The AquaMark3 is now available for free download from many mirros all over the world. Maybe it's no big news for you computer geeks out there.

http://www.aquamark3.com/am3-mirrors.htm

It's a tool to determine reliable information about the gaming performance of a computer system.

Feel free to download it and run the select measurement in the menu, take the top alternative then and after some good looking scenes you will be awared a score. Please post the score here and don't forget to list what computer system you got.

My system:
AMD athlon XP 3000+, 512 Mb DDR 400 MHz RAM and ATI Radeon 9600 XT 256 Mb
My AquamarkScore:
28681

It might get higher if I tweak the computer a bit...

I really hope you will take the time to to the test and post your results.

System:
P4 1.8GHz, 512Mb RAM, NVIDIA GeForce2 MX 100/200

Score:
2864

*sigh* I really, really, really need a new graphics card... and Processor. :D

63 MB :eek: Not on my dial-up!

We got into a mini 3-D benchmarking war over at Apolyton.

Using Aquamark3, I got a score of 38,927 with,

3.0GHz P4C
1 gig PC3200 400Mhz RAM
ATI AIW 9700 pro
2 36 Gb WD raptiors(10,00RPM) in RAID 0

After overclockng my graphics card slightly I was able to get a score of 44,209

System:

AMD Athlon 1700+
768 Mb Ram
NVidia GeForce 4 64 Mb

Score:

3,415

Ohh, pathetic. I got a crappy score - I think. I though I had a decent system. Well, I do not play many games that require those kind of graphics that were tested. I had an FPS of 0.8 at the worst, during the Large Scale Vegetative Rendering. I have no idea how to "tweak" my system for optimal performance. I really only play Homeworld 2 that has graphics anything near tested, and it works fine. I hear that Half Life 2 will require a 128 Mb Video card just o function . . .

Im sure mine would be low. I cant d/l programme due to using dial-up.

My specs though:
Celeron 500 MHz
190 MB RAM

I've got dialup,

I downloaded it overnight ;)

Intel P4 3.2GHz
ATi Radeon 9700 Pro
1GB PC3200

AquamarkScore: 36,810

Wonder what these stats would give?

Celeron 466MHz
Ati Radeon 9200
300+ RAM...

:lol:

Originally posted by Ankka
Ati Radeon 9200

How does Radeon label their Video Cards. I mean, what does the "9200" mean? Not Mb, certainly. I am wondering, 'cause I have a 64 MB NVidia Video Card, I am wondering how this would compare. Better, worse, . . . ?

9200=8500

Originally posted by Comraddict
9200=8500

Ummm . . . ok. Is this referring to my above post, or is this your score with AM3?

RealGoober, 9000, 9100, 9200 all are using 8500 core with come crippling modifications.

Originally posted by Comraddict
RealGoober, 9000, 9100, 9200 all are using 8500 core with come crippling modifications.

What the . . .? I was wondering what Mb a "9100", etc is. As in how would they compare to, ohh, say a 64 Mb NVidia GeForce?

I'm not sure about the 9100, but my 9700 pro has 128 Mb of RAM, the "non-pro" model has 64 (I think) the new 9800's have 256Mb

Got Aquamark off a CD :)

Well, I have an Athlon XP2000+, 64 MB DDR Nvidia 8x AGP card (MX440, unfortunately ;) ) and 512 MB of DDR ram at 333 MHz.

Started out with around 8000, tweaked the BIOS settings and got it up to 8500. Well worth the fiddling. :thumbsup:

Originally posted by ainwood
Got Aquamark off a CD

Well, I have an Athlon XP2000+, 64 MB DDR Nvidia 8x AGP card (MX440, unfortunately ) and 512 MB of DDR ram at 333 MHz.

Started out with around 8000, tweaked the BIOS settings and got it up to 8500. Well worth the fiddling.

Whathe . . . ? Ok, I seem to have a resonably comparable system to this, slower processor, more Ram (see post way above), same Video Card, but I got a pathetic 3,415!!!. How do you "tweak" this, or cn anybody explain to me why my score is so much slower?

I am fairly sure I have the same Video Card, how would I find out for sure? I know it is 64Mb DDR, I am not sure about the other stuff . . .

EDIT: Ok, apparently I have a " powerColour Nvidia GeForce4 440 64MB DDR AGP TVout TV", quoting directly from the sheet that came with my computer with the specs on it.

Well, its not just the videocard. My CPU is a 2000, yours is only 1700. What is your RAM speed? Mine is DDR, running at 333 MHz. What does your FSB run at?

In terms of tweaking, I didn't do too much - changed the dram CAS latency from 2.5 to 2, changed the Fast command from 'normal' to 'fast' (will try Ultra later), enabled the AGP master read & write, enabled teh PCI bus master (no brainer on that one ;) )

Power color is a crappy brand, that often sells video cards that are clocked below manufactur specifications(you have to read the fine print). Your Geforce4MX could be using a crippled 64bit memory bus, rather than the 128 bit one used by most other Geforce4MX cards. This would cut your memory bandwidith in half, on a card that is already probably struggling to run this benchmark.

