Microsoft tweaks Experience Index for Windows 7

Nautilus Science & Technology News
February 25, 2009
By: Marco Ayllon

New performance tool better measures multi-core CPUs and drives

Microsoft Corp. has changed the PC performance rating tool Windows Experience Index for Windows 7 to better measure faster graphic cards, multi-core processors and drives.

The index's top score will go up from 5.9 to 7.9, and add several new tests to more accurately measure the performance of hard-disk and solid-state drives, says a mid-January post at the Engineering Windows 7 blog.

Windows Experience Index, first introduced with Windows Vista, is intended to help users discover which parts of their system needs to be upgraded for Windows and applications to run well, or if the PC needs to be replaced.


Reviews of the first public beta of Windows 7 indicate that it generally runs faster and more smoothly than Vista, despite the two sharing a very similar codebase.

But critics have alredy begun questioning the revamped index's usefulness and accuracy. One beta tester, going by the handle 'Hurricane Andrew' on Microsoft's MSDN developer Web site, complained that an older hard drive using the slower IDE interface was awarded a much higher rating than his newer, larger hard drive using the faster SATA-II interface.

"I hardly believe that's accurate," he wrote.

Others complained that the new scale, from 1.0 to 7.9, was counterintuitive, or that the criteria for drive performance should not have changed between Vista and Windows 7 for consistency's sake.

Michael Cherry, an analyst with the independent firm Directions on Microsoft, said he "doesn't put much stock" in the index's scores.

A Microsoft representative said in an e-mail that the company was "closely monitoring" input from beta testers aboutWindows 7, including for the new index, but would not say if changes would result from the feedback.

Windows 7 apps may not run faster on quad-cores
The Windows Experience Index, found under the System Icon in Vista or Windows 7's Control Panel, quickly scans hardware befor delivering five results, including for: processor, memory (RAM), graphics for general desktop work, gaming graphics performance, and the primary hard drive's performance. The results are based on the rated specifications of each component, not on their actual performance history in the scanned PC.

Because PC performance is often determined by the speed of the slowest-performing component, the index's "base score" is defined by the lowest of the five scores, rather than an average of all five.

PCs with a base score of between 1.0 and 2.9 can run Office applications and surf the Web, but not play games and videos or use Vista and Windows 7's Aero graphical user interface, Microsoft says.

Computers with a base score in the 3.0-range should be able to run Aero and most of Vista and Windows 7's new features, while those with scores in the 4.0 to 5.0-range should be able to enjoy high-definition (HD) video and 3-D gaming.

For more information visit: Official Microsoft Windows 7 Blog