What does windows experience index test?

1

What underlying benchmarks does windows experience index (winsat) test?

Some specific questions are:

  • Does the processor score include single-threaded performance?
  • Is memory score based on the speed or the capacity? (I have gotten a 7.5 on 20GB of oldish ram)
  • What does the "aero performance" measure Directx? OpenGl? or some Microsoft property stuff?
  • Does gaming graphics test only Directx?
  • Can a raided hdd get higher than 5.9 on hard disk rating...because some raided situations are faster than ssds?
  • And in general what does each test do?

Also, just a side question, what is Aero or the DWM use for gfx acceleration?

agz

Posted 2013-04-21T00:51:38.740

Reputation: 6 820

3"What does the "aero performance" measure directx? opengl? or some Microsoft property stuff?" What do you think these all are? Aero is DX (Vista needed DX 9.0L compatible cards to run Aero). And DX is MS's baby. Proprietary and a Windows exclusive. Windows runs OpenGL, but make no mistake MS only actually cares about DX. – Austin T French – 2013-04-21T00:58:22.830

Answers

2

The Wikipedia article and Microsoft online help already cover a lot of the answers to your questions.

The current version of WinSAT in Windows Vista (Build 6002) and Windows 7 (Build-7601.17514) performs the following tests:

  • Aero Assessment
  • Direct3D Alpha Blending Assessment
  • Direct3D Texture Load Assessment
  • Direct3D ALU Assessment
  • Windows Media Playback
  • CPU Performance
  • Memory Performance
  • Disk Performance (includes devices such as Solid-state drives)

Overall I would not put too much stock in the score. It's meant to give people a warm fuzzy feeling about the performance of their computer. In general you are better served using benchmarks from tech sites and ones you run yourself than the Windows Experience Index.

Brad Patton

Posted 2013-04-21T00:51:38.740

Reputation: 9 939

2WinSAT does give you a good idea of how Windows is going to perform, and thats really what it was mean for. – Austin T French – 2013-04-21T01:24:50.630

Asked: 2013-04-21T00:51:38.740

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Active: 2013-04-21T02:13:56.460