New build.....performance problems

[Ice8168]

O hello to all as this is my first post. Heres the deal Ive just put together a new gaming rig and am initially pleased with the result, but not getting the performance i expected. I also have a few tech related questions for later. The specs are as follows:
Processor- AMD Athlon X2 5000
RAM- Corsair DDR2 XMS2 4GB total (timing 4-4-4-12) but this is not what bios shows.
GPU- EVGA 7950 GT KO
Power Supply- SilverStone 600w

When I run 3DMark06 i get very poor performance, i.e around 20-25 fps and when the processor test it goes to 0.

However playing FEAR i get ~80 FPS with all settings on high.

SO WTF. How can I improve this.

I also need to know where to begin if I wanted to OC. I know theres tons of info but I cant find anything simple to start with.

Also, I have 2 WD 250GB HD's i installed windows on one and with windows I can only see 1 drive listed, but both show in BIOS. And how do i go about setting these up in RAID1?

Also XP only shows 3.5GB of RAM, why is this?

Thanks for any input.

 

[Nitestick]

wow, you certainly went overboard with the memory!!! Windows XP 32 bit does not work very well with any more than 3GB of memory.

i guess you really haven't used 3Dmark before. i don't know why you would be concerned because frame rates are low. it's a benchmark, not a game. game performance is all you should be worried about. 3Dmark is designed "ahead of it's time". each previous version has been known to give graphics cards a good run for the money for 2-3 years after it's release. the whole idea of 3Dmark is that it puts an insane amount of stress on your graphics cards. no offence, but seeing as you don't seem to be a benchmarker i have no idea why you would even choose FPS to guage performance in 3Dmark. the only thing that even comes close to mattering is the 3Dmark score at the end.

summary: 3Dmark is only useful for boosting your ego only the performance in your games matters.

i can't help with your question about RAID1, do you understand the various levels of RAID though? also you will need to partition and format the second drive to be able to see it in windows, don't worry that is a VERY common mistake.

 

[Ice8168]

Thx for the help. Went in and formated the drive and now it shows in windows. As far as performance, thats kinda what I figured. So long as it runs the games decent then I have no problems with it.

 

[Nagasama]

hey man do me a favor and get a program called super pi.
run the 1m test and post your results. i'm curious how that 5200 scores vs my 4200.
thanks!

 

[Sora]

Well yea its a benchmark My system is brand new and on the cpu test of cd mark it went to 10 fps and I have a 3.0ghz E6300 C2D so basicly its a stress test to see. If your frames are fine on games then there you go. As for ram...lol thats alot I would never want more than 2gb.

 

[Ice8168]

For nagasama. I downloaded the program and it took 32s to get to 1m.

 

[lancec2c30]

It took 32 seconds!!!! holy crap thats bad. My system with a 3500venice and value ram got 30s.

Why did you get that cpu. a e6600 would have been a much wiser choice, but it is your decision.

 

[Ice8168]

So thats bad huh? Then could someone offer suggestions in improving the situation.

 

[jonny_uk]

Ice your going back to square one agian, super pi is another benchmark type programme, dont base your score on how your system performs as a whole, you just cant do that!

You said you get 80fps on FEAR with max settings, thats freaking awesome, FEAR uses an awful lot of power to play it on high settings, and you can do that, so id be happy.

 

[icantflybfplane]

as fair as the raid goes, you can use software raid in windows which is kinda crappy, its best to reformat and do a hardware raid
-you have to create a raid floppy from the motherboard cd, it should have some raid drivers for 32bit and 64 bit
-once you make a raid floppy put the windows cd in and push f6 when it starts to load to load up raid drivers
-it'll take you to a raid setup, raid1 is mirroring right? (which is slow) striping is fast but ur damned if u get an error on one of the hds
-select mirroring and select both hard drives for it
-i believe thats how you set it up i just setup raid 0 for my machine it wasnt to hard but i believe its similar to set up in raid1
now if it is the mirroring raid be prepared for a lil slower performance since it writes the exact same thing on both drives