Windows 7 Experience Index

[stanav]

Hi guys,

After years of procastination, I've finally upgraded my PC hardware and installed Win7 on it. The experience index showing I have a relatively slow score (3.1) on the graphic card which is an Nvidia Gefroce 7300 series. The next lowest score is for the hard disk (5.9) which I don't think I can improve much unless I'm going RAID wich I do not want.
I'd love to raise the graphic score up to 6.0 or higher but I don't want to spend a fortune on a new graphic card. My budget is $100 max for an new graphic card. So, what graphic card should I buy?

1. Radeon HD 4850 ($100)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814102824

2. GeForce 9800 GT ($100)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814133279

Or the cheaper ones?
1. Radeon HD 4670 ($70)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814125277

2. GeForce 9600 GSO ($70)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130509

If any of you are using one of these cards on a Win7 box, what is the score?

Thanks,
Stanav.

[kregg]

2.1 on my Eee PC, with the lowest score going to the graphics, and the highest the primary hard disk (5.4)

I personally don't mind. This stuff can easily be faked.

[I_Love_My_Vans]

You will need some serious performance to get your GPU score up, the cheaper ones will be almost no better.

I cannot recommend Toms Hardware enough, very easy to compare different cards then, you will see exactly how much your $$$ will get you.

It would also by my opinion that you would have to spend at least £150 (GBP) to play decent games, (ok, perhaps slightly less), you might want to take a trip to xe.com to see what that is in USD


Kregg!

[kregg]

In the UK, ebuyer.com sell some cheap desktop PCs for <&#163;500. Find the right bargain and/or upgrade it, then it could potentially be a beowulf cluster of awesomeness. (No, I'm not going to say that again *shudders*)

Unfortunately, I don't know any decent US sites.

[Valleysboy1978]

...I don't know any decent US sites.

Well obviously, they're in the US after all

[Shaggy Hiker]

My score wasn't all that hot. I forget what was lowest, though I think it was the HD. I put a GeForce 275 in the system, and am in the 5.? range. A 275 will run you in the vicinity of $250, and for that scratch you get a boost of slightly more than 2 on your score. Is that really worth it? How much will you suffer with your measly 3.1? Perhaps you won't suffer at all.

[stanav]

Yes, a score of 3.1 on graphics will be OK for the most part of what I'm using the computer for... No gaming, just some occasional video editing and graphic works (photoshop, illustrator,...). However, I'd like to see all the scores to be in the same range...
Anyway, I've ordered a cheap one (Radeon 4670) from Newegg because of the rebate. It only costs $40 after rebate... Will see how much score $40 can buy

[Bonker Gudd]

Have you tried Queinker 8.6?

[penagate]

However, I'd like to see all the scores to be in the same range...

What on earth for? Are you actually being hampered by poor graphics capabilities or not? Why spend money just because a number that's calculated with a good sprinkling of fairy dust isn't as high as it could be?

[stanav]

What on earth for? Are you actually being hampered by poor graphics capabilities or not? Why spend money just because a number that's calculated with a good sprinkling of fairy dust isn't as high as it could be?

For the most part it's just for my personal satisfaction knowing that the system doesn't suffer any major bottlenecks

[Shaggy Hiker]

Bottlenecks on the video system will be the most noticeable. If you don't notice them now, will $40 make a difference? If not, will you then buy a $60 card, then a $100 card? I would say: Don't nickel and dime yourself to death. If it's a problem, then fix it and fix it well. If it's not a problem, then save your cash, because eventually it WILL be a problem.

[stanav]

Surely this should be in the technical forum??
RANDOMNESS PEOPLE!

Well, you can argue on it but the original question was just asking members who are running Win7 to post there Windows experience index scores and to me that is not much of a technical question.
Anyway, I've made the decision of which video card to buy and I've already ordered the card... Just waiting for it to arrive now

[kleinma]

I just built a new system and here is the index score of this build:

Note that while the graphics scores are not high, this is because I am using 2 ATI x1650 graphics cards in non cross fire mode because I run 4 LCDs on this computer. However since I do no gaming and only need the graphics cards for WPF/Aero purposes they don't get taxed too much.

The rest of the system is a core i7 920 (quad core with hyperthreading), 6GB DDR3 ram running triple channel, and 2 Intel Gen 2 SSD drives in RAID0.

The entire system was built for under $1400 USD

[wossname]

That's a beast of a system and still only gets a little score. How misleading. I bet that box flies, especially with those SSD discs.

How much does one of those SSD's cost?

[kleinma]

220USD per SSD and yeah it does fly, but I don't even know what the upperbound of the windows index is, nor do I really care, as what good is a number really? The way the system feels and its responsiveness, ability to have lots of things going on and not slow down, that is the real world measure how fast the system is.

I am pretty sure Vista might have only had ratings up to 5 originally, and MS said this scale would go higher over time as speeds of hardware increase. I don't know that Win7 goes up to 10, but I would hate to see the price tag on the machine that gets you there.

When I got this machine, I starting installing Win7 from the DVD drive, made a sandwich in the kitchen, came back, and Win7 was done installing. I have to imagine the slowest part of the install was copying from the DVD drive.

[stanav]

Very impressive scores, Kleinma And as of now, the Win7 experience index has a range of 1.0 to 7.9... I don't know why 7.9 but not 8.0 or 10.0 ????
Your HDD score is maxed out. Probably it could get even higher if the score range is higher. It seems like SSD is the way to go for high performance.

[kleinma]

I could likely overclock the ram and CPU a little to boost them as well, but I haven't gotten around to that yet since this is my main development box I don't like to screw with it too much. I have heard some good overclocking stories on the 920 though.

