Why is my 3dmark 2001 score so bad?

[PeteyBoy23]

All,
I did a comparison to other people using the same CPU and video card I have, and my score is much lower. My current score is 13066, and people are getting scores over 15,000 with similar hardware. Also, doing a CPU comparison, the listing for 2.7ghz is 18% higher than my CPU, yet I am at 2.72ghz. I'm confused as to where the problem lies.

Pentium 4 2.26 @ 2.72 (17*160)
512mb Corsair XMS DDR3200 Set to 4:5, 2/2/5/2, and Enhance Performance
Radeon 9700 Pro (not overclocked - Yes I know I'd get a slightly better score if I did)
Abit BG7 motherboard - newest BIOS
Newest Intel application accelerator, ATI Drivers, and Intel chipset drivers.

Some of my Sandra scores:

Memory Bandwidth: 3117
3121
CPU Multi-Media: 10744
13458
CPU Arithmetic: 5259
1425/3328

I've tried both manually setting the sliders towards performance in the ATI display applet, and also leaving it set to "application preference" regarding FSAA, and the like. I would appreciate any feedback you guys could offer. Thank you.

[Showtime]

There are so many tricks/tweaks to increase your score its hard to know exactly where to begin. You can start by turning off all AA in your video card settings. Change settings from quality to speed.
The biggest is probably the drivers your using. Go find the latest and retest.

Remember the beauty of that card is it can get 13k+ and keep all the eye candy on. In other words, I get just under 13k, but yours gets more and it looks better doing it.

-jel:halo:
2.3ghz p4
Corsair 2700c2
ti4600 530/730(something like that)

[PeteyBoy23]

Jello,

Man, I thought you were leet. Here you are not even reading the whole post! Damn you! :D

Seriously, I already said that I did that stuff. When I get back from vacation, I'm going to do a full wipe, and start over. A lot of apps that I use(d) I can offload to another pc. Thanks a ton for replying. Take care man.

[Showtime]

Sorry bout that, haven't checked back in a while.

You can change out your card for another one and test it. Maybe you got a bad card.

What are the temps like in your case? Heat can make a difference at the speeds your running your cpu.

How long did you do the burn in for? Some people run Sandra etc for 24 hours to check for stability.

What kind of programs do you run? They might be sucking up RAM sitting there in the background.

You can set the computer from desktop to server.........

Turn off screen savers etc.

Turn off system maintenance programs.

What OS? You can turn off so much crap in XP, I don't know where to begin.... Turn off all of the remote access stuff... etc

Pages and pages of stuff can be written for any single rig.

Good luck and hopefully you already solved it cuz I couldn't stand to have my stuff performing under par. I mean it doesnt make a huge difference in day to day use, but if you pay for something it should work like its supposed to.

-jel:halo:
P4@ 2.3Ghz
Corsair@ 35x c2
Ti4600@ 320 /740
Gotta check my last score havent ran it lately

[Bires]

Don't put too much stock in 3DMark. The benchmark utility is NOT relevant anymore. When you're looking at apps getting 200 (!!!) FPS, the idea of a stressing benchmark breaks down.

Best bet: DL Unreal Tournament 2003 and bench your card with the settings that you are most likely going to use, and google search for unreal 2003 benchmarks. This will give you a much better view of how your system is performing.