Got my 1gb of RAM - benchmarks dropped!?

[iamaelephant]

I'm not too worried, seeing as how all my games run significantly better, but since upgrading from 512mb to 1gb RAM, my 3dmarks have gone down a full thousand points (6,500 -> 5,500) and the VST with CS:S went down from about 65 FPS to 27! Ah well, at least now I can play UT2004 at Holy Shit settings with 32 players in Onslaught without any slowdowns.

 

[lans]

I'm not too worried, seeing as how all my games run significantly better, but since upgrading from 512mb to 1gb RAM, my 3dmarks have gone down a full thousand points (6,500 -> 5,500) and the VST with CS:S went down from about 65 FPS to 27! Ah well, at least now I can play UT2004 at Holy Shit settings with 32 players in Onslaught without any slowdowns.

Your VST tests fell from 65 to 27fps?!

What are your full specs, and are you sure you were checking at the same settings (same AA,AF,e.t.c.) as when it was 65?

I've noticed major FPS drops with 128 mb 9800 pros with the VST, when you switch AA and AF up, quite a bit.

 

[iamaelephant]

Yeah all the same settings. My specs are:
Athlon XP 2500+
1GB RAM
9800 pro

I'm not worried about it, just a little curious about why it happened. Games still run better than ever, though.

 

[TheRook]

elephant your specs are the exact same as mine check in 3dsettings for the card (display settings) make sure they are all on application preference i was trying to figure out why mine was running that low... turned out to be 2xaa and 8xaf in display settings as soon as its set to app preference jumped to 66

Andy

 

[lans]

Yeah all the same settings. My specs are:
Athlon XP 2500+
1GB RAM
9800 pro

I'm not worried about it, just a little curious about why it happened. Games still run better than ever, though.

Don't worry though, the VST isn't a reliable or accurate test anyway. I myself will only believe official benchmarks from valve for the full game, as soon as they get posted at some reliable site like [H]ardOcp.

 

[TheRook]

running the VST thru CS:S with 12 people on the "small" map i get 40fps :/ constant...

but with reflect all on i get 30 :/ looks sexy tho!

 

[blackeye]

Is the ram running at 400 speeds. It could be that is running at 333. But I dont think it would cause that big of a drop.

 

[lans]

Is the ram running at 400 speeds. It could be that is running at 333. But I dont think it would cause that big of a drop.

Hardly - I changed from 333 to 400mhz once, no difference.

 

[Asus]

What is your board and how many sticks of memory do you have?
Dropping to DDR333 or lower timings probably wouldn't have this big of an effect.
Just for fun, take the memory back out and run some benchmarks again.

It probably is a setting somewhere.
Just a few notes to keep in mind:
1) 3Dmark2003 defaults to the same settings each time it runs. So looking at those results you know he didn't leave AA or AF on.
2) 3Dmark2003 benchmarks almost exclusively the Graphics card an then CPU and Memory sub system.

 

[iamaelephant]

The memory is DDR333, but one weird thing I noticed is when I POST, the RAM is displayed as 315M, which is weird because when I first installed the RAM yesterday, it was 333M. Very strange. Maybe my RAM isn't running at it's full potential?

Also something I noticed is I get the occassional random crash when running with all my RAM at CAS 2.5 (my original RAM speed) but it's fine when I lower it to CAS 3 (the speed of the new RAM). Not really a concern because it makes close to no difference, just strange because I was sure that even though the new stuff is rated at CAS 3, it would still run at 2.5

Cheers for the help guys, I'll try some of your suggestions, who knows, maybe it's not running at it's full potential.

Asus - my board is an Albatron KX600 pro. It's cheap, but it does the trick. I'm considering buying a fancier board (NF-7 or something), but I'm not sure how much of a benefit I would get from it. Anyone done this sort of upgrade before? Does it improve speed, overclocking or stability?

Edit - Oh, and is it possible that I bought a dud stick of RAM? I bought it off an auction site extremely cheap, and it was advertised as brand new but it didn't come in it's original packaging and it looks a little dusty like it's been used. I dont think the guy would sell me crap RAM, because he has an excellent trading history (180 positive feedbacks, 0 negative) and seems like a pretty genuine bloke. I would rather try to test it properly before blaming the RAM, because I fairly confident that it's high quality RAM.
I did notice that it has a Micron sticker on it, but none of the RAM modules on the stick have Micron logos. Is this normal for Micron RAM?