Advice on 3dmark, and Aquamark scores

[MrBob]

Here is my system

P4 3.0 with HTT 800mb bus
512mb 1chip, 3500 (running at 3200) Ram with low latency
Wd 7200 rpm HDD
Bfg 256 OC'd FX 5500 Video Card
Windows XP Pro SP 1
MSI MS-6540 motherboard
On board sound

Anyway I'm getting 3dmark03 scores around 1320 and Aquamark scores around 9500 and that is with AA and AF and background programs turned off.

My cousin who has a 2.6 htt P4 and 1 gig of 3200 Ram with a 128mb TI card got 3d score of 1660.

I'm curious, what kinds of scores should I be getting with this set up. Also what could I do besides overclocking to help maximize my systems's performance?

 

[Nubius]

Technically the only way of 'enhanging' your setup IS overclocking, theres really no way of inhancing it besides like adding another 512mb stick of RAM or something. I get 23K on aquamark with my 256mb FX 5700 Card, if I OC it I'll get 25K. I don't have the 3dscore program though.

 

[Cappy]

Try disabling Fast Writes -Check for Motherboard Bios Upgrades

 

[MrBob]

What is fast Writes, and how would I do that?

 

[lazerman]

It's in your bios, when you start your comp, you press the delete key and it will take you into your bios. Find the memory category (u might have to search for it) and go in there and disable fast writes.

You should be getting much higher scores in AquaMark3 with that setup. I'm getting almost double that and my system is half as fast.

 

[MrBob]

I turned it off but there really was no gain, on both tests.

 

[lazerman]

There must be a bottleneck somewhere... Your card is an Nvidia right?

 

[MrBob]

Yup a BFG fx 5500 that came OC'd. I'm using the drivers that came with it, should I try Nvidia's drivers?

Also there are 3 updates for my bios, should I do all of them or just the latetest one? I'm hesitant to do it because I've never done it before but the first 2 tempeture monitoring, and memory performance, so I ought to do them.

 

[MrBob]

I added another 512 mb of 3200 mb Ram, and there was literally now change in the score. WTF is going on?