If you're interested in ReadyBoost performance (as I am), you might be interested to know that some of the fastest USB drives on the market right now are..

- Kingston Data Traveller Elite (best, $$)
- Lexar JumpDrive Lightning (best, $$)
- OCZ Rally series (good, $)

These came out on top in these recent USB flash drive roundups:

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/321/4
http://www.anandtech.com/memory/showdoc.aspx?i=2549&p=1
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/flash2005.ars/1

There can be a very large difference between performance of the "generic" USB flash drives and the fancier stuff. So beware!

So is there a way to check the Vista score without actually downloading, burning, and installing the whole OS?

What's your home machine's specs? My home machine has e-wang envy and requires immediate upgrade!

Tyrannicus-- I'm not sure. There is a compatibility check you can run from XP using the Vista RC1 DVD.

Tristan-- home machine specs:

Athlon X2 4800+ CPU
Radeon X1900XTX Video
WD Raptor 74 GB HDD
2GB RAM

But if I was building a machine today, I'd go with the latest nVidia 7 series video cards due to their better watts/performance ratio, and one of the cheaper Intel Core Duo 2 CPUs.

Definitely get a Raptor though. I can't emphasize enough how much faster a machine "feels" with one of these 10K RPM hard drives as the boot drive.

Tyrannicus, it's available for XP users:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/getready/upgradeadvisor/default.mspx

Another interesting aspect of the WEI is that it provides a qualitative measurement of the performance degradation imposed by various virtualization environments. How much slower is Parallels under OS X than Boot Camp? Now you can measure...

well, is it irony or cynicism that motivates running this right after the Gas Bag??

methinks that the Wintel monopoly is playing into the hands of linux. back when M$ still called it DOS, a favored description of the state of PC-dom was that the three applications of interest were word processing, spreadsheets, and word processing. that's still true, modulo gaming (which may well devolve to its purpose-built devices). 15 Gig base??????? pleeeeeze.

<i>Vista requires 10x the drive space, 8x the memory, and 4x the CPU power. considering it's been 6 long years since the last release of a mainstream desktop operating from Microsoft. </i>

The way that you can say that unchallenged is really odd. Think of this as a software developer. If I made the next release of my software that fixed a few bugs, added a few new features, but if you wanted to do the same stuff as before with it (in the case of windows, web browsing, email, word processor and spreadsheets) - without doing anything substantially new with the software, it ran four times as slow in eight times as much memory - I'd be appalled.

But this is business as usual in OSs. Sad, really.

> without doing anything substantially new with the software

See the list of new features in Vista:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Features_new_to_Windows_Vista

It's a substantial improvement over XP. For example, the control panel and start menu are HUGELY improved and worth their weight in gold as far as I'm concerned.

Is there any protection against editing that xml file ? As you say, it could become a selling argument for OEM's and also when selling on ebay or whatever.

If it's easy to edit then that could become a huge problem for people that don't know much about computers but think they bought a great computer because the score said so.

OK, I'm not trying to be a jerk, but I sat there looking at the scores and thought, "You just bought a brand new machine and it's rated at less than 50% on this scale for running this new OS and you're happy with it?" Then I realized that the scale probably went 0 to 5 rather than 0 to 10. Expect the same reaction from non-technical users.

You do realize that this will eventually be changed by marketing to highlight the highest instead of lowest score don't you? And it will end up being like those 20 inch monitors that only had 5 inches of actual viewing area. (OK, maybe I'm exaggerating there.) Not that I'm cynical.

> Then I realized that the scale probably went
> 0 to 5 rather than 0 to 10.
> -- Darrin

But your first guess that the scale went from 0-10 is probably correct. Note that the last three scores were 5.9, 5.8, & 5.7. At the very least the scale goes to 6, but more likely 10.

> At the very least the scale goes to 6, but more likely 10

I am quite certain the scale has no arbitrary upper limit. I expect to see CPU and video scores of 50+ by the time Vista gets on in age..

According to many of the comments on the OCZ Rally series (the new drives) they fail the ReadyBoost test.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/CustRatingReview.asp?Item=N82E16820227112

This is for the 2GB drive.

> they fail the ReadyBoost test.

Those comments, based on the date, refer to the Beta 2. The ReadyBoost support has improved a lot for RC1; it's highly likely the OCZ Rally will work. The crappy (speed-wise) PQI I-stick I have works fine, and it's mediocre in speed at best.

