Gigabyte 8S648FX-RZ issues

[Inspiron83]

Hi everyone, i'm new here (if you couldnt tell already ). I have a Gigabyte 8S648FX-RZ motherboard with bios version F7 (the newest, last i checked today) and 6681 Nvidia drivers. I used to have a GeForce4 Ti4400 which worked great, about 9500 3D marks in 3D Mark 2001. I installed an MSI GeForce 6800GT (256MB DDR3) graphics card and i only get 13500 3D marks, i am sure i should be getting a much higher number (in the 20,000 zone). I have exchanged the card, thinking it was a defect but it's not so. I have Windows XP SP1, An intel Celeron D 2.8GHz CPU and 512MB of ram. I am wondering if the problem is that the motherboard doesn't support these new cards? (AKA GF6 Series and ATI X series). Please help!

[TechZ]

Welcome to the WD forums.
Have u played with the settings before running teh benchmark? How about other Benchmarks? Run 3dmark2003, its a DX9 benchmark, unlike 3dmark2001

Also run Aquamark. Its great for benchmarking.

[Inspiron83]

Thanks TechZ for you'r reply. I'd like to test my PC using 3D mark 2003 but its a very big download for dialup users like me. But i have seen PC's with lower CPU's and with graphics cards like Radeon 9700/9800's reaching between 15,000-17,000 points in 3D mark 01 so i know there is something wrong even with 01. Aqua Mark is another nice test, but again...dialup has its (major) disadvantages. The settings are pretty much driver defaults except for Anti-allising and Ant filtering are turned off. On the upside, Doom3 runs far better then it used to...but still jerks in a sitcky situation!

[TechZ]

Tell me about it, ive just gone and signed up for dsl (albeit with a 5gb cap) but I know what u mean. I've only used high speed inet thanks to my Uni and my Wifi laptop! Its saved me from teh Dial Up curse, and we have pretty expensive DSL here.

Where do u live?

[Inspiron83]

Well, i live in Saudi Arabia. Probably why we get outdated Motherboards with bad bios I still havent gotten this fixed yet, i have emailed Gigabyte but no reply yet. MSI is saying it's Gigabytes problem so i might be in for a fix O_o

[TechZ]

Hey I live in Bahrain neighbor! i usually get my pc stuff from Dubai, better selection I think.

[Inspiron83]

Well, i have yet to fix my little problem here. I did find some intresting info though...3D Mark 2001 states about the motherboards "cababilities" are "Aperture Size" which is 0 bytes, Sideband Addressing which is not supported and Fast Write which is also not supported. I am wondering if this is the isssue...the Aperture Size deffinetly worries me because i used to (on the old MB) have it set to 128 MB Aperture for the AGP card, but here it's giving it NOTHING?! What gives? No setting in the bios allow me to change this either...stupid Gigabyte.

[TechZ]

Dont knock GB, i use the GB 8iexp and its great, only the Northbridge Cooler wore out some time back, but it seems to be a common feature on GB board!

The board though is great.