Wiley Windows Vista Timesaving Techniques For Dummies
Contents
1. With five component scores under its belt Vista picks the lowest score and presents that as your system s performance rating The rating appears in the Performance Information and Tools dialog box as in Figure 1 1 where it s identified as your Windows Experience Index base score The same rating appears in the View Basic Information about Your Computer dialog box which you can see by choosing Start right clicking Computer and then choosing Properties see Figure 1 3 In the View Basic Information dialog box it s called the Rating ytem pentechon LNLS PREN ANS f updne serer s EF Figure 1 3 The Vista System Rating is the same as the Windows Experience Index base score Technique 1 Experiencing the Windows Experience Index Analyzing the WEI When you look behind the Windows Experience Index component scores several idiosyncrasies stand out In particular For people who use Vista as a multimedia repos itory or as a host for games the Processor Component score makes sense But for those of us who rely on our PCs to get actual work done the choice of benchmark programs leaves much to be desired In particular if you use your PC in some computer intensive pursuit the WEI processor score may not reflect your experiences in the slightest On the other hand if you while away most of your hours online working with e mail or Word documents PowerPoint presentations or garden variety spreadsheet2. 0 if the graph ics card doesn t support the older Direct3D version 9 0 standard If the graphics card can t handle the Pixel Shader 3 0 spec en wikipedia org wiki Pixel_shader the score maxes out at 4 9 no mat ter how fast the graphics card might be Any card that supports Direct3D 9 0 DirectX9 and WDDM see the preceding section receives at least a 2 0 Primary Hard Disk Component Surprisingly the Primary Hard Disk Component doesn t look at the size of your hard disk how much room is left its fragmentation caching seek time rotational latency or anything else that you learned in hard disk school Confronted by ultrasmart hard drives caches buffering policies hardware optimiza tions look ahead write behind and all sorts of con founding capabilities of hard drives and their drivers Microsoft basically threw up its hands and gave up on any attempt to measure all around disk performance 14 WinSAT proceeds in a very simplistic way It measures sequential read performance which is to say WinSAT jumps around your hard drive and reads the data on the drive here and there keeping track of the amount of data coming in and the time it takes to read That s it No random reads or writes Heck it doesn t write at all WinSAT averages the ratings and converts the num bers into a score between 2 0 and 5 9 Yes 2 0 is the slowest disk reading you re ever likely to see Assembling a base score
3. fact WinSAT runs a battery of Technique 1 Experiencing the Windows Experience Index processor intensive tests involving data compres sion and decompression encryption and decryption AES and SHA1 and encoding video Then a secret formula gets applied to translate the results into a score between 1 0 and 5 9 Worth noting Traditional CPU intensive opera e9 tions like oh running Fast Fourier Transforms Uio or recalculating humongous Excel spreadsheets or festering automatic color calibrations in Adobe Illustrator aren t considered when com ing up with the WEI processor score If you spend a lot of time working with big spread sheets assembling book size manuscripts or doctoring photos for presentation to Congressional subcommittees and or way ward spouses to say nothing of searching for oil your impression of processor speed may vary greatly from Vista s Memory RAM Component The Memory RAM Component score supposedly reflects memory operations per second but heaven help ya if you base a RAM buying decision on that fallacious description Two competing RAM limitations are at work here the speed at which Vista can shuffle data into and out of memory and the total amount of memory available for shuffles It s hard to come up with a single number that encapsulates both aspects of RAM performance so WinSAT basically punts Here s how 1 WinSAT tests the throughput the total num ber of megaby