I built my home computer in 2003. Specs: P4 2.8GHz/533MHz FSB, 512MB 1066MHz RDRAM on 32-bit modules (which you can't get in larger capacity modules, so I can't upgrade the RAM), 120GB Hitachi DeskStar 7200rpm HDD with 8MB cache. To test Vista I added an Asus Radeon 9550 Pro card (under 50 including VAT) and a 160GB Hitachi DeskStar 7200rpm 8MB cache HDD. The original nVidia GeForce 4 Ti4800SE will never have WDDM drivers as it isn't DX9-class.

The video card scores 2.1 on desktop graphics, and so Vista RC1 Setup does not enable Aero. Doing this manually (right-click desktop, Personalize, click the top link, select 'Windows Aero' from the theme list, OK out) results in a fine Glass experience.

I'll either be investigating USB pen drives, or buying a new machine - probably the latter as I expect a Core 2 Duo E6300 to massively outperform this while consuming a fraction of the power. Having said that, Vista performance is actually pretty good. The thing that will stop me upgrading is that eMbedded Visual C++ doesn't work.

5 is the highest score on the scale and is supposed be be the rank of the best companent out when vista was made must have made that part 2 years ago :p
the scale is never ending though, so as graphics get better the scores will just keep increasing im sure they will try and scale it somehow

The WEI scores top out at 5.9 in Vista. They are supposed to scale up over time as hardware improves and new features come into play.

I found out that the OCZ Flash Driver really don't work even on RC1. FYI, you can see the results of the Readyboost perf tests in the Windows event viewer.

'It's a substantial improvement over XP. For example, the control panel and start menu are HUGELY improved and worth their weight in gold as far as I'm concerned.'

Thats very true, I use Vista on a daily basis on my machine (using a dual boot) and I got to say Its hard for me to stand using XP compared but all things considering do these things really justify the OS being 10x bigger than XP? Surely with the modern knowlege and what not of modern coders and developers they would've been able to make the size much smaller than 15Whoopin GB?

Does the score include Sound at all? Sound Cards have varied capabilities and performance issues under DirectSound, and in game + multimedia applications. If for example you are grabbing a video and sound source, if the sound card isn't up to scrach you could get pops and sound glitches.

what i would like to know is if all the fancy processor consuming stuff in vista will turn off when i go to play a game? i dont want to waste CPU on processes which dont improve my gaming experience. i think that windows needs to make 2 OSs one for games and one for office applications. make the games OS run everything through directX or something like that and deactivate all the windows processes once a fullscreen program launches.

Here's what it says for mine under RC1:
(Asus A8N-E)

Total score = 5.0
Processor = 5.0 (AMD64 X2 4400+ 2.2Ghz)
Memory = 5.2 (2Gb 400mhz dual channel)
Graphics = 5.9, the highest score (7800GT 256mb)
Gaming = 5.8
Primary HD = 5.3 (SATA-1.5 Hitachi Deskstar 250)

(x64 version of Vista btw)

OCZ Rally2 2gbUSB drive doesnt work with Ready boost-says its too slow.

http://minpaso.goga.co.jp/

Minpaso is a service that collects the results of the performance evaluation of Windows experience index (WEI) adopted for Windows Vista, and displays the ranking.
The sidebar gadget of Windows Vista is used for the data collection.

My mean machine, P4 3.4 HT (Prescott 1MB), 768MB DDR400 RAM,
Geforce FX 5600 and 200GB Maxtor 7200RPM IDE, scored an
overall experience rating of 3.0, wow. The processor
was 4.4, graphics 3.4, Hard drive 4.9 and RAM at just 3.0

My not so small speeddemon :D

Total score = 5.8
Processor = 5.8
Memory = 5.9
Graphics = 5.9
Gaming = 5.9
Primary HD = 5.9

Damn my C2D e6700 is on 3,5ghz an still not 5.9!!

I have overall 5

Processor: 5.0
Ram:5.0
Graphics:5.9
Gaming Graphics:5.3
Primary Hard disk:5.4

this is on the 32 bit version. since my PC is 64 bit,how much difference will changing the OS make?. also how much change between 2GB DDR and 2Gb DDR2? Will either make any difference?

hrmm. I was really interested in this score when I finally installed a commercial copy of Vista on new hardware. It worked fine for me in beta. But now that I'm using vista business, I see no experience score. The Performance Information and Tools Dialog simply says Last rating: 4/20/2007, when I installed the OS, but no rating is visible and there is no update or score button to try again.

Any thoughts?

