How accurate is Windows Experience Index?

I run the test on my E-System laptop and in a friend of mine Dell laptop and the results are weired. As you can see from the picture my Celeron [email protected] scores better than my friend Core 2 Duo [email protected] despite the fact that the T7300 FSB is 200MHz while my overclocked T1400's FSB is only 166MHz. Also My Celeron has 8 times less L2 cache.

Also, my integrated SiS GPU is better than his nVidia Geforce 8400GS in Windows Aero.

Any comments?

 

WEI is only good if you want a thumbsketch and don't want to download a real benchmarking tool.

 

IMO, the only good WEI is, would be when determining if a machine can run Aero. Otherwise it's useless.

 

In my experience WEI for CPU is pretty accurate. Your Celeron runs at a higher clock so it's not unthinkable.

If you want to doublecheck run HyperPI or Wprime.

 

So, when does more cache make a difference? I mean when 4MB of cache is better than 512KB?

 

It helps certain tasks, here are some examples.

 

The graphics subscore (not gaming) is a measure of 2D rendering capability. I've sen plenty of GPUs that scores 7 on the gaming, and a 5.* on the Aero. Discrete GPUs are just optimized for 3D. It doesn't mean you can't turn on all the Aero bells and whistles.

 

Most graphics card (Desktop wise) perform similarly in 2d applications. Tomshardware did an article about it.. Good stuff :>

@OP
WEI is not accurate in the sense it will give you a good demonstration of the real world performance. It is merely for comparing of two computers to see where each stand, which it does fairly good in that respect..

 

I think WEI is ok to compare different components of your laptop processor vs memory etc.. but it is quite useless to compare 2 laptop as it give weird results like yours way too often
even that sometimes i get different results when i re-run wei so it's more use-less than ful
Show Us Your WEI - Windows 7 Forums
http://forum.notebookreview.com/des...-your-wei-windows-experience-index-score.html

to show you how wei is useless
(i didn't modify the image with photoshop or paint or anything except resizing in order to printscreen but there is a trick it's even simplier)

 

I only look at WEI to see changes when I upgrade hardware or drivers.

To the OP: Keep in mind that clockspeed (GHz) is only really applicable between two processors of the same class that have the same specs, cache, transistors, memory bandwidth, etc. Also, names that Intel uses, like "Celeron, Pentium and Core2 Duo" are virtually meaningless. They are nothing but marketing schemes to wring the most money out of you.

i.e. -- they'll take a C2Duo and halve the L2 cache and call it a Pentium. That's exactly what they did with the "Pentium Dual Core T4300" which is actually a C2Duo T6600 (or T6500) with half the L2 cache. All other specs of the 2 chips are identical and the "so-called" Pentium outperformed the other one on PassMark CPU benchmark. Go figure! So, the point is, names and clockspeeds can be misleading and like someone else said, cache doesn't figure in to most benchmark scores.

 

Yes, we know you can modify the file that WEI generates to make it say anything you want. That doesn't make WEI "useless". So, what's your point?

 

my point is wei can give anything as a result especially when you compare it with someone else laptop so naton should not bother with it and should go for more accurate and reliable benchmarks

 

I wonder if it is some kind of thread where people can battle against each other with WEI
I have 6.8 btw

 

Knock yourself out:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/win...windows-experience-index-score-notebooks.html

 

Search the threads; that party was thrown long ago.

 

Thanks.

Too bad i couldnt join the fun while everyone was active in that thread but posted my score anyway

 

No...just no. Just because you can change the score yourself in some .xml file hidden within the Windows folder on your hard drive it doesn't make WEI instantly useless. The XML is just where the scores are stored and where it can read off them for easy access.

 

I find it inaccurate! My experience: I swapped my original 5400 rpm drive with a noticably faster 7200 rpm - score remained absolutely the same although I have about 60% speed enhancement!!

 

ok then explain me how i can get sometimes 4.5 sometimes 7.5 for my ssd in WEI
and for the same cpu someone will get 4.2 when the other one get 6.3
another example... gracy123

 

Background Processes?

I never tried to say it was accurate - my point was, that just because the score is stored in an XML that is user changeable, it doesn't mean that it can be anything. Being able to change the score yourself and the benchmarking utility are completely separate from each other.

 

That's because of the 5.9 score cap on HDDs. It's a marketing tool by Microsoft to make SSDs (even more) desirable.

 

Is that official? Post a link please! I only find rumors about this and just as many people saying they have over 5.9 with a HDD.

But it is true that mine was 5.9 with the 5400 RPM HDD and continues to be with the 7200 RPM.

This is something interesting to know but prooves ones again how unreliable WEI is!!

 

Only 10K RPM HDDs break the cap, I think.

But, yeah, it does at least prove that for HDDs.

 

If you are using vista then 5.9 is the cap for everything I think. My friends T8300 has a higher score than my X9000 because he is on windows 7. I never really cared for the WEI scores.

 

Microsoft capped hard drives at 5.9 for one reason:
They don't see hard drives lasting much longer as the place where OS' are installed. I believe you need a solid state drive to get anything higher. Bunch of other crap too, like cache boosting performance of hard drives etc.
You can disable write caching on the hard drive, or modifying the WEI configuration to ignore caching. Then it will give you the real performance score of your hard drive. Do so with caution, it is know that disable write cache may cause issues with your operating system, or enabling it back again.

 

I'm talking about 7, however, where conventional HDDs have a 5.9 cap, but nothing else does.

 

10k RPM hard drives can't break the cap either. Here's the velociraptor 300gb.
As I said you need to disable write to cache, or perhaps modify the configuration file for WEI. Other then that hard drive will be capped at 5.9 unless it's a SSD.
velociraptor 300gb wei - Google Search

 

With either a P7450 or a P9600 i have exactly the same 6,2 cpu score. Accurate huh ;-)

I can confirm that any HDDs will always score 5,9.