4. get translated accurately into numbers you can see on a graph Historically after a specific benchmark test reached critical mass for example as soon as PC Magazine or PC Computing based recommendations on a par ticular benchmark test hardware manufacturers built and tweaked their hardware exclusively to improve those specific benchmark test scores regardless of the effect on real world performance Now that Microsoft has codified a specific benchmark test you should expect more of the same and take that natural propensity into consideration when looking at WEI results Analyzing Benchmarks A good performance benchmark can help in four very different ways iw vw If one of the components of your computer isn t pulling its own weight the benchmark should pinpoint the laggard In my uh experience the Windows Experience Index benchmark accurately identifies parts of a system that aren t up to snuff but fixing the problem may be considerably more difficult than throwing money at it Conversely if all your computer s pieces are reasonably well balanced the benchmark should tell you If none of the components is obviously pulling your PC down there s no reason to spend money on improving the per formance of a single part WEI does a surprisingly good job of giving you the big picture If all the pieces work more or less harmoniously and you still feel the need for speed don t approac
5. most capable bestest components maxed out at 5 9 You could assemble a hive of 64 000 optically interlinked supercomputers operating at Bose Einstein temperatures with petabytes of L2 cache and yottabytes of solid state disk and the self aware Uber computer would have to admit no doubt in sheepish tones that its Windows Experience Index doesn t exceed 5 9 It s a design requirement Douglas Adams would be proud Microsoft promises that we can continue to count on the WEI because 1 The WEI component score you get today will be the same WEI you get tomorrow If you have a PC with a Gaming Graphics score of 4 8 it will always score 4 8 As technology improves WEIs will be allowed to increase By the year 2008 we should see WEIs of 6 or 7 Kind of like the open ended Richter scale In the year 2525 That said there s no claim for scalability a PC with a WEI of 7 won t necessarily run two or ten times faster than one with a WEI of 6 Breaking down components Vista includes terse descriptions of each of the five performance components in the Performance Information and Tools dialog box refer to Figure 1 1 The method for calculating each of those five com ponents goes way beyond wiggling your PC s fingers and toes and the descriptions leave much to be desired Processor Component Vista says that the Processor Component is rated by calculations per second but that s only part of the story In
6. Choose Start gt Computer 2 Double click your C drive and then double click to navigate to Windows Performance WinSAT DataStore You see one or more XML files as in Figure 1 7 containing WinSAT results each with a filename that includes the date and time WinSAT was run Figure 1 7 Results from WinSAT runs which update your WEI scores appear in XML files in this folder Can t see the xm1 at the end of the file names like in Figure 1 7 You need to tell Vista to show you filename extensions explain how to do that in Technique 15 Quick hint Press the Alt key to bring up the menu click Tools Folder Options and click the View tab Under Advanced Settings uncheck the box marked Hide Extensions for Known File Types While you re there consider choosing the option Show Hidden Files and Folders Click OK 3 To see the results of your PC s first WinSAT run which happened before you logged on for the first time double click the file with Initial in its name To see the most recent 17 Digging Deeper results double click the last file in the list which is also the result of the most recent WinSAT run Vista opens Internet Explorer and shows you the contents of the XML file An XML file is a specific kind of text file that contains settings organized in a standard way that s easy for programs to recognize and digest Values inside the XML file are set off with beginning and ending t
7. Experiencing the Windows Technique Experience Index Save Time By Understanding what the Windows Experience Index says and doesn t say Upgrading your PC in ways that really help Not sweating the small stuff Microsoft refrains from calling the Windows Experience Index WED a performance index but that s precisely the function it performs You get one number backed up by a small handful of ancillary numbers that together are supposed to tell you how well Vista performs on a specific piece of hardware Since the dawn of computer dumb peo ple have been trying to measure how fast a particular computer works and report on the speed as a single easy to understand number or index To date nobody has succeeded Vista s no exception A performance index by any other name would smell as sweet A small handful of developers inside Microsoft know precisely how Vista calculates the Windows Experience Index None of them are talking A legion of hardware and software manufacturers are trying at this very moment to hack crack reverse engineer out psych and out bamboozle the Windows Experience Index Why Money For the first time in Windows long history Microsoft has put its impri matur on a performance benchmark Everybody and his brother wants to beat the Windows Experience Index Stakes are high A chip manufacturer that can eke out say a 5 7 rating instead of a paltry 5 4 can prove that its har
