3DMARK03 Scores

I just inherited my dad's old computer. I swapped it's graphics card with another computer's that I had to make it more powerful. So, I have 2 computers I'm comparing. One is a Compaq R4000 laptop and the other is a Sony VAIO tower. The laptop is 2GHz and the tower is 2.5. The laptop has an ATI Radeon XPRESS 200M card and the tower has a GeForce FX 5500oc. In Everest Home, I compared the two cards to see which one was better. The GeForce clocked faster and had twice as many pipelines. So, the tower has the better card, and a faster processor. I ran 3DMARK03 on both computers and for some reason, the laptop got a better score(1400 something) and the tower got only 1100 something. If the tower's specs are better, why did it get such a low score?

Also, and this might be part of the reason that the tower got the low score, is that it kept skipping. Like, it would run smooth for a little while, then all of a sudden it would skip a few frames. I thought it might be a driver problem, but I've tried 3 different drivers and they all skip. I've played the same games on the laptop and the VAIO, and the games definately work better on the VAIO, so why is it scoring worse?

So I'm trying to figure out why the VAIO Is getting a lower score when it's specs are better. Is there anything that could cause it to not use it's hardware to its full potential, or could the Radeon just be better than the GeForce even though it's specs are better?

3D mark 03 is'nt the best way to measure performance.
It bombards the PC and videocard with a lot of testing...at the same time.
Get FRAPS, and load the tuffest game you have. There, you will have much better way to see how the card behaves under actual gaming.
Alter the quality settings beween gaming sessions. And see how your card(s) fare? A FPS (Frame Rate Per Second ) of 60 FPS average is good performance.

You can download the demo of DOOM 3. If you have'nt got the game allready? and use it together with FRAPS.

the desktop probably has a lot of shit running in the background.

I don't think so. I just reinstalled windows on it, so I don't have a lot of programs installed. I'll try FRAPS. If I tried to play Doom 3, it would probably run at like 2 frames per second on these computers

Red probably means the s.c. "services". There are lot of unnessisary stuff running in XP.
Download SIS Sandra. And use the "Performace wizard" to determaine wich services you can shut down?

I ran the "Performance Tune-Up" wizard, and the only thing I found was "PCI Latency too high. Device could hog bus" Does that mean anything? Also "Large memory sizes should be made of registered/buffered memory" What's that mean? Maybe I didn't run the right thing, but I didn't find anything about services.

Also, why would one copy of windows have more services running than another copy?

Hi again!

Both "PCI Latency too high" and "Large memory sizes should be made of registered/buffered memory"
Is nothing you need to worry about. Sandra says that all the time.
If you did scroll a bit further. You would have found the servises to shut down, under "Tips".

Okay, I found it, but it told me to go to Control Panel\Services to stop them, and it doesn't seem to exist. Why would this computer have more services running than my laptop?

Also, what else could be slowing down my pc? There's no viruses or spyware. I just installed Windows on it.

O.K.

Go "Start" + "Run".
In "Run" type, msconfig.
Then click the tab "Services".
And uncheck, what Sandra says is o.k.
Reboot.

ALL PC:s / Laptops/ Notebooks, with Windows XP. Will have a lot of crap running, before you disable them.

If you done virus / spyware and shutting down services. Then you have done all that could be done , at least in Windows.

The only thing that comes to mind improving things, is maybe more RAM? And getting a Registry cleaner / repair software. And use it on weekly basis. This will help keeping your Windows healty. Avoid "PC Doctor" and " PC Resque" though. they are a piece of crap that will mess up your registry and stuff even more.

Invest in "Registry Mechanic" It is a very good reknown reg. repair software. I have used it for a couple of years. And I really like it!

You can download a demo of it. But you wont be able to repair more that 15 faults per scan.

EDIT: Also defrag your harddrive(s). Is a good idea to do on a monthly basis.
This will improve the search time and load time from the HD:s

Well, shutting down the services didn't help. Maybe it is possible that the Radeon is better than the GeForce. Here are the specs. The GeForce is better overall, but the Radeon clocks slightly faster. Is it possible that the clock was enough to give it the edge over the GeForce?

GeForce FX 5500oc
Video Memory: 128MB
GPU Clock: 290MHz
RAMDAC Clock: 350MHz
Pixel Pipelines: 4
TMU Per Pipeline: 1
Vertex Shaders: 2
Pixel Shaders: 1
Pixel Fillrate: 1160 MPixels\s
Texel Fillrate: 1160MTexels\s

Radeon XPress 200M
Video Memory: 128
GPU Clock: 300MHz
RAMDAC Clock 400MHz
Pixel Pipelines: 2
TMU Per Pipeline: 1
Vertex Shaders: 2
Pixel Shaders: 1
Pixel Fillrate: 602 MPixels/s
Texel Fillrate: 602 MTexels/s

Could be. But the fact that the Radeon is PCI express and the Geforce card is AGP. will also give the Radeon a upper hand.

It's PCI Express? I didn't know onboard cards were any type of bus at all. I thought they were just... you know... onboard.

I found this about the Radeon Xpress 200M at ATI:s home:



Radeon® Xpress 200M

ATI introduces the Radeon® Xpress 200M, the industry’s first PCI Express chipset for notebooks with AMD Sempron™, AMD Athlon™ 64, AMD Athlon™ 64 FX processors, AMD’s forthcoming Turion™ 64 Mobile Technology. Radeon® Xpress 200M delivers mobile-optimized performance and advanced functionality for today’s graphics-intensive business and communications applications, the latest 3D games, and high-quality digital entertainment.

Best-in-class PCI Express performance
Radeon® Xpress 200M is built on a .13-micron process with 350MHz graphics core speed, and 128-bit system memory interface ensuring best-in-class graphics performance with mobile applications. The built-in graphics deliver double the bandwidth of AGP 8X. Without the shared-bus limitations of PCI, Radeon® Xpress 200M better controls bandwidth usage and data priority while multitasking real-time applications and video playback for an enhanced cinematic experience. Enhanced plug-and-play support frees on-the-go mobile users to hot-plug the latest external devices with greater reliability, making Radeon® Xpress 200M-based notebooks the dependable mobile platform for productivity and multimedia entertainment.

I'm using The Sims 2 as a test game. The GeForce MX 440 isn't better than a GeForce FX 5500 is it? I'm pretty sure FX Series is better than MX, but for some reason, I remember The Sims 2 running way better on my MX than my FX.