Computer at half the performance :(

[Beckinsale]

My system specs are:

Athlon XP 2100+
Sapphire Radeon 9000 Pro 64MB
512MB DDR333

When I benched it last year I got 7k+ and 1.2k on 3dmark01 and 03 respectively... but now I get 2.5k and 612 for them. I think I might have turned down a lot of settings because when the vid card fan was dying, I tried to debug by turning most settings to minimum.

But now that the computer is stable again, I'd like to turn everything back up. I thought I did, but the performance is equally horrible. I'm not sure what I've missed. Do you guys/gals have any idea?

I'm using Catalyst 3.7, AGP4x with fast write, memory/core clock 275/275, BIOS set to turbo. What am I missing?

 

[nick1985]

are you sure the fan on the card is spinning and its not overheating? have you re-formatted?

 

[arcenite]

Have you turned up your quality settings to the max?

Bill

 

[Beckinsale]

nick: I have an 80mm fan blowing on the Radeon 9000 heatsink, funneled, so I'm sure it's not overheating. Besides, do graphics card chips throttle down when overheating already? I thought only CPUs...

Bill: I'm not sure what quality settings you are referring to. But I have turned off AA and have everything to bias towards performance under the D3D settings.

 

[buleyb]

haha, by the title I expected an Emachines thread...

anyway, what OS you running Beckinsale? DirectX version?

I ask because there have been unconfirmed performance issues for awhile now when certain combinations of XP/Cat3.7+/DirectX9. I solved mine with a clean install, and again, completely unconfirmed...just a thought

 

[Beckinsale]

Windows XP SP1 Dx9.0b.

I did clean install five times when I got the replacement back... maybe I should try that again :S

 

[Fern]

Any programs running in the background hogging resources?

Have you changed any components since last year?

Looks like your cpu w/b running at FSB of 133, and your ram at 166? Are they running async ? Were they last year?

 

[Beckinsale]

I installed Catalyst 3.10 and solved all the problems. Woohoo!

Thanks guys/gals.