8. ags which are stropped with lt and gt wedges For example your overall WEI system base score is listed in the WinSAT XML file as lt SystemScore gt 3 8 lt SystemScore gt Other XML values follow the same lt Tag gt SomeValue lt Tag gt form 4 Scroll down the WinSAT results see Figure 1 8 When you re done click X to exit Internet Explorer C iniindows PertormanceWinSA TiData Store 2006 12 45 12 07 55499 Assessment ats WinSA xm Wexdows int jormance WinSAT DataStere 2006 12 15 12 07 55 493 x e Searc P le dt ConndowsPoctaemancewwnsANDatastore2 D r 1 gt V6 0 Build 6000 lt Version gt Windows Systam Assessment Toal lt Tite gt thoc Windows system32 winsat cxe lt ModulePsth gt ly Physical memory available to the OS is less than or equal to t mem score to 4 5 Kelebon LE gt 1010012736 JLrrtopplied gt Rive Dene M Computer Protected Mode Off Figure 1 8 The full raw results that get massaged to produce your Windows Experience Index You can find your WEI component ratings formerly known as your System Performance Ratings under the tag lt winSPR gt Perhaps sur prisingly as you can see in Figure 1 8 WinSAT maintains seven component scores not the five that Vista shows you in the Performance 18 Information and Tools dialog box You can also see your raw ratings for each piece of the com ponent scores That information may prove help
9. ation and Toot er search P aiculations per second E advanced tools Memory operators per second 45 Desktop petommancetor Windows Aero 47 eng qemrg graphics 48 Determined by Figure 1 1 Vista s benchmark of your computer s performance 3 If you ve changed hardware recently or if yow re looking at a computer in a dealer s showroom or considering buying one from a Friendly FlyByNight Fleamarket Fellow click the link marked Update My Score Why Because Vista doesn t recalculate the Windows Experience Index score very often and it may be possible to jimmy the score Best to run an update see the sidebar WinSAT and be sure that the score you see matches the hard ware in the box If you run an update the WinSAT program takes a few minutes keeping you posted on the tests that it s running see Figure 1 2 When it s done your newly refreshed scores appear 11 Calculating the WE Windows Experience Index Assessing disk performance This might take a few minutes Your screen might flash during the rating Cancel Figure 1 2 The Windows System Assessment Tool WinSAT updates all of your WEI scores WinSAT The Windows Experience Index amounts to little more than a pretty face painted onto a sophisticated multitalented pro gram called WinSAT or the Windows System Assessment Tool If you installed Vista from a DVD WinSAT ran be
10. aving 2GB of memory and running a faster video card Once again the laggard performer of the five components is the processor Once again that doesn t bother me 16 e amp l use this PC as my main production computer 1 The fast graphics component score translates into very snappy screen responsiveness an important timesaving consideration for people like me who work with multiple windows open and frequently switch among them 2 In spite of the low processor score the components of this PC are very well matched for the kind of work that I and most folks chained to an office desk per form every day It would be a waste of time and money to upgrade any of the major components individually Digging Deeper Vista can show you a few more details about the WEI ratings To see the More Details about My Computer dialog box shown in Figure 1 5 follow these steps E Performance Information and Tocls Details Intel R Pentium R 4 CPU 3 20GHz 200 6B NVIDIA GeForce T800 GS Microsoft Corporation WDDM 390 MB Total arailable graphics memory F eLa Technique 1 Experiencing the Windows Experience Index Choose Start right click Computer and then choose Properties Vista shows you the View Basic Information about Your Computer dialog box refer to Figure 1 3 Click the link marked Windows Experience Index which appears to the right of your sys tem rating score The Performance Inf
