2. Maximize the Windows Performance Rating
With
the introduction of the fancy new Glass interface in Vista (covered in
the last section), Microsoft is at last taking display performance
seriously in a non-gaming context.
Enter the Windows Experience Index,
a numeric score that supposedly indicates the baseline performance
level of your PC's hardware. To view your PC's current score, open the
Performance Information and Tools page in Control Panel (Figure 3).
Here, you'll see the five performance indexes that Vista calculates:
Processor
This
measures your CPU's number-crunching prowess; specifically, how quickly
it can compress and decompress data, encryption and decrypt data,
compute a hash, and encode a video stream. For perspective, here are
benchmarks from a handful of Processor scores culled from the Web.
|
Processor
|
Processor subscore
|
Processor
|
Processor subscore
|
|---|
|
Dual Intel Xeon 5160 @3.0Ghz
|
5.9
|
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ @2.2Ghz
|
4.9
|
|
Intel Core2 Duo 6600 @2.40GHz
|
5.4
|
AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ @2GHz
|
4.8
|
|
Intel Core2 Duo 6400 @2.13GHz
|
5.4
|
Intel T2500 Core Duo @2GHz
|
4.8
|
|
Intel Core2 Duo T7600 @2.33GHz
|
5.2
|
AMD Turion 64 X2 Mobile @1.6Ghz
|
4.7
|
|
AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+ @2.6Ghz
|
5.1
|
Intel Pentium 4 @ 2.80GHz
|
4.1
|
- Memory
This
measures partly how fast your memory is, but also how much of it your
PC has (not including any shared as video memory). Here's how Vista
limits the maximum memory benchmark you can attain, regardless of how
fast your RAM is.
|
Amount of RAM
|
Max. subscore
|
Amount of RAM
|
Max. subscore
|
|---|
|
Less than 256 MB
|
1.0
|
513–704 MB
|
3.5
|
|
257–500 MB
|
2.0
|
705–960 MB
|
3.9
|
|
501–512 MB
|
2.9
|
961 MB–1.5 GB
|
4.5
|
Want a higher Memory score? Add more RAM. (It'll have the meager side effect of making your PC faster, too.)
Graphics
This value is the one most closely tied to your PC's ability to render the Glass interface , and also indicates your PC's ability to play
back video. The score is based on the video bandwidth (the speed at
which your video card can move data, as well as the amount of video
memory you have).
A video card that doesn't support DirectX 9 automatically earns a score no higher than 1.0. One for which you don't have a Windows Vista Display Driver Model (WDDM) driver can't receive a score higher than 1.9. To use the Glass interface, you must have a Graphics score of at least 2.0. Glass should run beautifully on a system ranked at 5.0 or higher. An updated driver will usually raise your Graphics score. |
|
Gaming graphics
This measures your video card's 3D prowess, specifically the frames per second it can attain in certain situations.
Like the Graphics
benchmark, described previously, there are minimum requirements for
certain scores. If your video card doesn't support Direct3D 9, it earns a
score no higher than 1.0. If support for Pixel Shader 3.0 is absent,
then you won't see a score higher than 4.9, regardless of other factors.
If you believe your card is capable of these things, yet your score
seems unfairly low, your driver is likely to blame. |
|
Primary hard disk
This
measures the transfer rate, the speed at which your PC can read and
write information to the drive on which Windows is installed.
Off to the right, you'll see a Base score
emblazoned on a Windows logo. This score isn't an average of the
subscores to the left, but rather an indication of the lowest score—the
weakest link in the chain, so to speak.
Don't panic if your Processor
score is a hair lower than your neighbor's down the street, even though
you have a faster CPU. (Because your neighbor is probably worried about
your slightly better Graphics score, even though his video card cost $40 more than yours.)
Rather,
use these scores only to provide quantitative feedback for the upgrades
or tweaks you're doing. And keep in mind that these scores, although
based on calculations, aren't quite as rigid as they seem. For instance,
refresh the index right after booting Windows, and you may see a 0.1
variance from a PC that has been scored after being on all day. Install a
new graphics driver, and your Graphics subscore may go up a few tenths while Gaming graphics dives slightly.
Click the View and print details
link to shed some more light on exactly how Vista is calculating your
PC's score. You can print the results here, or better yet, highlight
everything (Ctrl-A), copy the text to the clipboard (Ctrl-C), and then paste into Notepad (Ctrl-V) to save the results to a file. |
|
2.1. Update my score
Click either the Refresh Now button on top or the Update my score
link down below to rescan your system and perform the benchmarks again.
But don't be surprised when you don't see any progress bar or other
indication that Windows is testing your system; other than periodic
sluggishness in the mouse, occasional screen flashes, or increased hard
disk activity, you shouldn't notice much of anything happening.
But
don't let that fool you: to maximize your scores, make sure you close
any running applications (including background tasks like antivirus
programs and anything that uses your network), let go of your mouse, and
then go get a cup of tea so you avoid doing anything that may interfere
with the scoring. It's not unusual for scoring to take 10–30 minutes,
even on a fast PC.
If see this error or something similar:
Cannot complete the requested operation. An unknown error has caused WinSAT to fail in an unexpected way.
it either means you clicked the Refresh Now
button while Vista was already re-examining your system, or there's a
problem with your video driver that's causing the benchmark system to
crash. Update your driver, restart Windows, and try again.
