Why my Windows Experience Index is so low?

I've recentry bought a Dell Latitude E6400 laptop with a Core 2 Duo T9900. My CPU score is only 2.3 in Win7 and 3 in Vista. Why are those scores so low?

The Pentium Dual CoreT2310 scores over 4 in my old laptop.

 

I take it you are talking about your processor subscore? Don't sweat it. It doesn't matter. WEI is a joke.

 

WEI is not a joke, and the result is very irritating. you see both cores in taskmanager?

and you're not by any chance in powersave mode, but in balanced mode?

 

For years I have been trying to find a way to explain how WEI works and why its not reliable as any form of benchmark.

Explaining it technically is difficult but I finally thought of a good analogy for it.

"Using WEI to determine the performance of your computer is like using the speedometer on your car to determine how fast it can go"

Its almost the same if you think about it. Just theoretical numbers that "should" be possible but are often not, and if they are not it does not mean the computer (or car) is not performing as it is supposed too.

Deeper into the analogy it would still hold true. If you were shopping for a high performance car you would do so by looking at the engine & horsepower (CPU & Clock Speed) not by what the speedometer reading says.

So the moral is just know your equipment and how its supposed to perform, not how a silly test rates it.

 

that's just bollocks. computers are not like cars. the benchmarks that run are identical on each system. if for some reason one performs much slower, resulting in a much lower number, there is a problem.

if you have different types of hw, you can't 100% compare it trough WEI, as it obviously focuses on it's benches, other benches focus on other things (thats why, to compare platforms completely, one tests a lot of things). but for same components, the result is clear: faster cpu, higher WEI. if NOT, there is a problem.


so the moral is, grow over your anectotal knowledge of "i know better than microsoft", and help the OP.

 

Where you by chance testing your laptop while on battery mode? It might have throttled the CPU down, cause my SU7300 Core 2 Duo in my Latitude 13 gets me a 4.1

 

Your wrong, there are marked cases of low WEI scores just because the benchmark didnt recognize drivers and things of that nature.

The G73 had super low gpu scores with a certain driver set despite performing exactly the same in every game and application. It was a very clear case of WEI being BS and not performing like a standard benchmark by reading actual performance but instead just doing more of a lookup function.

I have seen other cases of WEI just giving stupidly false numbers for other systems as well where the given score is not proper for the system despite working fine.

I can point you to many threads where people had to bypass WEI just to enable AERO because the system had issues with the video card drivers saying it couldn't run AERO when it could with ease.

If somebody wants to compare gpu performance to another computer they should run something like 3dmark vantage and look at GPU scores of similar computers.

If they want to test the CPU they should do something like run Wprime and compare to other similar CPU's

WEI is not displaying very good consistency between machines with similar configurations and often seems to spit out garbage numbers that make no sense.

 

Hrm well I can attest to that WEI is personally messed up, it rates my Vertex 1 in my i7 desktop higher than the Vertex 2 in my Latitude 13 even with latest IRST drivers..

 

A good benchmark lets you know what it is testing, gives repeatable results, and allows different hardware to be compared to each other. WEI meets none of these criteria.

 

well, if windows doesn't recognize the driver, then you have a problem.

and if the CPU (that doesn't need a driver) test fails, then it's a problem.

 

it meets all of those. it's documented (as is anything microsoft), it's repeatable (but not all of hw responds 100% the same in repeated tests, which is wellknown), and it allows hw to be compared to each other.

it meets all those criterias. but enjoy the false-knowledge and spreading it.

 

Windows does recognize the driver, as I said all applications and games and everything and anything to do with the gpu worked fine. ONLY WEI MESSED UP

 

cpu does not use a driver => your argument, while having anectotal truth in it, doesn't matter.


in other notes, there are documented reasons why wei sometimes doesn't enable aero, independent on gpu drivers that work. as said, it's all there. but this was mostly an issue with amount of available ram, on vista. don't know (doesn't bother me) if it's still that way on win7.

 

I never said CPU driver, you really are losing it man.

I said GPU and was talking about AERO as well that uses the GPU.

 

I tried it with the charger plugged into the main, and all the drivers were properly installed.

I know that WEI is not a proper benchmarck, but I just find it odd that the score is so low.

 

a stab in the dark, try updating the intel chipset drivers.

 

yes, and i said that's absolutely irrelevant to the topic, as it's the CPU here. which doesn't use drivers.

 

I'm already using the latest drivers from Dell.

 

Find your chipset and update it from Intel's website. With the E6400 you either have a GM/PM45

 

WEI is not a benchmark, its exactly as it means Windows EXPERIENCE INDEX.

