Hey folks,

I'm going to start benching, and trying to enter the benchie comp going on here at PR.

I've OC'ed my hardware to the max already, now need to have the OS and Driver tweaked, but i'm weak on the OS side. I have a new HD that I am going to configure just for the purpose of benching. I wanted to see if I can get any friendly tips or advice, to squeeeze every last point from 3dMark and PCMark.

So what OS would be the best for OC'ing? Win2k Pro? Xp Pro?
How about best drivers for ATI 9800pro? I've heard that different Cat version have differnet performance charecteristics. Or should I just use the latest OmegaDriver?
How about any tweak to drivers or os?

SAD

EDIT: the information i gave assumes you are using windows xp...and since it is the most widely used OS and most of us use it, i recommend you do the same for the sake of consistency...

one of the easiest tweaks is the Omega drivers for your video card ( http://www.omegacorner.com/ )....

disable things like VSYNC and all anisotropic filtering and antialiasing in the control panel, also setting your cards detail settings to PERFORMANCE....

as far as your hard drive, i dont think there is a great deal you can do there, mebbie defrag it before doing the benchmarks...

and the OS in general, use MSCONFIG (go to start, run, type MSCONFIG in the text field and press enter) and go to services and startup, and disable all the items that you absolutely DO NOT NEED....this includes things like skinning utilities and stay-resident-agents like winamp agent and real player and quicktime.....

a few tweaks you can try in the BIOS include the obvious overclocking, lowering your DRAM timings (no less than CAS 2 and experiment with lowering the other dram timings, however, if you are on Nforce2 chipset, use a tRAS of 11), you can also disable all unnesessary onboard devices for the sake of stability (less room for error), things like serial ports, paralell port, and floppy and firewire controllers...

make sure to run the benchmarks at their strict default settings, and run them (especially the graphic based benchmarks) ONLY after a fresh startup, and about 3-5 times in sucession, so that any hiccups from memory management will be ironed out by windows the subsequent times...it also provides some evidence of stability...

i will add more if i can think of anything else...

Fu3lMan,

Those are some fabolous tweaks!! Now I can't wait to reload OS and start benching.

I will give all your tips a shot when I start to bench. Thanks for being so detailed.

So running the benches 3-5 times in a row will improve the scores? Didn't know that.

Please post more tips if you come accross any.

SAD

Quote: Originally Posted by SuAsDu Fu3lMan, Those are some fabolous tweaks!! Now I can't wait to reload OS and start benching. I will give all your tips a shot when I start to bench. Thanks for being so detailed. So running the benches 3-5 times in a row will improve the scores? Didn't know that. Please post more tips if you come accross any. SAD

Personally, I have 2 installs: a benchmarking install, and a standard useage install. In my benchmarking install, I have the bare minumum services running - I can't even print or share files off of that one.

Use www.blackviper.com to see what services you can disable in XP, and disable them all. RECORD WHAT YOU DISABLE though, because if you screw something up, you'll never remember what you just changed.

Make sure to have absolutely everything else turned off and not running. Tweak your services so that you only have like 10 running when you benchmark. It's not a big deal, just don't turn off anything critical, and you can reenable everything else that you need later. Every extra bit of memory can help

You might wanna run through www.tweakxp.com and click on the performance. I don't recall which ones are good, but you're smart and can read through the descriptions and if you think it'll help.

Control panel->System->Advanced->Performance->Settings, then click adjust for best performance. While most of those aren't gonna be influencing you while benching, turning off the custom theme one or whatever will make the memory hungry skins go away and let you have the old win2k and before look.

And I'd reccomend the OmegaDrivers. They just rock and have built in enough stuff so you can test the stability of the vidcard o/c and check for artifacts and stuff. Just, I recommend them.

EDIT: Pimp, you were faster than me and used my link. Darned multitasking.

Wow. I didn't know there was so much on the Software side to do to increase performance.

My Max 3dMark2k1 score is 21k. Lets see if I can break it I did that on a fresh install using Cat drivers (no tweaks and non Omega Drivers), and HW max OC'ed. The score is afew months old.

With tweaks on the software side, how much increase did you guys get on your scores?

SAD

Quote: Originally Posted by SuAsDu Wow. I didn't know there was so much on the Software side to do to increase performance. My Max 3dMark2k1 score is 21k. Lets see if I can break it I did that on a fresh install using Cat drivers (no tweaks and non Omega Drivers), and HW max OC'ed. The score is afew months old. With tweaks on the software side, how much increase did you guys get on your scores? SAD

if thats true, then you will have no problems competing here, thats an awesome score....

Quote: Originally Posted by Fu3lman if thats true, then you will have no problems competing here, thats an awesome score....

Fu3lman;

Thanks for the compliment. I haven't been able to repeat that score lately, since I have all this stuff running on my PC. So that is why i'm going to do it again w/ a new HD and Tweak OS

So Hopefully I can get 22k I told myself I woudl stop when I hit 20k, then I said the same for 21k.. now 22k.. geez.. hope my HW holds up

SAD

When your tweaking via mconfig, make sure to leave your network service on, so once you get your highest 3DMark01 score you can orb it, from personal experience there.

Quote: Originally Posted by Spectrum When your tweaking via mconfig, make sure to leave your network service on, so once you get your highest 3DMark01 score you can orb it, from personal experience there.

Spectrum,

Thanks, mental note taken

SAD