Legit Reviews

Hi all I feel that I should be getting better scores in 3dMark 06 & Vantage with my current setup which is in my signature. I'd like your opinions on this guys!
Also, I was getting much higher cpu scores when I first built my new system since then I've swapped my mother board with a ASUS p6x58d-e for a few days then I went back to my gigabyte mobo. My initial cpu scores in 3dmark o6 were 5-7k depending on the o/c but now I consistantly score below 4k on my cpu.

Is there any thing that would cause such a drastic drop? Heat sink not tight enough on cpu, to tight etc? My cpu temp is 50-53 idle and 55-61 on load.
Thanks in advance here are my scores:

FYI: My average Crysis Warhead X-Fire scores are 58-65fps on enthusiast @1080p AAx4 v-sync enabled.

3DMark06:

INITIAL BUILD = 16402(Gigabyte Stock w/6GB @ 1600 || CPU Score = 5)
15239(Asus Stock w/12GB @ 1066 || CPU Score = 3525)
Newest re-Build = 15725 (Gigabyte || CPU = 3831 @3.5 o/c || 18GB ddr3 @ 1600)
Newest re-Build x-fire = 20156 (Gigabyte || CPU = 3887 @3.5 o/c || 18GB ddr3 @ 1600)


3DMark Vantage:

:::ENTRY:::
INITIAL BUILD = E30951(Gigabyte Stock w/ 6GB @ 1600 || CPU Score = 18)
E21948(Asus Stock w/12GB @ 1066 || CPU Score = 9)
Newest re-Build = E24117 (Gigabyte || CPU = 10781 @3.5 o/c || 18GB ddr3 1600)
Newest re-Build x-fire = E29699 (Gigabyte || CPU = 10861 @3.5 o/c || 18GB ddr3 @ 1600)

As you can see there's a huge difference in the Vantage scores, my initial build, for which I only had 1 xfx 5770 scored higher than my xfire setup.

Thoughts and opinions?

Would an issue with my cpu cause this? bad CPU contacts, I've checked my pins and they are all fine....

first im gonna say run vantage in performance preset, as i have a 5770 and run it mix xfire with another 5750 i know what you should get, but i'll wait till you run it and get scores, i can't compare entry level scores because the performance preset is the standard

2. dont worry so much about ram, a 6GB kit is all you need really, and for benching even 4GB is more than enough, so i wouldnt move your RAM around anymore for testing, wasted effort

3. refer to here for best performance tweaks specifically for benchmarks

4. how 3dm06 works is that a higher CPU frequency will get a higher GPU score, and obviously also a CPU score, BUT the GPU score is weighted more for the overall, example: 1055T 3.4GHz gets 5k cpu score, while an X2 3.9GHz only gets 3k, but the x2 will have a higher overall score because the higher CPU frequency boosts the GPU score which is weighted more overall

5. cant say much about vantage because Exxxxx is a foreign language to me

also you can check out my HWBot page (signature) and click on the 3DMark06 or 3DMark Vantage links at the bottom of my page as i've run tests on all of my cards, for comparison (except i need to rerun all my vantage and 06 scores with the 1055T @4.2GHz..)

skier wrote:first im gonna say run vantage in performance preset

Thanks for the response...

Here are the scores for Performance:

Initial build = P10914 || CPU = 18k (Gigabyte Board Cpu @ stock 6GB ddr3 @1600 7-5-7-20-2n) 30fps

Asus build = P9543 || CPU = 9k (Asus Board Cpu @ stock 12GB ddr3 @1600 7-5-7-20-2n) 30fps

Re-build = P9929 || CPU = 10797 (Gigabyte Board Cpu @ 3.5 18GB ddr3 @1600 8-8-8-20-2n) 30fps

Re-build w/Xfire = P15108 || CPU = 11k (Gigabyte Board Cpu @ 3.5 18GB ddr3 @1600 8-8-8-20-2n) 60fps



Thanks

hmm, the initial is right, an i7 should be at 18k (21k at 4GHz), it really shouldnt be lower than 15k and my core2quad 3.1GHz gets 11k for reference, when you are in the CPU physics test (the 2nd test with the prop planes) how many of the 'gates' are there (they are in pairs of two, one on each side of the screen going from fore- to back-ground, how many pairs are there)

skier wrote:hmm, the initial is right, an i7 should be at 18k (21k at 4GHz), it really shouldnt be lower than 15k and my core2quad 3.1GHz gets 11k for reference, when you are in the CPU physics test (the 2nd test with the prop planes) how many of the 'gates' are there (they are in pairs of two, one on each side of the screen going from fore- to back-ground, how many pairs are there)

Sorry for the delay, there are 4 pairs and 4 of those donuts looking things as well.

