Low score on my Dell!

[hhcai]

I tested my Dell Optiplex GX280 PC that I bought couple of months ago (3.4GHZ, 1GB RAM, 160GB Hard drives, Windows Pro) with PerformanceTest5.0. I got some pitiful scores ranging between 318 to340. I noticed "Disk Random Seek- rw", “CD-read” and most graphics related test are very poor. I understand this is a business PC so the video card is mediocre. But I still can't understand how can a brand new 3.4GHz PC scored much lower than lots of those 2.4GHz and 2.8GHz machines. I had Dell support people diagnosed and found no hardware problem. When I told them about the test score, they simply sniffed the reliability of the test. But I still believe there must be something wrong with this computer, either hardware or Windows setup/configuration.

Can anybody here help me understand the score and if possible, tune up my PC to improve the score? Thank you very much!

[David (PassMark)]

The Dell Optiplex GX280 is sold as a budget business desktop machine. People buy them becuase they are cheap, not because they are the best performing machines on the market.

The video cards on these machines are typically very weak. And this will really reduce the overall result more than any other factor. But if it is a business machine, then maybe you don't need great 3D graphics and so you can ignore the poor graphics result.

For the CD test you can get a bigger score by using a CD with just a few very large files (rather than many small files). We suggest making your own standard test CD with this utility,
http://www.passmark.com/products/cdmaker.htm

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David

[hhcai]

David,
Thank you very much for your response. I followed your advice and created a test CD. Now I got a 350, slightly better. I agree that the poor video card is the major factor here. But I still don't get it why some CPU and memory related tests are also very low. Here are some scores:

Test Item Result Benchmark
----------- ---------- -------------
CPU - compression 2054 3000
CPU - encryption 12 20
CPU - image rotation 222 300
Memory – Allocation Small block 1230 2000

Can you or someone else explain this to me? Thank you so much!

[Tahoe]

Try editing preferences to change number of logical CPUs

Be sure to edit your preferences and change the processes to reflect the
number of logical CPUs to test when testing hyperthreaded enabled CPUs.