bah...ah well.

Ok, did some mad O/S and BIOS tweaking, managed to stuff my score up to just shy of 4000.

Undid all (most) of that because I was getting visual problems in Guild Wars. Dunno what happened, but the visual problems are still.

So, with an (mainly) unoptimized system, I used Riva Tuner and unlocked two locked pipelines and scored 4143. If I were to aggressively tune BIOS and the O/S again, I'm guessing I could hit 4200-4300.

Unfortuantely, those extra pipes seem to have issues of some sort. I'll get triangles that don't fill in 3d...dunno what that means. So anyway, I'm best off leaving them locked, I think.

I also haven't OC'd anything. Maybe sometime when I get bored I'll just do it all and see what happens.

I'd never have the balls to OC anything without improving the cooling.

Oh btw, it 60 degrees C healthy for my 7800GTX?

I was reading up on 6800 GT overclocking, and apparently 51-55 idle and 85 under load is fairly normal. I'm guessing that can be rougly equated to 7800. You may want to do some searching anyway. Also...window some game and play it...from what I read, load temperatures are might different (and more important), but the card cools off fast after you kill a 3d game. So you have to window it and watch it in real time.

With guild wars idling in a district, I topped out around like 60, so I think I may have some room for some serious OCing.

Ive been told 60 is fine. But this was after about 1 minute after quitting Brothers In Arms: Earned In Blood. Ill try and do what you say.

/me mocks Satis' futile attempts to bridge the gap to my rig


But then, you could prolly just throw in a few hundred bucks to get a better card if you really wanted to, which is more than I can say.


Got FEAR today btw. Goddamn finally.

Well I finally got my upgrades in.

Went from a


P4 2.4 400mhz Bus Non HT -> P4 3.0 800mhz bus, HT, 1 meg cache
Ati 9700 pro -> Geforce 6800

After the install, no overclocking I scored a 3300'ish. For Satis and my defense the 6800 doesnt do well when running the default settings of 3dmark. The 6800 really shines when the max settings are applied. source tomshardware.com

I played around with overclock the processor and the video card. Im quite impressed with the processor overclocking. I can bring it from a 3.0 to a 3.4 then it tops out. Runs stable.

The video card, I can overclock from 300 core cpu -> 385 and 700 memory -> about 880.

I unlocked my extra pipes but it gave me artifacts on my games.

My motherboard has a feature call "Dynamic Overclocking" where it will overclock your gear only when your doing something intensive like gaming. Ive messed with it manually and using the D.O. Ive been playing with the settings and so far Ive been only able to squeeze a 3400 in 3dmark with overclocking.

Although im not to impressed with the 3dmark scores I am very impressed with the upgrade.

My games look awesome, no lag. Quake 4 runs smooth as greased lighting. Over all I'm impressed with the Nvidia card. WAY better control panel, more bright vibrant color. Defiantly sticking with Nvidia form now on.

So for a $169 video card It was well worth it. Now to start saving up for that new motherboard, pcie video card and p4 EE processor. LOL


Btw, for those of you that recently bought very expensive video card upgrades the 512mb memory video cards come out soon. LOL. Pwned.



EDIT
Ok, something must be wrong with Satis and I computer. I re-read Derfs specs and correct me if Im wrong but he has a ATI x300se? According to tomshardware the 6800 should smoke all the x300 series.

http://graphics.tomshardware.com/graphi ... _mark_2005

granted these are PCIE cards but the difference shouldt be that big. And it shows the x300se to only score a 1000

Am I missing something here?

LOL! I have a 7800GTX!!! pwned idd!

I think i have the same processor as you 11b. Is it the 530 model?

O well that explains it. Yea the 530.

I was reading these as your specs.

SPECS
--------

>>>Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor 530 with HT technology (3.00GHz, 800MHz fsb, 1MB cache)

>>> 1024MB Dual Channel DDR2 400MHz [2x512]

>>>160GB (7200rpm) Serial ATA Hard Drive with 8MB DataBurstâ„¢ cache

>>>128MB PCI-Express ATI Radeon X300SEâ„¢ with TVout & DVI

>>>Dell 1704FP 17" UltraSharpTM Flat Panel Monitor with Height Adjustable Stand

>>>16x max. DVD+/-RW with double layer write capability

>>>Sound Blaster® Live! 24-bit ADVANCED HD™ Sound Card

>>>Dell A425 Midnight Grey speakers with subwoofer

>>>Bits 'n' bobs

Price ~ £650

I recently upgraded.

O by the way, you mention the 512MB are coming out soon. Well, there are already some 512MB (noticably the mediocre X800XL, which i tried) and i can tell you, contrary to what i used to think, the VRAM of the card means little compared to architecture, chipset and clock frequencies.

In other words, for games, its best to have a 256 with good clock frequencies than a 512 on mediocre ones.

Oh, another thing. My recent hopes in overclocking my CPU have crashed and burned. You cant overclock Dell computers because of the BIOS. Guess ill have to buy a newer mobo in the next months.

This is from a Q4 tweak guide



The reason I mentioned the 512's is because when good 512 hit the market mainstream all the other card prices drop.

Oh in that sense then i understand.

AMD Athlon @ 1.5GHz, 384 kB cache
ASUS RADEON A9550, 128MB 32bit
3 x 256MB DDR RAM
FSB 2 x 166 MHz
SB Live! value 24 bit (kX drivers)

=

2133

Well... HL1 is working

Good effort gfree. How bout an update ox?

I am obvoisly out of competition, derf. I wrote it just because of the statistics of CK.

Peltz: 8605
Derf: 6552
Ox: 4974
Satis: 3792
11B: 2292
GFreeman: 2133

Arathorn: N/A

Dammit Peltz, if it wasnt for the fact Dell wont let me overclock my CPU and i cant afford a new mobo+CPU i'd be smokin your SLI ass!