How to up Windows 7 HD performance index?

[ojon838]

I have the following system configuration:

AMD Phenom II X4 955 BE processor
DFI DK790XFB-M3H5 motherboard
Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 video card
Xigmatek Dark Knight S1283V cooler
Corsair TX850W power supply
Corsair TW3X4G1333C9 2G X2 DDR3 memory
Western Digital Velociraptor 150GB 10k rpm boot drive
Western Digital WD1001FALS 1.0T storage drive
Benq DW1620 DVD burner
LG GGW-H20L Blu-ray burner

The problem is that my total score is only 5.9 due to the Hard drives. Everything else is
7.4's. At first I only had the WD Caviar Black 1T in my system. I was dissapointed with
the low score, so I recently bought the 150G WD Velociraptor. Nothing changed?!? Is it
possible that it will only change with the addition of a SSD? If so does that mean anything
but a SSD will get the average score of 5.9, even though the rest of the components are
rated 7.0+ ? Can someone explain it for me?

ojon

 

[ChaiBabbaChai]

The score is scaled based on known available hardware performance, so since SSDs have been out for over a year and Win7 isn't really out yet, they push even great HDDs like the WD Blacks down the scale and there have also been enterprise level HDDs in RAID for years, so those would be much faster than a single FALS. You could probably get the stupid number up if you removed the WD1001FALS from the equation. VelociRaptors are fast. So, remove it take your stupid screenshot or whatever and show all your friends, and put it back in.

 

[Comdrpopnfresh]

might be able to go up a notch by reformatting to a smaller/bigger cluster size? Probably what was mentioned- ssds are faster, they're well known. You can always alter the registry so you can sleep at night?

 

[RollerBoySE]

SSD is the way to go!

With an Intel X25-M G2 160GB I score 7.8 for Primary hard disk in Windows 7 Experience Index.

 

[zuffy]

The VelociRaptor will only get a 5.9. Setup RAID 0 with it and you will get 6.1. Put an Intel X25-M and it will bump up to 7.7 - 7.8

 

[Xed]

My 5870 is rated at 6.0 lol. Take it with a grain of salt.

 

[Reliant]

Originally posted by: Xed
My 5870 is rated at 6.0 lol. Take it with a grain of salt.

My 4890 is 7.7, something seems wrong!

 

[yh125d]

To be honest, stop giving two shits what windows says about your rig :\

 

[Yellowbeard]

Originally posted by: yh125d
To be honest, stop giving two shits what windows says about your rig :\

LOL....I have been saying that since Vista came out. Good advice IMO.

 

[alcoholbob]

There's not that much of a difference between a Velociraptor and your 1TB drive to push it to the 6.0 threshold. Even the fastest enterprise 15k SAS drive will be 5.9...To get above 5.9 you need sequential reads OR writes to be in the 200MB/s+ region. No platter drive can get that high. Alternatively you would need random reads OR random writes to surpass 1MB/s...no platter drive can get that high.

Reason for SSDs to be so high is because all 4 of these metrics score extremely high.

 

[Old Hippie]

Originally posted by: Yellowbeard

Originally posted by: yh125d
To be honest, stop giving two shits what windows says about your rig :\

LOL....I have been saying that since Vista came out. Good advice IMO.

I really didn't think anybody took it seriously.

There I go thinkin' again! :laugh:

 

[ojon838]

Thanks everyone,

Seems that my only recourse is to go the SSD way. Of course I ought to be able
to ignore the numbers - they are stupid! Thanks for the explanations and the
opinions...

ojon838

 

[RollerBoySE]

Numbers are not important, but I can promise you that after you have experieced the performance of a SSD you never want to go back to a HDD.

 

[zod96]

Exactly I just went from a fast HD to an SSD and after using an SSD for a day it makes the raptor drives look like ancient hardware...

 

[taltamir]

different categories are calculated differently, and microsoft has only been a little forthcoming about HOW they calculate it... But from the little info they revealed about the vista ranking (which is capped at 5.9), it is a combination of speed testing AND "features". (ram size, DX version, etc)

So if your score is X.9 there is a good chance that you have something really fast but due to not having a certain feature they determined (say, it is not an SSD), it gets capped at a lower score.

You can safely ignore the MS performance index, everyone does. (I don't see anyone taking it seriously without full disclosure of how it is actually calculated)

 

[mtnd3vil]

5.9 is a hard threshold to cross for the HDD test. I have 2x 7200.11s' in R1, I also get a 5.9 in spite of 220MB/s seq. read.
My GUESS is that the HDD tests they run take access time into significant consideration, which would explain why I've never heard of a traditional disk or array beating 5.9.
My friends G2 intel 80 gets a wildly higher 7.4.

One thing to keep in mind is that this particular index is FOR windows performance, meaning it's only designed to be an indicator of how well your machine runs Win7 and not anything else you may do / install on it.
For example:
I think his SSD sucks wind when I grab large files off of it through the GBe network, but for the the speed and performance OF Win7, it murders with it's "good enough" throughput and blistering access times.

 

[pcslookout]

Is it ok to run a game like WOW on a SSD?

 

[Mir96TA]

I got 6.2 Subscore on my primary Hard Disk.
However I am putting out almost 300 MB/s HD Tune (Read that is)

 

[RollerBoySE]

Originally posted by: pcslookout
Is it ok to run a game like WOW on a SSD?

It's more than OK, the scene changes are almost instantaneous with SSD.

 

[poohbear]

Originally posted by: RollerBoySE
Numbers are not important, but I can promise you that after you have experieced the performance of a SSD you never want to go back to a HDD.

meh, but im reading that SDDs reliability and performance gets worse over time? is that only w/ the older SDDs or the newer ones too?

 

[latch]

Originally posted by: pcslookout
Is it ok to run a game like WOW on a SSD?

No, Baron Geddon will cast living bomb on you.

 

[pcslookout]

Originally posted by: RollerBoySE

Originally posted by: pcslookout
Is it ok to run a game like WOW on a SSD?

It's more than OK, the scene changes are almost instantaneous with SSD.

Originally posted by: latch

Originally posted by: pcslookout
Is it ok to run a game like WOW on a SSD?

No, Baron Geddon will cast living bomb on you.

I read on this very anandtech forum that it is not ok but maybe that is different now? The topic wasn't that old either. Let me see if I can find it again.

 

[pcslookout]

Originally posted by: RollerBoySE

Originally posted by: pcslookout
Is it ok to run a game like WOW on a SSD?

It's more than OK, the scene changes are almost instantaneous with SSD.

Oh yeah it already is just about on my 10,000 Raptor 150 GB though not sure if a SSD would help much at all.