What is the Windows Experience Index?
This built-in performance analyzer is found in the Control Panel under Performance Information and Tools. Your Windows Experience Index is the lowest of five scores assigned to your system’s CPU, memory, basic graphics capability, 3D graphics power, and hard disk speed. Microsoft hopes that the Windows Experience Index will replace the lengthier enumeration of system requirements found on software boxes. Instead of reading that a game requires at least 1GB of RAM, a Pixel Shader 2.0 graphics board, and a 2-GHz CPU, for example, you’d see that a game requires a WEI score of, say, 3.2 or better.
The Windows Experience Index measures the capability of your computer’s hardware and software configuration and expresses this measurement as a number called a base score. A higher base score generally means that your computer will perform better and faster than a computer with a lower base score, especially when performing more advanced and resource-intensive tasks. Each hardware component receives an individual subscore. Your computer’s base score is determined by the lowest subscore. For example, if the lowest subscore of an individual hardware component is 2.6, then the base score is 2.6. The base score is not an average of the combined subscores. You can use the base score to confidently buy programs and other software that are matched to your computer’s base score. For example, if your computer has a base score of 3.3, then you can confidently purchase any software designed for this version of Windows that requires a computer with a base score of 3 or lower.
“My computer is a 5.5. Yours is a 4.8. My computer is way better than yours!” This just might be the future of technology bragging on the elementary school playground. The Windows Experience Index is a technology, native to Windows Vista machines, that assigns a numeric value to the performance of a computer. The higher the number, the faster that computer can perform common tasks. Windows Vista runs 5 different tests to determine the performance of the processor, memory, graphics, gaming graphics and primary hard disk. At the conclusion of each test, a number (from 1 to 5.9) is assigned to that component. The most important of those numbers is whichever is the lowest. That number becomes the Windows Experience Index Base Score. For example, my monster of a desktop ranks 5.9 for 4 components and 5.5 for the fifth. That makes the system’s base score a 5.5.
. This built-in performance analyzer is found in the Control Panel under Performance Information and Tools. Your Windows Experience Index is the lowest of five scores assigned to your system’s CPU, memory, basic graphics capability, 3D graphics power, and hard disk speed. Microsoft hopes that the Windows Experience Index will replace the lengthier enumeration of system requirements found on software boxes. Instead of reading that a game requires at least 1GB of RAM, a Pixel Shader 2.0 graphics board, and a 2-GHz CPU, for example, you’d see that a game requires a WEI score of, say, 3.2 or better.
. This built-in performance analyzer is found in the Control Panel under Performance Information and Tools. Your Windows Experience Index is the lowest of five scores assigned to your system’s CPU, memory, basic graphics capability, 3D graphics power, and hard disk speed. Microsoft hopes that the Windows Experience Index will replace the lengthier enumeration of system requirements found on software boxes. Instead of reading that a game requires at least 1GB of RAM, a Pixel Shader 2.0 graphics board, and a 2-GHz CPU, for example, you’d see that a game requires a WEI score of, say, 3.2 or better.