Futhermore, both ATI and Nvidia use some extremely complicated naming schemes, but they generally follow these patterns in their more recent cards:

For ATI - you have Radeon, followed by model number(7000, 8500, 9700 ect) followed by a speed indicator letters - SE for a slow version, nothing for the normal version, Pro for a fast version, and XT for a really fast version, followed by the amount of video memory. Normally, the higher the model number, the faster the card, but this is not always the case. For example, the 8500&9100(which are identical) are slightly faster than the 9000&9200(both of which are also identical), though both cards have similar abilities - both are DX8 compliant.

For Nvidia, it gets a little more complicated. For the pre-GeforceFX cards you have Geforce, number,(1,2,3,4) , letter designation,(MX or Ti), followed by model number that indicated speed grade. For example, the only difference between a Geforce4 Ti4600 and a Ti4200 is that the Ti4600 has a higher clocked GPU and memory. Also note that the Geforce4 MX cards are in fact slightly modified Geforce2's(and thus lack DX8 compliance) and in most cases will be outperformed by a Geforce3.

For the GeforceFX cards, the naming scheme is a bit simpler - you have GeforceFX, model number, then letter set indicating speed - XT for a slower version (confusing, because ATI uses XT to mean a fast version of a card :crazyeye: ), nothing for the normal version, and Ultra for a faster clocked version of the card.

And of course, since many companies manufactur both Nvidia and ATI based cards, they sometimes throw in their own extra's into the scheme, confusing the mess even more. :rolleyes:

Hope everyone finds this helpful.

As for my own machine, an AthlonXP 2000 with 1gig RAM and a Geforce4 Ti4600, I got 17,612 Aquamarks. I will do some tinkering later and see if I can get it higher.

Originally posted by ainwood
Well, its not just the videocard. My CPU is a 2000, yours is only 1700. What is your RAM speed? Mine is DDR, running at 333 MHz. What does your FSB run at?

In terms of tweaking, I didn't do too much - changed the dram CAS latency from 2.5 to 2, changed the Fast command from 'normal' to 'fast' (will try Ultra later), enabled the AGP master read & write, enabled teh PCI bus master (no brainer on that one ;) )

PCI (IDE?) bus master is for DOS.
Your DDR is running at 333MHz, but CPU at 266MHz. Memory cannot be delivered faster to CPU than 266MHz.
In other words, it is useless and of sync to run memory faster than CPU. I suggest you to run in sync, at 266MHz. Then there is no lost cycles because synchronization. Maybe it is already set that way. Either way you can test and see if I am right.

Note - you can have RAM - DDR PC2700 that is capable of running at 333mhz(actually, it runs at ~166mhz, but since DDR sends two bits per cycle, you get Double the Data Rate) , but if you use if with certain processors - like the AthlonXP 2000 ainwood and I both seem to have it will run by default at the slower CPU speed of 266 mhz.

Now, you could try and over clock the FSB to make the RAM and the processor to run faster - I myself have gotten my FSB up from the default 133mhz to 140mhz - remember this is DDR RAM, which means the equiv of going from 266mhz to 280mhz, which upped my RAM speed to the same, and my processor from 1.67ghz up to 1.75ghz. Now, it might me possible to run an AthlonXP at with a 166mzh(333mhz equiv) FSB, especially if you have one of the newer Thoughbred B cores - if you didn't change the multiplier in the bios, your CPU would be running at over 2ghz, which is a very nice overclock indeed.

I have done some futher checking, and it seems that Powercolor did in fact sell a Geforce4 MX card with a crippled 64 bit memory bus; that alone could probably account for RealGoober's performance problems. I really reccomend people stay away from Powercolor, they are the Yugo of video cards.

AMD Athlon Thunderbird 1.33Ghz
Micron 512MB DDR 266Mhz (PC2100 IIRC)
MSI Geforce FX 5900 128MB
1 WD 20GB HD at 7200RPM (Windows Installed)
1 WD 80GB HD at 7200RPM with 8MB Cache (AquaMark Installed)

Running in the background:
PC-cillin Antivirus
eMule

24,974

A better CPU and a compatible memory to go along would kick this system beyond 30,000 for sure.

No need to upgrade, though, as I won't have much time to play the computer anyway in the next 3 years (military service).

Originally posted by Comraddict


PCI (IDE?) bus master is for DOS.
Your DDR is running at 333MHz, but CPU at 266MHz. Memory cannot be delivered faster to CPU than 266MHz.
In other words, it is useless and of sync to run memory faster than CPU. I suggest you to run in sync, at 266MHz. Then there is no lost cycles because synchronization. Maybe it is already set that way. Either way you can test and see if I am right. Good point - its the FSB that sets it. I can't configure the ram speed to be independent of the CPU speed, but I can tweak the latencies (If the memory can run at 333 MHz, does this mean that I could reduce the CAS even further???)

I tried overclocking the FSB, but can't get much benefit out of it. My CPU runs quite hot (idles at around 52 - 55°C, depending on how hot the day is ;) ). AM looking at a new fan and heatsink for it, which should help. :)