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I have an Alienware M17x with an Intel Core 2 Duo P8600 2.4 GHz w/ 3 MB Cache. When I received it, it had Vista and a 5+ processor rating in the Windows Experience Index. I reformatted the hard drive and installed Windows 7. I've loaded all the drivers I can get from Dell, and now when I re-run the score all my numbers seem good except for the processor: it's now a 3.2.
What driver could I be missing that would affect the CPU performance so drastically like that? Is there a setting somewhere that is default to "run CPU at half speed" or something like that?
Edit:
I checked the power states, and while plugged in the Minimum Performance is set to 5%, the max is 100%, and the cooling is Active, so the fan will turn on before the CPU decreases its speed. The fan never came on during the test.
as eplained in my answer :) yet, you still cannot compare the different scores, if you want exact and reliable results, you should run the same version of a CPU benchmark program on both OS, WEI is a very basic benchmark test, lacking the accuracy required for in-depth comparison. – None – 2009-12-13T18:28:04.717
thanks Molly. You were addressing the larger issue of comparing benchmarks from one OS to another. I was looking more for my particular issue of driver problems affecting CPU performance. – Nathan DeWitt – 2009-12-13T22:13:48.060