would get a score above 100,000 -> cpu is a 8400 dual core and the GFX a 8800GTS (512MB -> G92 core)

Heh heh.....

Graphics - 29,070
CPU - 15,253
Overall - 148,839


Core 2 Duo E6700
2GB PC 6400
MSI GeForce 8800GTS 512 OC (NX8800GTS)



*Edit* Here are the stats.

Name: Benchmark 2008-03-14 07-13-09

Processor:
Vendor: GenuineIntel
Name: Unknown processor
SpeedMHz: 2666
Type: 0
Family: 6
Model: 15
Stepping: 6
Flags: 0xBFEBFBFF
Number: 2
HyperThreading: n/a
MemoryOS: 2145890304

Graphics:
Description: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS 512
Vendor: 4318
Device: 1536
SubSys: 2148537442
Revision: 162
CoreClock: 0
MemoryClock: 0
Driver: nv4_disp.dll
DriverVersion: 6.14.11.6921
VideoMemory: 531628032
TextureMemory: 778043392

OperatingSystem:
Version: Microsoft Windows XP
Type:
Build: Service Pack 2 2600

Run0:
DisplayWidth: 1024
DisplayHeight: 768
DisplayDepth: 32
AntialiasingMode: 0
AntialiasingQuality: 0
AnisotropicFiltering: 4
DetailLevel: 4
AvgFPS: 148.839478
MinFPS: 110.000000
MaxFPS: 222.000000
AvgFPSRender: 290.702759
AvgFPSSimulation: 305.041779
AvgTrianglesPerSecond: 44805468
MinTrianglesPerSecond: 6008772
MaxTrianglesPerSecond: 181057779
AquamarkScoreRender: 29070
AquamarkScoreSimulation: 15253
AquamarkScore: 148839

I'm actually quite disappointed in mine.

Just factory settings, fresh install of latest drivers on my new 9600 GT 512 card got me roughly 81K for a final score.

My specs are pentium 4 3.4 ghz 2GB ram dual channeled - the aforementioned 9600 GT 512 topping it off. I have an 800 mhz FSB on this Dell 8400, is that possibly my slowdown? Am I expecting too much from this setup? I'm wondering if putting a 9600 on this old machine is like putting hubcaps on a tractor at this point, I may have reached this system's ceiling and a new videocard is not going to matter much.

Been a long time since Ive fired this thing up and tweaked it, I have to sit down and go thru it all again and reset up everything. It just seems outta the box would be higher than that.

Bored to play any games, so may as else benchmarking my rig:

Under Vista 32bit,
Core 2 Duo E6750
3GB DDR2 RAM
GF 8800GTS 512MB non-overclocked
================
GFX 27,936
CPU 13.875
Overall 139,131
================

Hmm, your CPU score should be a little higher than that Remus.

Ya i noticed that; i build the new rig last christmas. The processor is in sealed box when i bought it; maybe i accidently underclocked it in BIOS?. CPU-Z, Windows and Sandra properly detected it as E6750. The details in CPU-Z:

Name: Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 (2.66GHz)
Code Name: Conroe
Package: Socket 775 LGA
Technology: 65nm
Core Voltage: 1.152V
Model:F
Stepping:B
Revision:G0
Core Speed. 2000.1 MHz
Multiplier: x 6.0
Bus Speed: 333.4 MHz
Rated FSB: 1333.4 MHz

Is the multiplier and Core Voltage settings correct? I'm using default setting in Gigabyte P35-DS3, never overclocking and tinkering much with it.

Not sure about the multiplier and Core Voltage settings, you would have to check that CPU's specifications. Shouldn't Core Speed read 2660 MHz if it's a 2.66GHz CPU?

I think the problem was due to the bus speed & multiplier 333x6=2000MHz. Anyway after refered to online overclocking guide, pushed the CPU speed from 2.6MHz to 3.04MHz (380x8). But that hardly useful nowadays as most games are more GPU intensive (The CPU Aquamark test did reached 14,500 mark though).

I also installed the Vista SP1, and my GFX score drop to 17,500 mark. It seems the Vista service pack did funny thing to Aquamark.