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Ok guys I just got THIS baby and everything pretty much works just fine with Win7 except the system was showing a nice 5.9 General Windows Experience Index rating with the default Windows Vista X64 version, after upgrading and/or clean installing 7 all ratings went nicely up except for the "Primary Hardisk" rating which shows only a 3.0, this also brings the General System rating down to 3.0, just like in my old PC, any ideas what might be causing it and what can I do to improve the general rating?

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Ok, after disabling it general rating went up to 5.5, still lower than Vista but much better than it was, I really would hate having to upgrade the hard drive as this is a new system which is not too cheap either lol and now Im a little concerned about data loss though, I wonder why Vista shows higher rating on the same hard drive.

Don't forget to update your sig. That's a sweet rig. :D

Here's a general overview of what they tweaked in Win7 WEI index scoring.

  Quote
Microsoft has lifted the veil on some of the changes made to the Windows Experience Index system in Windows 7.

The Windows Experience Index (also known as WEI) is a suite of system tests that give the end user an idea of the performance capabilities of their PC. I’ve talked before about WEI in Vista so I won’t cover that ground again (refer to this post for background information), but I will take a look at some of the most significant changes to WEI in Windows 7.

Windows 7 raises the top WEI score from 5.9 to 7.9. This takes into account faster hardware that’s been released since Vista went RTM.

Five areas tested stays the same:

- Processor

- Memory (RAM)

- Graphics (general desktop work)

- Gaming Graphics (typically 3D)

- Primary Hard Disk

The scoring rules have been changed, which means that scores on identical hardware relative to Vista might not be the same.

WEI scores of 6 and 7 represent high end systems.

to score a 6 or 7 in terms of gaming graphics, a system will have to support DirectX 10 and WDDM 1.1 driver. DirectX 9 support only, along with WDDM 1.0 drivers, will cap score at 5.9.

Hard drive scores for drives exhibiting what Microsoft calls “problematic” have been capped under Beta 1 of Windows 7.

As guidance, Microsoft claim that most quad-core CPUs will be able to hit high 6 to low 7 range, with 8-core rigs able to approach 7.9.

I’ve yet to see a system that scores a full 7.9 under Windows 7. To be honest, it might not be possible right now. As far as I can tell the Core i7 Extreme 965 doesn’t score a 7.9, in which case to get a high score for the CPU you’d need an 8-core dual-CPU rig like a Skulltrail, but that platform doesn’t support SLI or Crossfire, so you’d be hit on the graphics side. Maybe an insane overclock on the 965 would work, but that only goes so far. I’m sure you’d also need a quad-GPU graphics card too. Oh, and a RAID 0 array of really fast drives, maybe SSDs. And add to that fast DDR3.

Given this it may not be possible to hit the magical 7.9 score just yet.

And disable 'write caching' is better? It's a bloody benchmark. Don't hinder the slowest component in your computer to get a better rating. The reason for the 3.0 cap is because your drive has a high latency rating. Disabling stuff like 'writer cache' would actually be slower for yourself in real world scenarios. People take WEI too seriously. There is reasons for the capped score. Don't be stupid.

It's like people who disable stuff like Superfetch etc. These are stuff to actually help the system as a whole.

  Darconf said:
A raid 0 will net you a 6.0

wow Im getting 7.3, 7.3, 7.9, 6.5, 6.0 with a Q6600 @ 3.2 and 8gb DDR 8500 on an x38 board and a gtx260+

think Ill skip an upgrade to i7 , after seeing those scores :huh:

Do remember. Your system is overclocked, his isn't. Also, it's an OEM machine, so cheap stuff have been used, for example, his hard drive.

  NeoFlux said:
And disable 'write caching' is better? It's a bloody benchmark. Don't hinder the slowest component in your computer to get a better rating. The reason for the 3.0 cap is because your drive has a high latency rating. Disabling stuff like 'writer cache' would actually be slower for yourself in real world scenarios. People take WEI too seriously. There is reasons for the capped score. Don't be stupid.

It's true. Disabling 'write caching' will give you better rating, but bad disk performance.

Ok I have been thinking that perhaps I should buy a new HD and create a RAID array; I read RAID 0 is the best for performance however is riskier in terms of data loss, should I use RAID 5 instead? will this type of array offer the same level of speed and performance as RAID 0?

Here is good article.

IMO, the following system would get a perfect 7.9 in Windows 7:

Apple Mac Pro:

2 X Quad Core Xeon Processor @ 3.0 GHz

DDR3 1600MHz RAM [Assuming it supports it in the future]

15000 RPM Hard Drive

2 X nVIDIA GTX 295 [if Apple supports SLi]

and of course Windows 7

Okay, let's get this straight...

Turning off write caching will give you a better WEI score but poorer actual performance?

If that's true then it MUST point to a bug in the way Windows 7 scores the hard drive.

Regardless of the fact that some drives are worse at caching than others, they should all perform better with it enabled, yes?

Just trying to apply some logic to a confusing situation. Anyone care to offer the definitive answer!?!?

  primortal said:
I belive this is a bug in Win7. I wouldn't go nuts about the drive score until Win7 is near release....

It's not a bug, it was done on purpose to point out hard drives with bad latency.

  wiggly1uk2000 said:
Okay, let's get this straight...

Turning off write caching will give you a better WEI score but poorer actual performance?

If that's true then it MUST point to a bug in the way Windows 7 scores the hard drive.

Regardless of the fact that some drives are worse at caching than others, they should all perform better with it enabled, yes?

Just trying to apply some logic to a confusing situation. Anyone care to offer the definitive answer!?!?

As you can see with the post above. Disabling the Write Cache still gave him a bad score. It might be a bug with the Write Cache thing, but bad latency means he will be stuck at 3.0.

  Ely said:
Ok I have been thinking that perhaps I should buy a new HD and create a RAID array; I read RAID 0 is the best for performance however is riskier in terms of data loss, should I use RAID 5 instead? will this type of array offer the same level of speed and performance as RAID 0?

RAID-5 is designed more for redundancy, not performance.

If you want performance. Go with RAID-0. But if you want back up. Keep all the important data on a separate hard drive. You should do this any way like.

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