3DMark2001SE Tweak Guide - Part 2

I'm often asked by my friends and family why I spend so much time and money to baby my computer, after all it's an inanimate object that could never love me back. The reason is simple, I do it for the same reasons people tweak their cars and it all comes down to performance!

The 3DMark benchmarks from MadOnion are quite popular and are often used to test the power of computers, and while 3DMark may not always represent real world 3D performance, it is usually a good indicator. Like I mentioned in my earlier 3DMark2001 Tweak Guide , the best feature of the 3DMark benchmarks is the ability to upload your score to the web and compare your computer to some of the fastest rigs in the world.

The boys over at MadOnion setup "The Fastest Webmaster " contest, it's a friendly competition between the hardware sites to see who can get the highest scores. While I'm not first anymore I'm still doing very well considering my hardware...

As you can see I'm 800 points off the lead, but when you look at the system spec's...

Not too shabby eh? Of the Top 10 there's only one P4 (ranked 8th) that's is clocked lower then my test rig. There is an AMD T-Bred based system which obviously is clocked lower as well (ranked 7th). Something else you might be interested in is that I'm on 100% unmodded hardware, with just air cooling!

On a side note, I'm simply amazed at how high the scores have come in the last year. I remember how difficult it was to break the first 10k barrier!