What does that represent exactly? Number of cores?

BiGg RiE wrote:Sorry for the delay, there are 4 pairs and 4 of those donuts looking things as well.

What does that represent exactly? Number of cores?

yup, since it is showing 8 threads that is normal(and isnt disabling threads or something crazy like that) so it must be going into a power/thermal state of some sort, have you gone into BIOS and made sure C1E and the like are disabled?

skier wrote:yup, since it is showing 8 threads that is normal(and isnt disabling threads or something crazy like that) so it must be going into a power/thermal state of some sort, have you gone into BIOS and made sure C1E and the like are disabled?

No, Not sure what C1E is though, I did have to turn this and that on and off when I was trouble shooting a previous ram config using 2 x 6GB(3x2gb) Kits.

But I haven't messed around with much anything in there, so if you could clarify what that C1e is I'd be able to check it out.

Thanks for your help!

its CPU throttling, i have no idea why it would throttle during a benchmark as it is not 'idle' but thats the only thing i can think of that would make the cpu drop that much while still using all 8 threads

might also be hardware throttling in the health section of the BIOS

skier wrote:its CPU throttling, i have no idea why it would throttle during a benchmark as it is not 'idle' but thats the only thing i can think of that would make the cpu drop that much while still using all 8 threads

might also be hardware throttling in the health section of the BIOS

Ok gotcha, I'll look into it in my bios, is the Hardware Throttling something I can adjust as well?

I'm curious as to whether or not, my cpu not being tight enough or to tight in relation to the heatsink mounting would affect this in anyway. I don't wanna mess with reseating my cpu and remounting the heat sink if it would not be causing this, but if it's a possibility I will. I remember using much more force to mount my heat sink on my initial build, and not so much on the most recent one, since I was weary of damaging the pins or CPU after reading up on some of the memory related issues with i7 and not recognizing all your ram when all 6 slots are populated if the heat sink isn't evenly tight on all four retention push pins..

if the tension pins ont he heatsink are locked in its fine, and if the cpu itself didnt make good enough contact with the board it simply wouldn't boot to begin with

the C1E/hardware throttle is the only thing i can possibly think of, unless your computer goes into away mode or sleep in the middle of the test, in between tests i always move my mouse to make sure it hasnt frozen, or doesnt go into sleep or some stupid hybrid sleep mode

skier wrote:if the tension pins ont he heatsink are locked in its fine, and if the cpu itself didnt make good enough contact with the board it simply wouldn't boot to begin with

the C1E/hardware throttle is the only thing i can possibly think of, unless your computer goes into away mode or sleep in the middle of the test, in between tests i always move my mouse to make sure it hasnt frozen, or doesnt go into sleep or some stupid hybrid sleep mode

Ok, well I will check the bios when I get home. I'll report my finding accordingly. Thanks for your help, it's greatly appreciated.

Ok, so I turned off C1E and no dice, got a CPU score of 10700 in vantage... idk.. could it be my software Vantage and 06 I mean?

What about my overclock to 3.5Ghz would that impact it? I would think that it would help the score not hurt it...

the only other alternative I can think of is that the CPU is shot, but would that equate to poor performance or no performance at all ie no boot. Now that I think of it when I swapped the mother boards to the asus I did notice that one of the contacts on the bottom of the cpu was darker than the others by about a shade or two... would that cause it?

something ain't right..you should be getting about double the CPU score you're posting with that CPU. I run at 3.6ghz on a 920 and im getting well above that..You said you turned off C1E, did you disable SpeedStep too?