11. dware works faster thus potentially selling zillions of additional chips Powerful incentive to jigger the results any way they can You can save yourself a heap of time and money if you understand the inner workings of the Windows Experience Index both its strengths and its limitations This Technique shows you the mechanics and the dirty underbelly of the beast At the end of this Technique I reveal the most important benchmark of all one that Vista doesn t even touch 10 Technique 1 Experiencing the Windows Experience Index Problems with Performance Benchmarks You can t boil down a computer s performance to a single simple number You know that Microsoft knows that The world knows that But it sure doesn t keep people from trying Performance ratings have been around since the very first computers flipped their bits For decades com puter magazines thrived on benchmarks Whetstones and Winstones Dhrystones and Fhourstones SYSMarks PCMarks 3DMarks MarkMarks and dozens more all achieved levels of notoriety but ultimately failed to produce a simple answer to a simple question Which computer runs faster There s a reason why the answer proved and proves so elusive A computer s speed depends quite dramatically on what you re doing and how you re doing it Benchmarks can try to replicate a typical or even atypical workload but in the end performance differ ences that you can feel in your gut rarely
12. fore you first logged on when the aurora kept dancing on your screen WinSAT results were used to determine whether Vista would first appear with the Aero Glass see through interface running less capable video cards don t get Glass WinSAT also runs when certain kinds of hardware get installed graphic card installers in particular are sup posed to call WinSAT when the drivers are set up When you tell Vista to Update My Score WinSAT runs again Application installers can pluck numbers out of WinSAT while they run modifying a program s options to take advantage of your computer s capabilities or lack thereof So the numbers you see in your Windows Experience Index may influence the features of the software installed on your computer Calculating the WEI The Windows Experience Index consists of five com ponent scores and an overall base score which is simply the lowest of the five component scores Microsoft figures with no small amount of justification that your PC s performance chain is only as strong as its weakest link Yank the chain and the slowest link bogs down the entire system In order to understand your overall score you must therefore look at each component and struggle with the nuances 12 Maxing out the WEI As Vista slid out the door Microsoft decided to place an arbitrary upper limit on perform ance ratings the day Vista hit the stands every PC scored at least a 1 but the fastest
13. ful if you re comparing machines trying to figure out why one s slower than the other Now you know why it s important to have Vista update your scores particularly if you re relying on WEI scores to buy a computer from someone you don t know The raw values can be jimmied and the raw score file could be compromised The Most Important Benchmark Score With all the emphasis on benchmarking in 3 Windows find it surprising that Microsoft wos doesn t even attempt to calculate a compo nent score for the most important component of all your Internet access speed As more and more of our working lives take place online your PC s processing speed becomes less and less relevant Kind of like Windows itself eh For most people most of the time a point or two dif ference in WEI scores doesn t count as a blip on the radar screen when compared to lightning fast or abysmally slow download times Just as there are myriad arguments for running cer tain kinds of CPU speed tests or hard disk access tests or pixel subshader blinder blender blaster Technique 1 Experiencing the Windows Experience Index tests there are also zillions of Internet speed tests each of which has its adherents and detractors Personally I use the DSLReports test available free at www dslreports com speedtest see Figure 1 9 I always test by bouncing off the same location and the reports produced are surprisingly consistent If
14. h the problem piecemeal wait until you can afford to buy a new machine When you re out to buy hardware say a new hard drive or a video card or even an entire new computer the benchmark should help you compare among the products on offer This is where WEI starts to break down Part of the problem lies in the way the scores are calcu lated see the next section Part of it can be attributed to the historical problems with benchmarking Microsoft claims and I remain skeptical that the Windows Experience Index in particu lar can help you choose software If you re looking at a program that requires say a WEI rating of 4 and your hardware only comes in at 3 5 presumably the WEI can keep you from buy ing a product that runs like a slug I m skeptical because the examples I ve seen work the other way Oh Dad Doom XVII only takes a WEI of 2 7 and we have a 2 8 Can we spend our rent money and splat more zombies In the end frequently get the feel ing that Microsoft and its partners use the WEI to sell more stuff To see your computer s Windows Experience Index follow these steps 7 Choose Start Control Panel Click the System and Maintenance link 2 Under the System icon click the link marked Check Your Computer s Windows Experience Index Base Score Vista shows you the Performance Information and Tools dialog box shown in Figure 1 1 Ge E Fetormsecevtonm
