Anyone up for a little 3DMark06 competition?

Hey buds. I'm feeling a combination of sad and silly today, so bear with me.

SAD After querying another forum's boards, I noticed someone mentioning that with all this UT3 Demo proliferating everywhere, he/she loaded up UT99 just for giggles, and found that no one was playing online anymore. Don't get me wrong, bots on godlike are fun, but I was sad to see just how few people were still hitting up the servers. My my how times have changed.

SILLY With that in mind, I remembered back when I played UT99 everyday when I was a youngin', and benching was as fun as gaming. I remember being the [pathetic] 1st place GeForce MX400 64mb 3DMark2001se holder for about a week, and that was pretty thrilling.

So in light of this, I'd like to announce: as of today, October 17, 2007 @ 9:40AM Pacific Standard Time, unclebrudy (of Notebookreview.com, Notebookforums.com, Futuremark.com, dpreview.com, dcresource.com, and dyxum.com fame ) is the #1 3DMark06 DDR2 8600M GT notebook. Woohoo! (as of today, 10/18/07 @ 12:31PST, #3 behind Crazy Larry and joebusby! Good job!)

I fully expect there to be alot of you folks who probably scored higher than me and just haven't or forgot to publish it, but that'd be great because it gives me something to shoot for. (Truth be told, this is my 2nd fastest run. I'm saving the ringer in case someone steps up.) If anyone wants to play, remember, default resolution is 1280x1024 (which would entail most of us to hook up external monitors), and DDR 2 8600s only (doesn't have to be Dell only, but seeing as this is the Dell board I expect most of them to be, and suffice it to say the the DDR 3 MBP's, G1S', and IFL90's easily outpace me). I know there are still a few of you out there who used to bench profusely! And I know hooking up the external is a pain, but hey, I was 15 and care free when I published my first 3DMark score. Now I'm 29, have a 9 year-old daughter I just dropped off to school, a wife who's lunch I made at 6AM before she went to work, and a 50 hour a week grind, and I still had fun overclocking and benching this thing. Let's bring the old days back, if only for a short while.

Any friendly competition out there? I did a search, and our existing 3DMark06 threads (like here, here, here, here and here) all have people either running or complaining about different resolutions. Real-world shmeal-world, this is all in the name of fun, so hopefully no one gets on my case about 3DM06 not being a "real-world" indicator of performance. Anywho, I would compete with people in a real game, like UT99, but....ack! The pain is just too intense!

8600M GT DDR2 3DMark06 Current standings: (incomplete, will update once off work. Thanks for your understanding)

1. 4,067 (!!!) crazy_larry71 Inspiron 1520
2. 3,871 joebusby Vostro 1500
3. 3,762 unclebrudy Inspiron 1520
4. 3,443 siege_2 Asus C90s
5. 3,374 7109338 Asus C90s
6. 3,293 vfrjim Asus C90s
7. 3,227 mikeandsandy1 Inspiron 1520

 

Nice score!

 

So anyway, yeah.

Old story.

 

unclebrudy, you might want to do an Orb search next time. Looks like SEVERAL people easily beat your score. Sorry bud, but keep trying.

Here's an example: http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=2809921

 

In the link you gave it says its a G1S, thats a ddr3 card,. He said specifically in his post that he wants to do comparisons of ddr2 cards only. Maybe read the whole post next time..

 

Just wanted to say thanks to everyone for all the views and replies! Just to clear up any confusion, the search filter was 3DMark06->nVidia 8600M GT->All drivers. I left everything else at default, and allowed all drivers because FM is lagging a bit IMO as far as driver approval, which is understandable considering the hundreds of modded mobile drivers out there that we notebook folk have to contend with.

Hi Mike! I did do an ORB search. Those above me are either "Mac-F4238BC8" or MacBook Pros, "G1S" or "IFL90" (both self-explanatory), i.e.- DDR3 8600s. But see below, there's now a "0UW306", which is the Dell, that just stole the top DDR2 spot and broke 4k! Yowza!

Thanks Aevum031! I am in your debt.

Hey Joe! Friendly bro, please! J/K, I know you meant that good-natured!

I tried searching the ORB for your compare, but couldn't find it. Not that I don't trust your screenshot, just curious. Anyway, might be moot, check out this:

4,067 Crazy Larry indeed! He broke 4k @ default! Awesome! Now it's my turn...at least when I get off work.

 

Added a short top DDR2 listing, will add the rest after work.

Anyone else? I'm getting excited! I hope more people decide to play!

-B

 

On the topic of the sad, there are some people who still play UT99. Me and some friends jumped on an empty server one night, and suddenly a couple of others joined, and boy did they leave us in the dust >_<

Anyway, I might try 3dmark when I get my 1720

 

This is a slightly random question, but here goes: I'm looking to get a lappie with good graphics performance, and me seeing those results pretty much made my jaw drop. Is it safe (hahaha Marathon Man ) to game with the laptop while you're o/cing that much? (again, sorry if this is in the wrong thread, I just didn't want to make a whole new one)

 

Heya nerf!

As with any overclocking, there are risks. As with any risks, there are rewards. Hehe.

Running your gfx beyond spec will shorten its lifespan, no ifs, and, or buts. With that said, as long as you keep our temperatures in check and find your safest stable overclock, you'll chuck the laptop long before it reaches even close to its lifespan. Case in point: my old Pentium 200MHz, overclocked to 292MHz and an extra 0.75v (!) he vCore, lasted over 5 years before I retired it as a nifty keychain. I'm sure it would continue kicking to this day, and eventually would've pooped out, but not before its useful life. I still have an overclocked, voltmodded GeForce3 ti200, multiple AthlonXPs, A64s, and other components that I've run to the hilt without remorse and they are still doing their daily grind. I won't go into too much more about the science behind overclocking (i.e.-how stuff is underclocked to fill a marketing niche, downclocked to provide longer battery life, lower core speeds to enable 'fanless' heatsink designs, etc.) because so many other resources explain it 10 orders of magnitude better. (For a quick fix, see wikipedia)

Anyway (sorry, I know I talk a lot) ask anyone who has bought the latest batch of Inspirons with 8600s and most if not all will tell you that it is amazingly efficient keeping the CPU/GPU components cool. Even with my overclock, my full load temps went up a whopping 3c. After over 3 hours of playing Oblivion, my GPU is still a nice and cool 69c, and is back down to 51c idle within a few minutes of returning to 2D.

I say do it!

-Brian

 

Thanks, I'm still thinking strongly about the 8710p, but now that I know a bit more about o/cing, I might be tempted to get a lighter laptop ...