Simple question, well for you guys anyway.

[Sycho]

I am currently on p4 2.66ghz, 1024-2100spd ram, geforce 6800GT and got some crap old motherboard.I am wondering would this limit the card's performance a lot? because it doesn't seem to be improving at all hardly fps wise when running 3d mark 2001 compared to my old fx5900.I will have a new pc built later on in the week including an athlon 3500 winchester, MSI K8N Neo 2 platinum board, crucial 1gb 4000 ballistix ram and the geforce 6800GT.

Now i am wondering, is this current set up limiting the ram usage of the card aswell as the speeds? i noticed in 3d mark 2001 it said the ram being used was 62mb and it also said it was 4xagp when the card is supposed to be run at 8xagp.

So will the new set up make this card fly basically? i think the motherboard and ram is making the card not run much better than my previous.Any ideas what it is?

 

[Xavier]

3DMark2001 is ancient, made at a time when cards had 32mb video memory as standard and 64Mb on the high end, so most of the game demos are designed to use a maximum of 64mb framebuffer. If they didn't then it would mean the benchmark instead focused its tests on I/O and your systems memory controller... So I wouldn't be shocked by the revelation it's not using the quarter of a gigabyte offered by your graphics card which is almost four years newer.

Yes, your system IS holding the hardware back, especially that RAM, it sounds like your motherboard is i845 based, or at least of that class - which implies that it doesn't even offer AGP 8x, which explains the interface details (both board and card have to support AGP8x for it to use that mode, otherwise they will default down to the next fastest, compatible bus rate).

If I were you though, I'd consider using a REAL benchmark, such as the games you play paired with a copy of FRAPS, the 3DMark series consist wholly of artificial scenarios which in many cases aren't even balanced appropriately to represent how games will really run on your PC, and gaming is *hopefully* the reason you're upgrading...

 

[Sycho]

Yep it's a gaming machine i want it to be and the upgrade options i took will hopefully provide that to it's best potential on games like half life 2, far cry and doom 3.Just when i see people getting 23000-30000 3d marks on their pcs on 2001 version using a 6800GT with a 3ghz+ system makes me wonder when mine is 15000 or so, seems like the motherboard/ram and cpu really boosts the card performance overall.I can only get 4xagp max so that probably gives an indication of how old the board is too.Ah well guess it be worrying if the card doesn't perform good on the new pc, just have to see by end of the week.(really hope it improves a lot)

 

[Moriath]

They spend days tweaking their systems just to get the last ounce of performance out of them .. o/c the gfx card and the cpu and most probably using watercool or vapo chill etc .. they are not standard results

 

[throdgrain]

Changing a video card hardly ever increases fps, unless you have a really old card.
Changing the cpu almost always increases the fps.
I know, ive done the same thing loads of times.

 

[`mongoose]

Yep it's a gaming machine i want it to be and the upgrade options i took will hopefully provide that to it's best potential on games like half life 2, far cry and doom 3.Just when i see people getting 23000-30000 3d marks on their pcs on 2001 version using a 6800GT with a 3ghz+ system makes me wonder when mine is 15000 or so, seems like the motherboard/ram and cpu really boosts the card performance overall.I can only get 4xagp max so that probably gives an indication of how old the board is too.Ah well guess it be worrying if the card doesn't perform good on the new pc, just have to see by end of the week.(really hope it improves a lot)

Only difference between your new sys and my new sys is the mobo. I think you will love running hl2 on it

Cs:s is a dream with that spec system

M