Quad Core and Futuremark?

[richardd43]

I am not a big fan of benchmarks but use them to see if there are any changes after an upgrade.

Using 3DMark06 here are the results:

AMD X2 6400
At 3.2Ghz 12400
At 3.4Ghz 13407

AMD X4 9850
At 2.5Ghz 13386
At 3.0Ghz 14968

I stepped up the speed on the Video card a little for a score of 15401
http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=6635851

All tests were run with Vista 64

My question is; is 3Dmark06 biased to the quad cores?

I am not sure why I had higher scores with a lower clock.

[NickN]

It sure does!

isn't that special?

Your game may or may not run better with a quad but you 3DM score will sure go up

[richardd43]

Well, I reloaded Crysis to see what it would do.

I am not sure there was any difference. Frames stayed the same and it already ran fairly smooth. I tried some higher settings but that did not work so it looks like everything stayed the same.

I don't mind being the same, was just happy that I did not loose anything.

Now, if some respected member here wanted to give me some hints on the "PROPER" way to overclock this thing I would not be offended.

[markag]

A quad is still a good investment. More and more games and programs are being written for 4 or more cores and the performance in those will be much greater with a quad.

[Slotback]

You're not sure why you had a higher score with lower lock? Well you've got 4 cores vs 2 cores, AND, the quad core AMDs are on a new archetecture than the duals, even in single threaded applications chances are your new quad will be quickier.

[richardd43]

You're not sure why you had a higher score with lower lock?

I actually worded that wrong.

I understand the architecture of the chip, but I was surprised in the difference in scores.

I was expecting more of a break even or possible small gain.

[NickN]

Now, if some respected member here wanted to give me some hints on the "PROPER" way to overclock this thing I would not be offended.

I dropped AMD over a year ago... I do not know the ins and outs of the slug/board you are using

OC is the same.. highest memory speed on the lowest memory latency @ the highest CPU

Typically you want to get the memory to the fastest possible but be stable with a higher FSB... the dividers are where it becomes tricky and can be a bit confusing at first. Since each motherboard has its own set of quarks and can even have different FSB points where the divider kicks in, you have to research to get to know the math of the board.. once you have that down the rest is in the FSB and NB/SB frequencies


FSX will respond to higher CPU speed and lower memory latency more than anything else

[richardd43]

I really am not interested in overclocking this chip. When finances get better and all of the new stuff hits the market this summer I plan on building an Intel system to play with.

AMD is a "what you see is what you get" chip. The little headroom it has for overclocking (to me) is not worth the effort.