BiGg RiE wrote:Ok, so I turned off C1E and no dice, got a CPU score of 10700 in vantage... idk.. could it be my software Vantage and 06 I mean?

What about my overclock to 3.5Ghz would that impact it? I would think that it would help the score not hurt it...

the only other alternative I can think of is that the CPU is shot, but would that equate to poor performance or no performance at all ie no boot. Now that I think of it when I swapped the mother boards to the asus I did notice that one of the contacts on the bottom of the cpu was darker than the others by about a shade or two... would that cause it?

overclocking affects the Vantage CPU incredibly linearly, for example my 1055T at 2.8GHz gets 14550, while it gets 19000 with just a 1GHz overclock (3.8GHz) like i said at 3.5GHz you should be up at 20,000 at least, consistently. you have to be missing a setting somewhere in your BIOS about throttling, highlight every entry in every section and read if any say something about speed step/C1E/intel power saving/smart throttle/energy saving or anything resembling those and disable if you do find some. id also go into the health/monitoring tab and disable everything(energy saver/smart fan/thermal throttle/check temps etc.)

i really dont think it is the cpu itself as it would be crashing, not throttling if it were, this has to be either the BIOS or operating system

skier wrote:
overclocking affects the Vantage CPU incredibly linearly, for example my 1055T at 2.8GHz gets 14550, while it gets 19000 with just a 1GHz overclock (3.8GHz) like i said at 3.5GHz you should be up at 20,000 at least, consistently. you have to be missing a setting somewhere in your BIOS about throttling, highlight every entry in every section and read if any say something about speed step/C1E/intel power saving/smart throttle/energy saving or anything resembling those and disable if you do find some. id also go into the health/monitoring tab and disable everything(energy saver/smart fan/thermal throttle/check temps etc.)

i really dont think it is the cpu itself as it would be crashing, not throttling if it were, this has to be either the BIOS or operating system

Ok I went in and changed everything I could think of last night, or that seemed like it would affect it, I will go back in and see if I might have missed anything. I'll report my findings, thanks guys!

Sense turning off Speed Step and C1E did not work in the bios it may be the operating system,Go into your control panel

and under Power Options change the Power Plan to high performance and change everything in the plan to "Never"...

Just a suggestion,seemed to try everything else....Thats what I have my rig set to also..Windows 7 64 bit...

Scott

@ Texas Scott: I have this set that way already, but thanks for the suggestion

@ Everyone: So I went into the bios, disabled everything I could find that I thought could remotely contribute to this issue, and still no dice.... should i reinstall if it could possible be an os issue? would repairing the install be benificial? I'd hate to reinstall all my progs all over again...

one thing I thought of is, when i first installed I went into msconfig, and under boot-advanced options, I enabled use 4 cores for boot ironically enough I remember doing this on my initial install and but it was after I had ran benches and there were initially 8 there, and when i restarted I couldn't boot so i had to reinstall everything. I read an article that you should select the highest available number when doing this so i selected 8 as it was the highest, once it didn't boot after that I selected 4 even though initially 8 is still there.. but if i go in there now it shows only 4. I'm going to try to disable it and then see if I see 8 again, but I will wait to hear you guy's feedback before testing selecting 8 instead of 4 if it appears.

other than that.. idk what to do, what else could the os do to limit the cpu in this way, I'm feeling like it's a hardware issue, maybe my cpu isn't broken in the sense of funtionality, but in the sense of throttling... idk.

Well if you're only getting 4 cores, I'd say HT(Hyper-Threading) is disabled. I'm not exactly sure how it affects scores, but I know in the image I posted, it was enabled on my rig.

SUCCESS!!

Yep it was me using 4 cores in the boot that was killin the cpu score... don't know why I didn't think of that until now!



Uploaded with ImageShack.us

woo hoo, 21k now that's more like it!

Boot time went from 50 seconds to 66 seconds I'd say a fair trade!

Thansk again to all who helped me... uhhh help myself...

BiGg RiE wrote:

hmm the Phenom II series is verrry slightly better in CPU test 2 (crash n burn physics- at 4.1GHz i get 32.6steps/s)and the core series does way more operations/sec (first test-at 4.1 i get 2550plans/s) at the same clocks, proportionately

good to know...sortof