Understanding the Windows Experience Index in Windows 7
Posted on March 2, 2010 at 5:48 am
Introduced in Windows Vista and carried through to Windows 7, Microsoft’s Windows Experience Index (WEI) is an attempt to rate your computer on various performance criteria. Unfortunately, the WEI has met with some harsh criticisms and doesn’t seem to be taken seriously in the world of computer hardware and software.
What is the Windows Experience Index?
The WEI is a general measure of your computer’s performance capabilities by taking into account five major components. According to the WEI window in Windows 7, these components are:
Processor: Calculations per second
Memory (RAM): Memory operations per second
Graphics: Desktop performance for Windows Aero
Gaming graphics: 3D business and gaming graphics performance
Primary hard disk: Disk data transfer rate
Using a real-time test, Windows 7 will rate your computer on these subscores and determine your WEI by the lowest score among the components above. The minimum possible score is 1.0 and 7.9 is the current maximum possible score.
The score your computer gets today is the same score it will get forever as long as you don’t change any hardware or software in your computer. The maximum score, however, changes to take into account advancing technology such as faster processors, memory, and graphics cards.
Get Your WEI Score
To determine your WEI score, click on Start and then right click on My Computer. Select Properties from the menu and the System Information window opens.
Click on Windows Experience Index under the System section in the middle of the window. This opens the Performance Information and Tools window.
If you haven’t run the WEI assessment yet, click on Run the Assessment in the bottom right hand corner of the window. If you have already run the assessment, you subscores and score should be displayed in the window.
If you want to rerun the assessment, click Re-run the Assessment in the bottom right hand corner of the window. When the assessment is complete, your scores will be displayed in the window.
What the WEI Numbers Mean
The WEI numbers don’t actually represent measures of any particular metric such as clocks per second, polygons per second, or CAS latencies. They simply represent your computer’s score against a theoretical maximum. This maximum is a moving target as computer components become faster. As stated above, 7.9 is the current WEI maximum score.
Notice that your actual WEI score is determined by the lowest subscore. If you computer is like most people’s, your lowest score is derived from the data transfer rate of your primary hard drive.
Criticisms of the Windows Experience Index
There are three main criticisms of the WEI that weaken its impact on using it for software ratings and other purposes. In fact, the last criticism is a combination of the first two:
One number determines the WEI. Trying to boil down any metric to one number often results in misinformation about the object being measured. Using one number to determine your computing experience would be like judging a student by his/her grade point average (GPA) alone. There are a lot of factors embedded in that GPA much like there are a lot of factors that contribute to an overall computing experience. One number cannot easily represent all of which your computer is capable.
The lowest subscore determines the WEI. Rating a computer by its slowest subscore would be like calculating a student’s GPA by using his/her lowest grade ever received in a course. An average such as the mean or medium would be a better representation of your computer’s performance capabilities. A particularly low score on one subscore offers a distorted view.
The hard drive ultimately determines the WEI. Since your WEI is calculated taking the lowest subscore and most people’s lowest subscore is the hard drive data transfer metric, a computer’s hard drive ultimately determines the measure of the WEI and the performance capabilities of a computer. This hardly seems an accurate measure of computer performance.
In the figure above, you can see that the test computer in this example scored 6.9 on gaming graphics. Not a bad score for an nVidia 8800GT graphics card with 512MB of video memory. However, the computer’s SATA-300 7200RPM hard drive forces the WEI to be 5.5, significantly less than all of the other subscores.
Although an attempt to create a simplified rating system, the Windows Experience Index falls short on several fronts by being ultra conservative in its procedure for determining computing experience.
Using one number to represent performance, using the lowest subscore for that number, and ultimately having the hard drive determine computer performance combine to create a largely unappealing and inaccurate method of rating Windows or other software experiences on your computer.
» Filed Under Windows 7
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I hate the Windows Experience Index, it’s a load of crap. I’ve never seen a number higher than a 5 and most new computers start out with 2 or 3′s. I think they have that whole system so that people end up buying more expensive computers thinking that their WEI number is too low!
My computer has a rating of 5.9, I can prove it!
What kind of PC do you have? A 5.9 Experience Index is pretty high. I’m curious as to what your lowest sub-score was? Let us know…
Mine is 5.5, hows that for a custom, and cheap computer.
Mine is 5.9 due to hard drive. Supposedly that’s the highest score possible for a standard drive without going RAID (or maybe SCSI?) All my other scores are 7.4 or 7.5. So, I guess the absolute best you’ll ever achieve with a single SATA or IDE drive is 5.9. Whoopty-doo.
Oh, and for those who want to know my specs:
Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit
AMD Phenom II X4 965 CPU (3.40 GHz)
Nvidia GeForce GTX 285
8GB DDR3 RAM (WEI=7.5)
pentium965extreme 3.73ghz dualcore-6.2 4gb 800mhz ddr2 -6.1 evga gt220-6.5 ,6.5 gaming and aero performance windows 7 64 bit ultimate 500gb sata -5.9 wei score -5.9
fwiw, 5.9 is the highest you can get with a single mechanical drive (or maybe one spinning at max 7200rpm). my intel SSD is rated as 7.1
As Johnne indicated, if you want to break through the hard drive 5.9 barrier, go with a solid-state hard drive. I bought a Patriot Torqx from NewEgg (I don’t think they sell it anymore) and my hard-drive index is 7.3! They’re not cheap and make sure you look at the specs, the read and write throughputs can vary significantly from brand to brand and drive to drive. They’re also pretty small, I keep all my videos on an external USB drive.
