So i finally got my athlon 64 up and running and was all excited to see the performance increase over my old barton 2500. I was saddened when my first run of 3dmark2001se was a little over 14000. Thats with a sapphire radeon 9800 pro. This can't be right. I was getting 17222 with my old system. Granted i had my barton overclocked to 2800 speeds but still i would have thought that i should get at least 19000 with my new system before i overclocked it. I guess i'm a bit suspicious of the video card too because its different as well. I sold my old system to a friend which had my retail ati radeon 9800 pro and so i replaced it by getting an oem sapphire radeon 9800 pro assuming that they would be pretty much identical. I guess i'll try putting my old card in and seeing if that makes a difference. You don't think my 300w power supply is limiting my system do you? That would only affect stability wouldn't it?


EDIT: I turned on fastwrites which helped but i'm still only getting 16500 in 3dmark2001se. Reviews i've read that have almost my exact same system have gotten slightly over 20k with stock speeds. Could i have a bad cpu, motherboard, or video card?

Please fill the System Specs part of your profile, it will help us help you & you won't have to paste your specs every time you start such a thread.

I see you're using Cat 3.7. Is that the same version you were using on your old system?

BTW, there's a new set of Cat's out yesterday....though I haven't used 'em yet. I'm about a day away from my system....dang near clone of yours.

yeah i was using 3.7 before too

First of all, if this is the system you are talking about here -> My first DOA system. Need help, it would be nice to inform those who tried to help that you got the system up & running.

Now is your system overclocked ? I think you barely have enough juice for the system to run at stock speeds so I wouldn't advise you to OC at all.

Do you have Cool'N'Quiet enabled ? Have you installed Via 4in1 drivers ( make sure you have a version that supports the K8T800 ).

Is Vsync turned off as well as AA & AF ?

Vsync, AA, and AF are all off.

Haven't touched Cool n' Quiet yet. I don't know much about it but from what i've read it doesn't look like it would have any effect on performance but i could be wrong.

Now the VIA drivers are ones i just grabbed using the Live Update utility. I didn't check for compatability because i assumed it read my system automaticallly but i'll check that.

Cool'N'Quiet can certainly have an effect on performance. It actually makes the system work as if it were a laptop where you have power saving modes.

In its most power efficient mode, the Athlon64's speed can be lowered all the way to 800mhz. I also know that with early version of the .inf file that installed the Cool'N'Quiet features, it would happen from time to time that the CPU wouldn't be restored to its original speed, requiring a reboot to get the nominal speed again.

I have a saphhire card (9800 Pro 128MB) and I get about 16000 on 3dMark01.

http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=7499349

I don't know if that means anything...pop in your old card.

OEM just means you get the card, no software or anything like that, just the basic card. it shouldnt have any speed differences from a retail card.i would go with didou on this one. and upgrading your powersupply might help things. try a 400w or 450w. something along there.

Turns out it was just a driver issue. Which driver i'm not sure but it seems like my audigy driver makes 3dmark run slower unless i reinstall dx9 and then reinstall my video driver. Might also have been the chipset driver but as long as i do it in this order i think i'm ok: sound driver > VIA chipset driver > dx9 > catalyst driver

Well kudos to you for getting that system up & running on such a small PSU. I hope for you it doesn't mean stability problems in the long run.

Now that your system is running as it should, enjoy.