15. ormation and Tools dialog box appears as in Figures 1 1 and 1 4 If there s any reason to doubt the validity of the Windows Experience Index shown on the screen click the Update My Score link to have Vista re calculate all five component scores Under the component column click the link that says View and Print Details You see the More Details about My Computer dialog box shown in Figure 1 5 Don t bother clicking the link to View Software for My Base Score Online If you do Microsoft takes you to Windows Marketplace see Figure 1 6 a giant Microsoft advertising site designed primarily to separate you and the advertisers from feeelthy lucre Don t be fooled Software and hardware companies pay Big Bucks to advertise on Microsoft s site 26368 Free 27968 Total Figure 1 5 Details for the PC in Figure 1 4 8 Introducing digital locker yun Figure 1 6 Windows Marketplace a Microsoft owned and operated advertising site Avoid it The More Details about My Computer dialog box shows you a few more details about your WEI scores including the type of processor and video card that you re using I talk about performance enhancing tweaks in the next Technique Tracking Performance and Reliability If you re curious about your raw WEI scores it s easy to see the log of the tests WinSAT has per formed and how the benchmarks stack up Here s how to look at the log 7
16. re of an art than a science but differences of less than a point in any of the scores doesn t affect performance to the extent that I can feel it If you put a PC with a base score of 5 1 next to a PC with a base score of 4 2 and try to slog through a normal day s work you proba bly won t feel much of a difference But if you put a 5 1 next to a 3 5 I bet you d feel the difference in a New York minute With those caveats in mind take a closer look at the Windows Experience Index in Figure 1 1 and see what the numbers really mean The PC with the 3 7 WEI in Figure 1 1 and 1 3 runs an AMD Athlon 64 3000 proces ass sor which is rated by AMD at 1 8 GHz The Athlon only delivered a 3 7 on the WEI processor component benchmark a number that drew down the base score rating for the entire PC The memory component bench mark came in at 4 5 not because of the memory operations per second but because this computer has 1GB of memory see Table 1 1 With a graphics benchmark of 4 7 this system performs quite nimbly Because don t use the PC for games the gaming graphics score doesn t mean much and the hard disk score means even less ae BN 3y g When I feel the urge to upgrade this computer I will start by adding more memory That won t boost the Windows Experience Index by much but because I leave Outlook open all day long and use it fre quently more memory will make the PC run faster The dispa
17. rity between the processor component score and the graphics component score a differ ence of a full point doesn t overly concern me because Microsoft s processor benchmark is so 15 Analyzing the WEI heavily weighted toward compression to the exclu sion of other activities that I use far more frequently When AMD makes a CPU with a WEI of 5 0 or so that ll work on my motherboard I ll consider upgrading but I won t lose any sleep over it and I won t expect to notice much of a timesaving difference Other than memory and possibly a processor upgrade that s about it Unless I run out of hard disk space I won t bother trying to upgrade any other part of this computer the relatively well balanced scores tell me that it isn t worth the time or the money When I outgrow this computer I ll hand it off to someone else in the family and buy a brand new one Compare that PC with the one shown in Figure 1 4 with a WEI base score of 4 3 Tasks ti Merage startup programs P Aafjust pomve settings amp Opin Disk Chorp E Advanced tools Desktop pertomancetor Windows Ace 53 3Db oe Determined by lowest subscore Lect rating 10 7 2006 201 93 PM Figure 1 4 This PC runs considerably faster than the one in Figure 1 1 This second PC uses an Intel Pentium 4 rated by Intel at 3 2 GHz The computer feels much faster than the PC in Figure 1 1 a fact that I attribute to h