Pentium 4 3.6Ghz(560j)HT O.C./3.8Ghz..Nvidia Geforce 9500 PCI-Express Graphics card..2 Gigs generic Ram (dram frequency 211.5)Seagate SATA Barracuda 108 Gig…Motherboard chipset> Intel 945p..Equals>> 5.1 WEI…The weakest link being the CPU..Thats right an old decadent P4 single core with hyper threading built on 2004 can fetch ya a 5.1 WEI..Of course that is a 3.6 Ghz P4 overclocked 200 MHZ’s..This is a Windows 7 WEI..
my wei is 7.9! i have the netbook acer n270 with Windows 7 and 1 GB RAM, 320 GB atom CPU 1.60 GHz and not overclocked.
Mine is 7.2
Intel Skulltrail Mainboard (dual processor (both x4) )
2 x Qu880 Extreme quads @ 4.0GHz
8gb OCZ Reaper DDR3 Ram
Seagate 10,000rpm 1tb Hard-drive
3x NVidia 8800gts Overclocked SLI. (board is compatible for 4 but there is not yet any current driver support)
1400watt Power unit
Swifttech water cooling system allowing sustainable over clocking if I wish to do so!
All come in at a steep price of £3500. I was expecting higher, to be honest.
@ clint
I really can’t see how that is possible.
Well done, anyway.
IGP’s only ever come out at 2.9-3.5 on netbooks/laptops.
My WEI subscore is also 5.9. I just build a custom pc with this specs: AMD Phenom X2 555 BE, Asrock 870 Extreme3, HD 5770 1Gb, 2x2Gb Patriot DDR3 RAM, 500Gb WDC Black Caviar Sata 2 harddrive, Seasonic S12II Bronze 520W.
All other parts have a 7.4 subscore, except for the processor (6.6). I’m going to agree that the WEI should’ve rate the score by an average score, not by the lowest subscore.
My WEI is 7.1
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz 7.1
Memory (RAM) 4.00 GB 7.1
Graphics NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 7.3
Gaming graphics 2559 MB Total available graphics memory 7.3
Primary hard disk 11GB Free (74GB Total) 7.4
The Hard Drive is an Intel SSD
I have been giving serious consideration to a new laptop. I like the Sony “Z” series. They come equipped as workhorses.
Being a Sony, however, there is obviously a price premium for the sex appeal and features. They also come with SSD’s.
The WIE is in the 6′s for all components; 7.4 for the SSD! Wow!! Then, a lackluster 5.9 for the memory! What the heck?? No one at Sony can tell me why. That’s a lot of clams for s system that lacks relative to far less capable and far less costly laptops!
Many bloggers poo-poo the WIE. I don’t think it’s that simple. It IS a test, so has flaws, yes. But, it should give a relatively decent index. More importantly, if it does come up low, doesn’t that, by itself, say something??
I’m stymied….thoughts?
I will confirm what many have said:
Dell 9000, i7-920, 12GB ram, HD5870 VC. Intel 80 GB Boot drive and Samsung 640GB 7200 rpm HD.
The HD was the bottleneck at 5.9. An 80GB Intel SSD Boosted the WIE to 7.5….Now the weakest links are the processor and ram, both at 7.5 (12GB of ram still doesn’t put you over the top…By the way, moving from 9GB to 12GB only moved the number from 7.4 to 7.5.) The SSD scores 7.8 and was the most appreciable upgrade, So when they give hard drives a low score…I say they are justified. Buy a small SSD boot drive, You won’t regret it.
@David:
TechRadar has an article called “Get a perfect 7.9 Windows 7 WEI score”, it indicates that 5.9 is normal for 4GB of RAM (which is the max you could have with 32-bit Windows 7). Personally, I have a score of 6.1 with 4GB (DDR2-667MHz) of RAM using 64-bit Windows.
From the article:
“What memory and storage will you need?
The memory is another stunning factor, we tested the fastest memory available running over a triple channel. But the WEI is well known for imposing artificial limits on certain scores, memory being a particularly limiting one. Essentially 5.9 is the highest you can score with less than 4GB of memory and from what we can evaluate, a stunning 8GB will be required to score over 7. And even so it’s going to have to be fast memory to make the grade.”
There is a nice tool avilable for chaging windows 7 rating ‘Windows Rating Changer’ by jtechsoftwares Visit and download :http://www.jtechsoftwares.in/windows-rating-changer.html
Yep mine is 5.9 and that’s the highest I can get. The HD is a SATA 7200 RPM and it’s the lowest number on the list.
I’m running the fastest I5 with 4 cores, 64 bit Windows, 16GB of 1600 mgz ram Corsair RAM, a nice $150 video card (I don’t game wat all) but the HD score keeps my overall number at 5.9
It’s a joke, I just ignore it and run it every once in awhile to amuse myself.
It means nothing, this PC screams
I hjave at least a 5.9 as well, in an Asus G73, 14 GB Ram, ATI video 1gb +Integrated Graphics Memory, Low Score Is disk through put, Which I think Is Probably Capped for Non SSD or Non SAS drives.