Datasheet

Analyzing the WEI
15
 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 more 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-
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 I
don’t use the PC for games, the gaming
graphics score doesn’t mean much, and the
hard disk score means even less.
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 disparity 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
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.
• 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
having 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.
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