Thanks,
-Colin

Has anyone else experienced WEI reducing over time without any hardware changes? After buying my new pc I re ran WEI and some of the indexes reduced!! Did it again a few weeks later. Checked againsta new model in pc world and my pcs WEI ratings are now very much lower.

Processor: 5.9 = q6600 quad core
Ram: 5.9 = 2 gig ddr2 1033 ram
Graphics: 5.9 = 8800 gtx
Gaming Graphics: 5.9 = as above
Primary Hard disk:5.9 = 500gig 16mb sata 2 segate

i guess its time the upgraded the WEI a bit :D

Any tips for a newbie? I dusted off a dual PIII 1GHz Powerdege server and installed Vista Ultimate. Originally it had 1GB RAM and scored a 1.8 in WEI. I upgraded to 2GB and now I get a 1.7 (yes lower). The processors are a 3.0, and the graphics get a 3.5 (256MB ATI PCI bus). The disk gets a 4.5 (highest) but I see constant page faults running media center.

I'm only interested in Media Center. I'll probably never open a file or even browse the web. As is though, the audio/video pops and skips make it unusable. I've heard about ready boost, but I read that it only helps 1GB and below. Aero is turned off, as well as all the effects, and power usage is set to max perf. My memory usage is steady at about 20%, but I literally can't play a CD. Any registry settings to improve memory performance?

Thanks

This is on my Alienware Laptop:

Processor: 4.9 - Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU T7200 @ 2.00GHz
RAM: 4.5 - 2 GB DDR2 Kingston
Graphics: 3.3- ATI Radeon Mobility x1400
Gaming: 3.6 891 MB Total Memory Available
Hard Drive: 5.2- 80 GB SATA @ 7200 RPM

In response to sparky:
Try getting JkDefrag. It is the best as far as I'm concerned. It takes all the data on your hard-drive and moves it to the inner disk while defraging. You can get JkDefrag at their home page (manual install):

http://www.kessels.com/JkDefrag/

I've also built an installer for it if you want an easy install:
http://www.pages.drexel.edu/~sag47/software/jkdefrag-setup.exe
It does wonders for performance.

Clearing Prefetch helps to rebuild your system every once in a while. delete everything here:
c:\windows\Prefetch

Over time Windows will clutter the the Prefetch with programs or links that may have been deleted long ago so deleting it starts the Prefetch from scratch and allows Windows to run a little cleaner.

If you're a gamer (although I doubt you will be on that machine) then turning off SuperFetch will increase system performance greatly in before you start a game. Although I recommend running Superfetch when not ingame because it increases user performance over time. Create a batch file to do the following

Start SuperFetch:
net start superfetch

Stop SuperFetch:
net stop superfetch

Or you can hit [Win]+R and type services.msc and then scroll down to Superfetch and turn it off. But using a batch file is much easier to do when on the fly and takes less time away from gaming ;)

One last thing. Only clean the Prefetch once a month or every couple of months. If you delete it all the time then Windows doesn't have a change to build up a list of commonly accessed programs to increase performance when fetching into RAM so you would actually be degrading system performance if you delete it alot.

sparky please post and let me know how my tweaks did for you.

Here is mine
Processor 5.9 (QX6700 2.66Ghz)
Memory 5.4 (Dominator 1066 4 gigs of it)
Graphics 5.9 (BFG Geforce 8800GTX 768mb)
Gaming graphics 5.9
Primary hard disk 5.5 (4 Hard Drives each 500GB)
Globe score 5.4 :)

Hello from Cyprus.... Here is mine...

Processor 5.4 (X2 4800+ oc 2.6Ghz)
Memory 5.7 (2GB ~2x1GB~ 400MHz) dominator and bullshit.... :-D
Graphics 5.9 (Geforce 8800GTS 640mb)
Gaming graphics 5.9
Primary hard disk 5.9 (2 x 200GB seagate raid0 )

OC your computers my friends.... Play a little with the timings of the memory and you will see boost on overall performance...

My friend Playerman666 the score of your memory is only 5.4???? With corsair dominators? Why?? Something is wrong with the configuration...

(sorry for my very bad english ;) )

mine are really bad...and I mean REALLY bad...

processor: 3.6 (Pentium M 1.73 GHz)
Memory: 3.9 (758MB RAM)
Graphics 1.9 (Intel 915/910 ERxpress CHipset)
Gaming Graphics: 1.0
Primary Hard Disk: 4.2 (40GB total)

Base Score: 1.0!!!!