18. s you don t put much of a strain on your processor anyway and the WEI processor benchmark number is largely irrelevant Spending the money to raise your processor score may not save you much time at all w Adding more memory to a Vista PC makes sense up to a point say 1GB if you use only a couple programs concurrently or 2GB if you run Microsoft Outlook all day and a couple of addi tional big programs The Memory Component score is entirely dependent on bus speed with caps for lesser amounts of memory and the caps aren t dependent on the memory s speed at all Ultimately the score s an apples and oranges kind of mish mash How else to explain the fact that you can upgrade from 1 5GB to 4 0GB of memory on any computer and not nudge your score one iota On the other hand the Graphics Component score means a great deal to almost everyone who uses Vista day in and day out precisely because it s closely linked to WDM the program that draws on the screen 1 D3D component scores make a big difference for gamers three dimensional modelers certain sophisticated graphic designers some scientists and engineers and almost nobody else w The disk component score is a joke Drives are so sophisticated now that any attempt to benchmark their real world performance is just as dependent on the assumptions made by the benchmarking software as the capabilities of the drive itself Analyzing component scores remains mo
19. t with emphasis on playing video includ ing movies TV and the like and the specific needs of Vista s Aero Glass interface Every recent graphics card supports the DirectX9 specification which makes it faster for programs to interact with the screen and WDDM the Windows Display Driver Model which provides a uniform way for programs to show things on the screen If your graphics card doesn t have a DirectX9 compliant driver WinSAT sets your Graphics Component score to 1 0 If it doesn t have WDDM the highest score you can get is 1 9 13 Calculating the WEI Gaming Graphics Component More than anything else the Gaming Graphics Component measures your video card s ability to handle 3D graphics Internally this benchmark is called the D3DScore D3D being geek shorthand for Direct3D Microsoft s proprietary set of com mands for high performance three dimensional pic ture rendering WinSAT runs three different Direct3D benchmark tests An alpha blending test that determines how quickly your graphics card can blend together two colors in a standard semitransparent way Y A straightforward calculation test that assesses the graphic card s computing power when work ing with shades Ashader texture test that measures the graphic card s ability to load textures Again the three raw scores go into a blender and the result is a score between 1 0 and 5 9 The score can get clipped It s set to 1
20. tes per second of large blocks of data going into and out of system memory A magic incantation translates the bandwidth in megabytes per second into a raw score between 1 0 and 5 9 2 Then WinSAT caps the score based on the total amount of memory available to the PC minus any memory that s reserved for graphics If you don t have enough memory your mem ory speed score gets cut off at the knees The caps appear in Table 1 1 TABLE 1 1 WEI Caps For THE Memory RAM COMPONENT If You Have This Much Memory excluding memory reserved Your Memory Score for graphics Gets Cut Off At 256MB 2 0 512MB 2 9 768MB 3 9 Less than 1 5GB 4 5 1 5GB or more Score isn t capped Graphics Component The Graphics Component WinSAT score determines whether Vista will try to run the Aero Glass interface automatically It s a two dimensional video centric measurement WinSAT runs the following three video bandwidth benchmarks mashes the results together and comes up with a score between 1 0 and 5 9 1 WinSAT simulates the Desktop Windows Manager the program that controls the Aero Glass interface at work calculating the num ber of frames per second DWM exe can push onto the desktop 1 Itruns a Video Decoder test and measures how long your PC takes to display video Finally WinSAT measures video memory band width in megabytes per second The graphics component score is a two dimensional kind of tes
21. you ever wondered how much data your line can handle this is the place to check kabend help Speed saw Mesila Anric Lie Lat yew tgtney e leae D E Figure 1 9 DSLReports features independent reliable Internet line speed tests Free The folks at DSLReports run extensive broadband service comparisons gripe lines and well informed forums Next time you catch yourself swearing at your slow computer run over to DSLReports and see if the problem lies with your line
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