New hdd, WEI from 5.8 to 5.9? That's all?

[bupkus]

I just cloned my Seagate Barracuda 160GB onto a new Samsung Spinpoint F3 HD103SJ 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb and my Windows Experience Index only increased by 0.1.
I must say I'm a little disappointed. I thought I would see a little more improvement rating.
Maybe my old Seagate was a little speed demon. Maybe my Samsung isn't as fast as testimonials suggest. Maybe 0.1 is a big improvement considering the theoretical ceiling of 7200 rpm disks.
Or maybe the WEI sucks?

 

[Voo]

WEI weighs random r/w and access time obviously much higher than sequential r/w, so the differences between two 7.2k rpm drives won't be that large.

But in this case, the solution is much easier.. 5.9 is the hardcap for HDDs - also there are much better benchmarks for such comparisions than WEI.. though it's "correct" in that sense, that the difference between those two drives probably won't be noticeable without benchmarks..

 

[BlueWeasel]

But in this case, the solution is much easier.. 5.9 is the hardcap for HDDs - also there are much better benchmarks for such comparisions than WEI.. though it's "correct" in that sense, that the difference between those two drives probably won't be noticeable without benchmarks..

Bingo -- you've maxed out the score for spindle hard drives. Test with more appropriate benchmarks and you'll see the newer drive will be much faster.

 

[n7]

For higher scores, get an SSD

 

[MisterDonut]

I've only seen 5.9 on 7200 mechanicals. My SSD is 7.4 .

 

[CurseTheSky]

Don't let Windows Experience Index get you down. It's a rather horrible benchmark.

Compare the two drives using HD Tune or a similar program.

 

[bupkus]

Don't let Windows Experience Index get you down

Not likely. This samsung is running just fine. I won't be doing any more upgrades for a while to come.

 

[taltamir]

Here is how WEI works:
X.Y
X = A number based on the FEATURES it detects.
Y = A number based on a speed test, between 1 and 9.

X being 5 in both cases is because both drives have above a certain minimum amount of space (I think over 80GB), 7200RPM, and are not an SSD.
Y going from 8 to 9 means that you went from a performance of "8/9 on a scale that MS decided to measure for" to "literally off the charts MS was using".
Spindle drives are limited to an X of 1 through 5. SSDs can get 6 and 7.

WEI is also inconsistent, and MS refused to ever publish a full explanation of exactly what is measured by everything... I am basing the above data on some VERY limited data MS released about WEI in windows vista; and an interview with an MS engineer about how WEI differs in windows 7...
http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/...indows-experience-index-an-in-depth-look.aspx

oh, and WEI is:
1. Limited to 5.Y on windows vista, and 7.Y on windows 7.
2. Had changes made to how it measures, resulting in mostly lower numbers on windows 7 for identical hardware.

 

[sandorski]

5.4 on my Seagate. Everything else is 7.5-7.2ish(going from memory).

 

[sub.mesa]

Use a real benchmark:

CrystalDiskMark
AS SSD

Testing throughput on your system disk is mostly useless; concentrate on random I/O performance, particularly random reads. Then you will see why people buy SSDs, when your HDD does have trouble reaching 1MB/s with this kind of workload.

 

[Yellowbeard]

Here is how WEI works:
X.Y
X = A number based on the FEATURES it detects.
Y = A number based on a speed test, between 1 and 9.

X being 5 in both cases is because both drives have above a certain minimum amount of space (I think over 80GB), 7200RPM, and are not an SSD.
Y going from 8 to 9 means that you went from a performance of "8/9 on a scale that MS decided to measure for" to "literally off the charts MS was using".
Spindle drives are limited to an X of 1 through 5. SSDs can get 6 and 7.

WEI is also inconsistent, and MS refused to ever publish a full explanation of exactly what is measured by everything... I am basing the above data on some VERY limited data MS released about WEI in windows vista; and an interview with an MS engineer about how WEI differs in windows 7...
http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/...indows-experience-index-an-in-depth-look.aspx

oh, and WEI is:
1. Limited to 5.Y on windows vista, and 7.Y on windows 7.
2. Had changes made to how it measures, resulting in mostly lower numbers on windows 7 for identical hardware.

Well said. I agree 110%. Bottom line, completely ignore WEI. It is worse than worthless.