So see if you can get worse than those scores!

But we still don't know how we can ran the score from an XP SP2 machine.
The Vista upgrade advisor points to elements that need attention before you can even upgrade to Vista (software, hardware, conflicts, etc). It does not give you a user experience index for vista...

The only thing I can think of when it doesn't exist... finding a VirtualAppliance with Vista and running this... but it will slow down the average pc ofcourse.

PS: My laptop which is running Vista only has an index of 4.3, but it's still ok.

Gizmoh

Sam,
thanks very much for JKdefrag installer amd the superfetch tip.
Both work lovely

have a good day :)

Gizmoh, looking at http://www.windowsscores.com there aren't many laptops with scores over 5.0 at the minute. So I wouldn't say your score of 4.3 is low. It's pretty good really.

P4 3.4 GHz Northwood 800 FSB (512KB L2), 4 GB PC3200 DDR 400 (dual chan.) RAM, eVGA nVidia 7800GS CO (256MB GDDR3), 80 GB 7200 RPM WD HDD PATA (EIDE, ATA-133)

Processor: 4.4
Memory: 4.9
Graphics: 5.9
Gaming Graphics: 5.4
Hard Drive 5.3

Velocity micro - intel core 2 quad, vista 64 home premium, 4G ram, 750 GB hitachi, nvidia 9800 gtx with 512k- maxed out scores at 5.9 all categories. Tis already time for MS to redo top end scores.

It only goes up to 5.9

I used to have a really good system before that I custom built from spare money/time/curiosity. Ladies and gentlemen, I DIDN'T break the bank with this machine!

Processor: AMD Sempron 2400+ (1.6ghz) $120
Mainboard: Asus a7n8x-vm "nForce2 Ultra 400" mini-atx $80
Memory: 2x Corsair 512mb PC-3200 DDR-400 SDRAM $100
Graphics: ATI x1600 Pro 512mb DDR2 AGP8x $180
Hard Disk: 2x 250gb Seagate 7200rpm uATA 133 $220
Sound: SoundBlaster X-Fi ExtemeAudio $70

The system got me the following scores

Processor: 3.0
Memory: 4.0
Aero: 5.9 (before drivers update, 4.9)
Gaming: 5.5 (before drivers update, 4.7)
Hard Disk: 5.2

WEI Base Score: 3.0

It was well suited for Media Center, and most of my programs ran like the wind! If you noticed however, I have almost the same graphics chip as the person who started the blog way up at the top (his is a mobile version of mine). And my scores were similar too. But when I upgraded the drivers and took the time to bring the system out of "first boot" drivers, those numbers went up a full score!

Learn well, young padowans!

Of course, I lacked 3 major innovations of the past few years:

PCIx
SATA
Dual Core

So, I bought a brand new HP dv9535nr Notebook PC back in Sep07.

Long story short, here are my new scores:

Processor: 4.6
Memory: 4.5
Aero: 4.9 (WTF?)
Gaming: 5.3 (WTF??)
Hard Disk: 4.5 (WTF???)

It seems, fate would have me end up buying a machine that was the total invert of my previous one!

A $1500 lesson learned well, my fellow padowans!

For those who wanted to know, here are my specs:

Processor: Intel Core2 Duo 5250e "merom" (1.5ghz)
Memory: 2x 1gb DDR2 PC2-5300 SoDIMM
Mainboard: Intel GM965 "Santa Rosa"
Graphics: nVidia GeForce 8600m GS 256mb DDR2
Hard Disk: 2x 120gb Fujitsu 5400rpm SATA 150
Sound: Onboard (I have a Creative Xmod, sounds great!)

for some reason my system only gets a 5.0 on desktop graphics, but 5.9 on gaming.. processor is 5.4, and memory / harddisk scores are 5.9.

i realise that they are different scores, but i would've thought that my cards (two 8800mGTX's in SLi) would produce as good a desktop score as they can in gaming..

rest of my system is a 2.6ghz C2D proc, 4gb ram, 7200rpm HDD's in RAID0. perhaps something wrong with my laptop setup, or maybe the cards just aren't as good for encoding..

I have the worst by far of anyone!

Processor=3.4

RAM=4.1
(i know what your thinking by now, not too bad??)

Graphics=1.9!!

Gaming Graphics=1.0!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Primary hard disk=4.2

Are you kidding me! ARRRRGHHH i can even have aero, i spent all my money on vista ultimate i cant even have the thing i wanted! and worst of all its my laptop so i cant change my graphics card! DOUBLE ARRGGGHHH!!

