Performance required to improve Windows Experience Index?

Question

Is there a guide on the metrics required to obtain a certain Windows Experience Index?

A Microsoft guy said in January 2009:

On the matter of transparency, it is indeed our plan to disclose in great detail how the scores are calculated, what the tests attempt to measure, why, and how they map to realistic scenarios and usage patterns.

Has that amount of transparency happened? Is there a technet article somewhere?

Answer 1

If my score was limited by my Memory subscore of 5.9. A naive person would suggest:

Buy a faster RAM

Which is wrong of course, it is simply not only about faster but also about more.

From the Windows help:

If your computer has a 64-bit central processing unit (CPU) and 4 gigabytes (GB) or less random access memory (RAM), then the Memory (RAM) subscore for your computer will have a maximum of 5.9.

You can buy the fastest, overclocked, liquid-cooled, DDR5 RAM on the planet; you'll still have a maximum Memory subscore of 5.9.

So in general the knee-jerk advice "buy faster stuff" is not helpful. What i am looking for is attributes required to achieve a certain score, or move beyond a current limitation.

The information i've been able to compile so far, chiefly from 3 Windows blog entries, and an article:

Memory subscore

Score    Conditions
=======  ================================
1.0      < 256 MB
2.0      < 500 MB
2.9      <= 512 MB
3.5      < 704 MB 
3.9      < 944 MB 
4.5      <= 1.5 GB
5.9      < 4.0GB-64MB on a 64-bit OS
         Windows Vista highest score
7.9      Windows 7 highest score

Graphics Subscore

Score    Conditions
=======  ======================
1.0      doesn't support DX9
1.9      doesn't support WDDM
4.9      does not support Pixel Shader 3.0
5.9      doesn't support DX10 or WDDM1.1
         Windows Vista highest score
7.9      Windows 7 highest score

Gaming graphics subscore

Score    Result
=======  =============================
1.0      doesn't support D3D
2.0      supports D3D9, DX9 and WDDM
5.9      doesn't support DX10 or WDDM1.1
         Windows Vista highest score
6.0-6.9  good framerates (e.g. 40-50fps) at normal resoltuions (e.g. 1280x1024)
7.0-7.9  even higher framerates at even higher resolutions
7.9      Windows 7 highest score

Processor subscore

Score    Conditions
=======  ==========================================================================
5.9      Windows Vista highest score
6.0-6.9  many quad core processors will be able to score in the high 6 low 7 ranges
7.0+     many quad core processors will be able to score in the high 6 low 7 ranges
7.9      8-core systems will be able to approach 8.9
         Windows 7 highest score

Primary hard disk subscore (note)

Score    Conditions
=======  ========================================
1.9      Limit for pathological drives that stop responding when pending writes
2.0      Limit for pathological drives that stop responding when pending writes
2.9      Limit for pathological drives that stop responding when pending writes
3.0      Limit for pathological drives that stop responding when pending writes
5.9      highest you're likely to see without SSD
         Windows Vista highest score
7.9      Windows 7 highest score

Bonus Chatter

You can find your WEI detailed test results in:

C:\Windows\Performance\WinSAT\DataStore

e.g.

2011-11-06 01.00.19.482 Disk.Assessment (Recent).WinSAT.xml

<WinSAT>
   <WinSPR>
      <DiskScore>5.9</DiskScore>
   </WinSPR>
   <Metrics>
      <DiskMetrics>
         <AvgThroughput units="MB/s" score="6.4" ioSize="65536" kind="Sequential Read">89.95188</AvgThroughput>
         <AvgThroughput units="MB/s" score="4.0" ioSize="16384" kind="Random Read">1.58000</AvgThroughput>
         <Responsiveness Reason="UnableToAssess" Kind="Cap">TRUE</Responsiveness>
      </DiskMetrics>
   </Metrics>
</WinSAT>

Pre-emptive snarky comment: "WEI is useless, it has no relation to reality"

Fine, how do i increase my hard-drive's random I/O throughput?

Update - Amount of memory limits rating

Some people don't believe Microsoft's statement that having less than 4GB of RAM on a 64-bit edition of Windows doesn't limit the rating to 5.9:

And from xxx.Formal.Assessment (Recent).WinSAT.xml:

<WinSPR>
  <LimitsApplied>
    <MemoryScore>
      <LimitApplied 
          Friendly="Physical memory available to the OS is less than 4.0GB-64MB on a 64-bit OS : limit mem score to 5.9" 
          Relation="LT">4227858432</LimitApplied>
      </MemoryScore>
    </LimitsApplied>
  </WinSPR>

References

• Windows Vista Team Blog: Windows Experience Index: An In-Depth Look
• Understand and improve your computer's performance in Windows Vista
• Engineering Windows 7 Blog: Engineering the Windows 7 “Windows Experience Index”

Answer 2

Memory

I fully agree that, no matter how fast your RAM is, having 4GB or less will not give you the best experience, so a ceiling score of 5.9 is understandable. Granted, "Memory ops per second" is a bit misleading since other factors come into play here (like the amount of RAM) so perhaps they should have kept it even simpler (never thought that was possible) by just saying "memory subscore" and keeping it at that. I get 7.8 for memory.

Primary Hard Disk

What will give you better random IO is a SSD drive. That's what SSDs do: great sequential read speeds, and excellent random IO! My 2 years old Intel SSD gets 7.5:

<AvgThroughput kind="Sequential Read" units="MB/s" ioSize="65536" score="7.5">256.16625</AvgThroughput>
<AvgThroughput kind="Random Read" units="MB/s" ioSize="16384" score="7.8">205.25000</AvgThroughput>

Conclusion

It seems your problem is that Windows Experience Index does not provide you useful insight on how to improve your index. However, I'd argue that whatever index you do get today is relatively valid in itself. If you have 4GB of RAM and no SSD, well I can only agree with WEI in that your Windows experience will not be optimal. So WEI is doing its job of assessing your system's performance relatively well.

Even though there's some transparency in the subtest results, it may be lacking in fully explaining how those results are processed into final scores.

But WEI never claimed to provide hardware upgrade advice anyway. For that, you'll need to look elsewhere, perhaps on our site. Even though we lack your specific system details, here's my take at improving your memory and disk ratings: get more (DDR3) RAM and get a modern SSD.

Answer 3

Is there a guide on the metrics required to obtain a certain Windows Experience Index?

There is no point in obtaining a certain Windows Experience Index, exactly because it is an indication and it is not meant to be a goal. It allows you to single out the overall worst component and improve upon that or in other words serves as a quick way to see what's limiting your overall performance.

You can buy the fastest, overclocked, liquid-cooled, DDR5 RAM on the planet; you'll still have a maximum Memory subscore of 5.9.

This is wrong, note how WEI actually calculates the score as you can see using the XML files. In their articles they simply outline the generic / especially devices, but you'll certainly get another score if you go outside the borders.

The information i've been able to compile so far, chiefly from 3 Windows blog entries:

Conditions is the wrong term there, because I have different scores on some test machines here.

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I would at least suggest better instead of faster.

All the rest of your question is not constructive or rant, so I'm not willing to contribute any further...