Originally posted by: Woody
Originally posted by: niggles
It sounds like you're saying that 3Dmark only tests the video card and nothing else.
Hello? Yes! this is what I said. It does a fine job of this without being affected by the rest of the system significantly.
Like I said. I went from 6060 to 6216 in 3DMark05 with my X800Pro after putting it into a brand new ASRock 939/ A64 3700 combination from a ASUS NForc2 / 3200XP system. My gaming performance has improved significantly due to a wide variety of factors but my 3DMark stayed very much the same.
The 156 point increase could be attributed to a more efficient AGP bus on the new board, improved performance of the Cat 5.10 drivers over the 5.8 drivers I had previously tested with, or more likely, a combination of both. The better CPU, memory controller, HTT, etc. had little or no effect on the score.
So you ask why this is useful since it means nothing. It's not useful, at least not for what you were trying to evaluate. You should not be using this application to determine the overall performance of your rig.
If you would like to compare the absolute performance of your video card to mine, this is the application to use. If you want to measure the effects of a driver modification, overclocking your video card, different resolutions, and various other graphics card settings, this is the application to use.
"The right tool for the right job."