P4 and 7900GS Bottleneck

anonemus · Posted: Tue, 31 Mar 2009 22:49:30 Post Subject: P4 and 7900GS Bottleneck

Guys, my 3dMark03 score is around 14,000 on my Pentium 4 641 3.2Ghz processor (65nm, 65w, D0-stepping) and 7900GS card. Looking at the madonion results of others who posted their scores, I see results from 20,000 to even 40,000.

Is my processor the bottleneck?

Hellfire · Rated XXX Joined: 05 Aug 2003 Posts: 3473

Keep in mind that many of those people will have tweaked their system using hours and hours to do it just to get a little more out of it.

Any or all of your components could be a bottleneck. When looking at the scores, check which CPUs they have, FSB speed, RAM, etc. I'm not sure if the scores list whether the drives are in RAID, WD Raptors, etc.

anonemus · Posted: Wed, 01 Apr 2009 20:12:32 Post Subject:

No, the scores list only CPU and GPU.

But you're right, maybe other subsystems are contributing to the bottleneck.

I was able to have a stable OC at 3.6Ghz CPU and 900Mhz for the RAMs while playing COD5 last night.

I guess in the end, I just have to retire my P4 soon. I'm eyeing the Pentium Dual-Core E5200 as replacement Smile

anonemus · Posted: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 00:17:56 Post Subject:

Was able to OC my CPU to 4Ghz last week using stock cooler and voltage; also OCd my card to 600/700 and got a 3dMark03 score well above 17,000 Smile

Still, I'm imaging what OCing even a lowly C2D would do to this score Smile

sbrehm72255 · Posted: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 09:58:21 Post Subject:

OC'ing brings tons of improvement when benchmarking, but in terms of real world gains, it all depends on what program you want to run and the amount of the OC. And OC'ing will shorten the life span of your components.

anonemus · Posted: Mon, 13 Apr 2009 22:38:45 Post Subject:

I've been playing FarCry2 for a week now and OCing both my CPU and GPU at least increased my FPS to 10-15...albeit on low-med settings still.

I constantly monitor the temps and stayed within the voltage of the CPU. I wonder if there's a program that also monitors the voltage of a GPU? Also, this card was in 2006 and I'm wondering how long will this last?

anonemus · Posted: Thu, 16 Apr 2009 21:24:55 Post Subject:

I OC'd my E5200 to 3.5Ghz last night, combined with the OCd 7900GS, I got a score of 20,000+! This is from an OC'd P4 4GHz and vcard that previously scored only 17,000+.

Games played a lot smoother, especially RTS.

Wow.

arsimjay · Posted: Sat, 18 Apr 2009 04:19:07 Post Subject:

17k to 20k i guess the dual core relly helped..
Smile

SAMSAMHA · Rated NC-17 Joined: 28 Feb 2005 Posts: 112

YEP, most of the current game really won't see huge benefit with quad core but a fast dual core sure will ehlp it.

kryptonian_sher · Posted: Sat, 18 Apr 2009 22:09:46 Post Subject:

hmmm... maybe i'll try this on my current rig... i hope i dont fry it.. hehehe