Tuning and Benchmarking a Dell GX270 SFF P4 - Part 3

I upgraded memory from 1 GB to the system max of 2 GB expecting a nice performance jump as the easiest upgrade to a PC is to add memory. Nope. The overall performance actually went DOWN.

 So, let's look at the individual benchmarks to see what happened.

Overall rating went from 92.6 to 88.3 - a decrease of 4.6%.  Hmm.  Let's compare individual tests; Prior to memory upgrade CPU Mark of 329.8, after upgrade 328.8 not too much difference there. Prior to upgrade 2D Graphics Mark of 296.1, after upgrade 296.3 again, not to much difference. Prior to upgrade 3D Graphics Mark of 9.3, after 8.8. For some reason adding system memory slowed down the 3D graphics test by 5.4%. Continuing, prior to upgrade Memory Mark of 486.1, after upgrade to 2 GB, 577, an 18.7% increase. Close to what one would expect but not enough to compensate for the slower graphics hit. Finally looking at Disk Mark before 346.4 and after 341.9. Again a slowdown but only about 1.3%.
So I think I will go back, remove the GeForce card and compare the results with a 2 GB system memory upgrade.

Tuning and Benchmarking a Dell GX270 SFF P4 - part 2

I was going to add additional memory as the first upgrade to the base unit, but the integrated graphics chip bombed the 3D benchmarking test a couple of times so I decided to do a quick video upgrade. I added back the NVIDIA GeForce4 MX440 AGP card and when I rebooted the BIOS automatically recognized the card and overrode the integrated chip. I ran 4 tests and the 3D test showed a 7.5% improvement while the memory test  got 4.7% faster probably because the video card has its own memory and doesn't have to share system memory like the integrated chip.

Overall the system performance achieved a 7% speed increase with the video card upgrade.

Next step will be a memory upgrade.