Huw

It maxes out at 5.9. 50+? A dream, nothing else. I have a quad Yorkfield oc'd at 4.2, two 9800 GX2's, 8 gigs of 1066 Ram, and two velociraptor's in RAID 0. All 5.9's. I've never seen anything any higher.

Well Here's mine and I got a 5.0
Processor AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4400+ ---- 5.0
Memory (RAM) 3.25 GB ---------------------------------------- 5.9
Graphics NVIDIA GeForce 6800 XT ----------------------------- 5.9
Gaming graphics 1524 MB Total available graphics memory ----- 5.7
Primary hard disk 52GB Free (98GB Total)--------------------- 5.9
Windows Vista (TM) Ultimate
Here're the Real Specs:
System
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Manufacturer Incognito
Model System Product Name
Total amount of system memory 3.25 GB RAM (Which is actually 4Gigs)
System type 32-bit operating system
Number of processor cores 2
64-bit capable Yes

Storage
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Total size of hard disk(s) 1825 GB
Disk partition (C:) 52 GB Free (98 GB Total)
Disk partition (D:) 50 GB Free (98 GB Total)
Disk partition (E:) 292 GB Free (466 GB Total)
Disk partition (F:) 233 GB Free (233 GB Total)
Media drive (J:) CD/DVD
Media drive (R:) CD/DVDCD/DVD
Disk partition (S:) 15 GB Free (466 GB Total)
Disk partition (T:) 39 GB Free (466 GB Total)

Graphics
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Display adapter type NVIDIA GeForce 6800 XT (Actually 2 of them in SLI)
Total available graphics memory 1524 MB
Dedicated graphics memory 256 MB
Dedicated system memory 0 MB
Shared system memory 1268 MB
Display adapter driver version 7.15.11.7813
Primary monitor resolution 1680x1050
DirectX version DirectX 9.0 or better

Network
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Network Adapter NVIDIA nForce Networking Controller 10/100/1000
Network Adapter Microsoft Tun Miniport Adapter
Network Adapter Realtek RTL8187 Wireless 802.11b/g 54Mbps USB 2.0 Network Adapter
Network Adapter NVIDIA nForce Networking Controller 10/100/1000

All I can think of upgrading now is to a Phenom, and puttin in another 4 gig of RAM, of course two latest Nvidia sli cards will add to the robust rig, but I guess it still ain't gonna exceed 5.9

New setup I just put together.

Processor: 5.9 (Core 2 Quad @ 2.4GHz)
Memory: 5.3 (8GB = 4x2GB DDR2 @1066MHz) WTF??
Graphics: 5.9 (GeForce 9800GTX+)
Gaming Graphics: 5.9 (GeForce 9800GTX+)
Hard Drive: 5.9 (10k raptor)

Can anybody explain that memory score to me?

New setup I just put together.

Processor: 5.9 (Core 2 Quad @ 2.4GHz)
Memory: 5.3 (8GB = 4x2GB DDR2 @1066MHz) WTF??
Graphics: 5.9 (GeForce 9800GTX+)
Gaming Graphics: 5.9 (GeForce 9800GTX+)
Hard Drive: 5.9 (10k raptor)

Can anybody explain that memory score to me?

Yeah my memory score is being pretty gay to. I had a 5.1 with 2GB of RAM and I just upgraded to 4GB and my score IS STILL 5.1

I think the WEI is a bunch of crap, only to be used as a marketing ploy. The proof is in how the comp operates for you, the user. I mean is there a real performance difference between a 4.3 and a 4.6 ???? and would you even notice. Just something for them to jack up the price.

I bought 4 gig of very cheap ram and got 5.9 but other people buy fancy ram and get less? BTW evrything on mine is 5.9.

memory scores are highly dependant on latency. usually, the 512MB and 1GB sticks have lower latency than the 2GB sticks. my dell inspiron e521 has 4 memory slots. i have 2x 1GB crucial ballistics tracerz and 2x 1gb PNY Optima filling the 4 slots. even with just the 2GB of the PNY Optima, i got a 5.9 with both sets it's still a 5.9 wei. if your latency is 5 instead of 4, your wei score will lower even if you have a larger amount of RAM. you can use 2Gb sticks of DDR3 and get lower than a 5.9 if your latency is over 4. even when 2gb of DDR2 will give you a 5.9 if it's low latency.

something to consider.