Powercolor HD 4850 and overclockign using 3dmark 06

[PanzeR_1987]

hey guys. i havent posted here in a while

Ive just baught my self a hd 4850, added my own 3rd party cooling (thermalright hr 03 rev.a) temps running really well (30c idle 38-39c load)

Only trouble is when overclocking the hd 4850 in 3dmark o6 the scores seem to drop even when overcloking the core/mem by 5mhz? thus i cant achieve any overclock!

could this b;

1) using the wrong 3dmark? is it to old for the hd 4850?

2) my processor being the bottle neck (e2160 pentium dual core 1.8ghz @ 2.6ghz

any ideas?

system specs

Intel Pentium Dual Core e2160 1.8ghz @ 2.6ghz

Powercolour HD 4850

Western DIgital 260gb HDD

xfx 680i LT sli Motherboard

570w Trust PSU

2gb Patriot DDR2 memory PC2-6400 @ 4-3-3-10 @ 800mhz

(stable)

[Ham]

Sorry if I've picked up the wrong end of the stick. But your not trying to use 3Dmark to adjust the clock speeds are you?

[PanzeR_1987]

no just to get the 3d mark score lol using the ati ccc to oc

[Ham]

Few..

How bigger drop are we talking? 3Dmark scores will fluctualte between runs anyway.

Are the likes of speedstep, EIST and OS power management features that throttle down the cpu all turned off?

[PanzeR_1987]

only about 5-10 point but thats still a drop and will continute to drop. i thought it was thermal throttling but it cnt be on my gpu its only running at 40c on load! (with third part cooling)

im not to familiour with my mobo bios atm, ill have 2 look into that

[Ham]

5-10 points is perfectly normal. Only start to worry if it drops between 2 different runs by a few hundered points.

[Rastalovich]

As far as 3dmarks are concerned, u can get differences from anything around 100-200 in between runs and resets.

If ur Vista`ing, give ur pc a chance to finish all it`s cacheing b4 u do any runs is usually best. Top end pc will take around 7 minutes, slower ones 10 mins perhaps.

[PanzeR_1987]

ah cheers guys, so even if it still drops im still getting the overclock done and it will stick with that overclock even while gaming. i just wouldnt want the clocks to drop under normal use.

so should i oc until the 3dmark cant run anymore basically

last question

wouldnt my pentium dual core bottle neck the hd 4850 @ 2.6 if it is overclocked further?

yes i am using vista btw, 32bit

[PanzeR_1987]

I have just run the 3dmark 06 and on the second run the score dropped by 80points? would you call that normal?

[Bungral]

Yep.. That's fine.