It is crazy but a retail store called Microcenter (we only have 1 here in NJ, but they have several locations in the US) was (probably still is) selling the boxed retail i7 920 for 199 bucks. That was 80 bucks cheaper than newegg's price.

I did order some parts from newegg, got the CPU retail, and the SSDs I got from eCost.com, since newegg was price gouging on them.

[Valleysboy1978]

You'd seriously spend that kind of money on your PC!?!
You're nuts!

[wossname]

The biggest workout my new laptop gets is photo editing, sadly that's not really something I'd get much benefit in using an SSD disc.

But for a server... oh boy, my linux box would boot in a few seconds! Now there's an idea.

[kleinma]

You'd seriously spend that kind of money on your PC!?!
You're nuts!

You think $1400 is too much to spend on a computer? Good thing you don't like Apple then, they generally start around that price

[stanav]

I've just put in my new box the ATI 4670 video card I mentioned above. It performs much better than I had expected.
System specs: AMD Phenom II X2 250 3.0GHz, 6 GB DDR2 800MHz, 2x 1TB SATA2 HDD, Win7 x64.
Total cost: around $400.
Not anywhere nearly as fast as Kleinma's system, but it's also a whole lot cheaper

[kleinma]

Wait a second. How did you get 6GB of ram, an ATI 4670, 2 1TB drives, the CPU and Windows 7 for 400 bucks?

Also what about case, PSU, etc?? Did you just update an existing machine?

[stanav]

Yeah, some of the components on the old box are reused (1 1TB HDD + DVD Burner).
Those are the ones that I had to buy:
$50 - Case + PSU (Rosewill promotion free PSU with case)
$60 - ESC motherboard
$70 - CPU
$90 - 6GB RAM (after rebate)
$40 - Video card (after rebate)
$80 - 1TB HDD
Free shipping on all items purchased.
Win7 beta release - free download from Microsoft.
===========
$390 Total

[EntityX]

Surprising to me that your total is that low. I would think the motherboard and CPU would be more. Are you going to stick with the beta release for Windows 7? I hope your case will be able to endure all that kicking.

[chris128]

and 2 Intel Gen 2 SSD drives in RAID0

lol I love that even with SSD drives you wanted to make them even faster by using RAID 0... Anyway, I've got some questions about SSD drives if you dont mind taking a quick look http://www.vbforums.com/showthread.php?p=3641565

[Arrow_Raider]

[MartinLiss]

Thread moved.

[chris128]

I'll post another once I get my SSD hard drive (although that wont change the base score as its the graphics card that is letting me down )

[Lord Orwell]

if you view the xml there are interesting developer comments in there on how they compute the numbers. It's not all about speed. Memory is artificially limited if you only have 1gb for example to a smaller number.
@kleinma: Yours is the first system that is showing a number higher than 5.9 for hard drives. I find this interesting. I am going out on a limb here and saying that you have the commercial version of win7 and the others are using the rc?

Everyone please speak up when you post and say which version of 7 you are using. I suspect there was a bug in the rc's hd number reporting that topped it at 5.9. I got this score with 4 hds in a raid-0 and one of the drives was getting a 5.9 by itself.

[chris128]

I'm using the final RTM version (bought it just a couple of days ago) and my 10,000 RPM SATA hard drive still only gets 5.9

[kleinma]

I am running the x64 version if that matters. I don't know if x86 and x64 have different levels or performance indicators. I don't know why it would though.

[kleinma]

I also did a system build for a friend that used 1 Intel SSD drive, so no raid and it was the first generation, not the second gen (which is what I got). It was a similar config otherwise with 6GB ram, Win 7 x64, and the i7 920 CPU.

His scored a 7.6 for disk rating with just 1 intel SSD.

[EntityX]

When I got this machine, I starting installing Win7 from the DVD drive, made a sandwich in the kitchen, came back, and Win7 was done installing. I have to imagine the slowest part of the install was copying from the DVD drive.

Boy is my experience installing Windows 7 ever not like that. I've been installing Windows 7 Pro on my computer for the past 22 hours. It's being installed on another partition so I can still work on it using Vista. Here's the screen I've been seeing for the past 21 hours.

My Vista Windows Experience Index is 4.6 with graphics as the low point and everything else being 5.3 or above. After 22 hours it still says Expanding Windows files(0%)... I see the little dots after the (0%) moving which suggests something is happening but it's not happening very fast.

[chris128]

It sat on that bit for about 10 - 15 minutes for me... I think after 21 hours you should reboot and try again..

[kleinma]

Yeah the documentation says it should take no longer than 20 hours.

[RobDog888]

Hey Matt, what model number is you ssd? Is it Intel X25-M and what size?

[EntityX]

It sat on that bit for about 10 - 15 minutes for me... I think after 21 hours you should reboot and try again..

Maybe I'll give it another day and then if still no progress I'll start over.

[kleinma]

Hey Matt, what model number is you ssd? Is it Intel X25-M and what size?

Both generations of the Intel SSD drives are X25-M. If you look at the full model number some end with G1 (gen 1) and some end with G2.

The specific ones I got end with G2R5, but that is just because they were retail and not OEM packaged. The only difference is the box it comes in, and the retail drives come with sleds to fit into a standard hard drive slot in a case since SSDs are the size of laptop drives. There could be a difference in warranty length, but I am not sure.

[RobDog888]

They were expensive on new eggs. If Im gonna spend that much money I might as well get the E version. The write speeds on it are more then double the write speeds on the M versions

[kleinma]

I didn't buy mine on newegg, I bought them from eCost.com for their suggested Intel retail price.