Its designed to score how well the hardware installed will run Windows 7, not how well it will compete with another machine. It only runs tests that the Windows 7 environment requires.

I do suggest running individual benchmarks for each hardware over WEI.

 

My cousin was so bored with this WEI that he just hacked it to 99,9 it was pretty funny actually. It took him the better part of an entire day screwing around with the permissions. Initially it was to see if he could force Aero-Glass to be on but afterwards he just wanted to find out how he could do it.

As long as the WEI isn't serious and your processor isn't running at 1/3 of it's best then I wouldn't worry about it.

Get CPU-Z and let it tell you the truth about your processor.
Oh and the guy before me is absolutely right, Microsoft states that the WEI absolutely not a method that you can use to try and calculate how good your computer is. It's only a numerical representation of how well your operating system will perform through your computers hardware.. lol...

 

+1 good way to stay it.

Better than my "lookup" that I call it.

 

It took your cousin the better part of a day to edit an XML file? (don't disable UAC as it suggests)

 

I'll try that.

 

I think Windows installs a driver for the CPU.
I changed from a P8600 to a T9900 and after Windows restart the "Hardware changed and new device installed"(or similar) message box popped up and a restart of Windows was adviced.

 

That is not messed up.

Your i7 desktop idles faster than your L13 maxes out.

WEI is accurate in this case.

(To prove it, switch SSD's and you'll see the i7's score go up as well as the L13's score (possibly) go down).

 

-_- lol that's a good point, I did disable EIST so my 970 runs @ 3.2 GHz all the time. And I pretty much only game so pretty much it's always Turbo Boost'ed.

But point in case the WEI shouldn't be different per computer, it should be the same test. The Vertex 2 should completely and utterly destroy the original Vertex in terms of raw performance, but according to WEI it doesn't. I understand hardware can be iffy sometimes, but a benchmark should be able to reproduce very similar results. There shouldn't be huge discrepancies for your hardware unless it is failing/defective.

 

But WEI should be different on different computers.

Depending on the O/S version installed.

Depending on the hardware and peripherals attached.

Depending on the drivers used.

Depending on the specific apps installed (if they're installing running processes even during bootup/idle).

Yes, huge discrepancies for the same hardware (SSD's, for example).

That is why an AMD system will never be purchased by me in the foreseeable future: hardware, chipset, drivers and 'features' = one big (potential) headache. No matter what 'benchmarks' rate them at.

Once again, V2 will 'completely and utterly destroy' the original V - in the same exact system. WEI is showing that accurately in your case, imo.

 

He'd never used Windows 7 before let alone Vista and had no idea how to edit permissions to de-authorise the .xml so he could edit it. He also takes pretty long coffee breaks but yeah, the better part of a day to mess around lol.

If the OP has an issue with his low rating he/she can change it and brag about it later hahaha.

 

Guys I think I know why it is so low. I run orthos on my laptop and the CPU frequency was only 800MHz (SuperFLM all the time). I use the tag number and let Dell advice what drivers should be installed. The recommended list contained 9 drivers. I think I need to download and install something to sort the power management so to allow the CPU to run at full speed.

 

Check the bios to make sure that speedstep is enabled. So your laptop has been running at only 800Mhz but you never felt the difference?

 

speedstep is enabled... if it was not the CPU would run (I would imagine) at full speed all the time (i.e. 3.06GHz). I found this in dell's website. It said that it is not required for laptop purchased after 2007. I think I'll give it a go anyway.

 

You didnt do the BSEL mod on it right? or have RMclock running?

 

Without speedstep it actually reverts to the lowest multiplier. Although that should still make it go faster than 800Mhz. Probably some power saving downclocking thing gone awry.

 

Just check the current speed in CPU-Z. If it's not 3.06GHz (3.2GHz with IDA) while running the CPU test in the WEI, you have a power savings problem.

All the WEI catfighting aside, my only problem with it is that the hard drive scores seem to be artificially limited to 5.9 (my laptop hard drive scores 5.9 with or without RAID-0). Otherwise, I'm perfectly happy comparing WEIs as a very basic method of checking whether my games will run fine (see the Games folder in the Windows 7 start menu).

 

I think you can still duke your WEI scores like you could in Vista by going to the winsat/datastore/ directory and editing some .xml file. Thats the reason why the top rated system on WEI Share has 7.9 in everything despite having an atom processor, 2gb RAM and integrated graphics.

 

I downloaded a patch for vista but didn't test it yet. The don't have a similar patch for 7. I'll keep you posted.

 

WEI isn't the greatest benchmark, but I find that it is usually fairly accurate. I'd rather have it there than not.... the "aero performance" is kinda jacked.. I dunno how they come up with that one. If its low, I'd try plugging in and running the test again