Windows Experience index, HD very low

carling220

Senior member
Dec 16, 2011
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The windows experience index assigns scores out of 7.9. Everything is 7.5-7.8, which is good, except my primary hard disc, which is 5.9?

I wonder if the shop building my PC skimped on the HD, or is this unimportant?

Will upgrading HD make much difference to every day, and can it affect gaming?
 

Elixer

Lifer
May 7, 2002
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A SSD for the OS drive is the way to go, and if it is big enough (256GB or higher) then you can also install some games on it.
 

Blue_Max

Diamond Member
Jul 7, 2011
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The only way to get higher than 5.9 is with a solid-state disk. Even the newest, fastest mechanical hard drive gets a 5.9 (though I've seen some older drives get 5.0-5.4 and they were slllooooowww!)
 

Morbus

Senior member
Apr 10, 2009
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To answer your question, YES it will make a huge difference if get an SSD as your primary hard drive. Huge improvements to boot time and windows response time, as well as every other read/write activity that happens on the SSD.

For older machines, this is even more noticeable. The way you say "if the shop building my PC skimped on the HD" tells me you probably have an old/not very awesome PC, so definitely upgrade, for sure.
 

carling220

Senior member
Dec 16, 2011
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I will read the SSD sticky now. My PC is fairly good I think I have a 2500k and a 560ti, with a 770 lightning in the post. But know nothing of hard drives and was curious about the score.
 

Blue_Max

Diamond Member
Jul 7, 2011
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Don't worry - you have a perfectly normal mechanical hard drive.

If you've got a 2500k, you have a z68 (or better) chipset so you could get a smaller SSD to use as a cache for the big drive and improve most performance. (Intel SRT)

You'll still get a 5.9 on the ratings, but it'll feel much faster overall.
 

Cerb

Elite Member
Aug 26, 2000
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I will read the SSD sticky now. My PC is fairly good I think I have a 2500k and a 560ti, with a 770 lightning in the post. But know nothing of hard drives and was curious about the score.
A single HDD maxes out at 5.9, and HDDs that will max out whatever test it uses have been around for several years, now. An SSD or RAID array are needed to get higher. But, WEI, aside from diagnostic purposes, really doesn't make a difference. if you're up for spending some money on your PC, an SSD is a good way to spend it, no doubt, but don't get hung up on WEI scores, unless they are unusually low for what you have.

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/blogs/2013/09/19/farewell-to-the-windows-experience-index/
 

alangrift

Senior member
May 21, 2013
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Those rating are fairly worthless unless you are trying to sell the PC. This is because when you buy the PC you can see all the specs in it which makes it worthless since you know hrs capabilities of each item in the PC for your needs. So as long as it is running well for you don't worry about it.
 

Puffnstuff

Lifer
Mar 9, 2005
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You want a ssd for your boot drive and if you can afford it buy one large enough to put your most used programs on as well. Sandforce drives slow down as you fill them up so keep that in mind as you decide which one to get. Personally I recommend that you get a Samsung evo and call it a day.
 

nwo

Platinum Member
Jun 21, 2005
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If you've got a 2500k, you have a z68 (or better) chipset so you could get a smaller SSD to use as a cache for the big drive and improve most performance. (Intel SRT)

You'll still get a 5.9 on the ratings, but it'll feel much faster overall.

I have a 2500k with a P67 chipset. There are a lot of different chipsets for an i5 2500k.

I always wanted to test that feature out (on my z77), but I am not sure what the advantages of it would be over using an SSD boot drive. :confused:
 

Blue_Max

Diamond Member
Jul 7, 2011
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P67... rats. Still a good overclocker at least. :)

If you have a good sized drive, a small and affordable SSD would cache the whole thing, not just booting.
 

Elixer

Lifer
May 7, 2002
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Can't you fit two or three games on a 128 GB SSD? 0.0

It depends what else you have installed, but, since most SSDs need at least 30% free space to operate efficiently, then you basically end up with a much smaller SSD...
 

CA19100

Senior member
Jun 29, 2012
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I always wanted to test that feature out (on my z77), but I am not sure what the advantages of it would be over using an SSD boot drive. :confused:

I use it on my H77 machine, with a 30GB SSD and a large mechanical hard drive. The big advantage is that you can get much of the speed advantage of a large SSD, but without the expense of one.

For example, a 1TB Samsung 840 Evo is $589 from Amazon. A SanDisk 32GB SSD is $47, and a 1TB Desktop drive is ~$60. So for 18% of the cost of a large SSD, you get a huge speed boost by having the commonly-used files (like the OS) loaded from the SSD, and you only have a single volume to manage instead of moving stuff between an affordable SSD and a larger platter drive.

The Intel SRT works much better than I expected it to. It made my machine nearly as fast as using just an SSD, at much lower cost.
 

nwo

Platinum Member
Jun 21, 2005
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Thanks for all the helpful info. What size do you recommend for a an SRT SSD? Is there a limit to the SSD drive capacity you can use for SRT? I imagine it would make games load faster on consecutive launch in which case I am very tempted to try it since I do not want to invest in a 400+GB SSD. Do all z77s and z87s come with SRT or just the higher end models?
 

CA19100

Senior member
Jun 29, 2012
634
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Thanks for all the helpful info. What size do you recommend for a an SRT SSD? Is there a limit to the SSD drive capacity you can use for SRT?

Size depends on your budget, of course. I got a 30GB Corsair last year, and that's working fine for me, although something a little bigger would be able to hold more in the cache. There is a limit of 64GB; anything beyond that would be split into a separate volume and not used for SRT.

I imagine it would make games load faster on consecutive launch in which case I am very tempted to try it since I do not want to invest in a 400+GB SSD.

Yep, that was exactly my scenario. And that's exactly how it works: After you launch something a couple of times, it caches it into the SSD, and loads it from there. In an ideal world, I'd have an unlimited pile of cash and just get a giant SSD, but unfortunately I'm not there yet!

Do all z77s and z87s come with SRT or just the higher end models?

It's a function of the chipset from Intel, so should work with any motherboard that uses it.

For Sandy Bridge, it's supported only in Z68 chipsets.

For Ivy Bridge, it's in Q77, H77, and Z77.

For Haswell, it's in Q87, H87, and Z87.


Hope that helps!
 

Morbus

Senior member
Apr 10, 2009
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It depends what else you have installed, but, since most SSDs need at least 30% free space to operate efficiently, then you basically end up with a much smaller SSD...
My 840EVO tells me it needs only 10/15%...

Word of advice for those with doubts about what you can and cant put into a SSD: for MOST games, SSDs will make a very VERY marginal performance improvement, and only on the loading of the game/level/map/whatever. Some older games may even misbehave on SSDs. The reason for this small improvement is that most of the loading time is spent processing the information that is read from the disc, rather than actually reading it. This is not true for huge games (that's 10GB+) or heavily modded games (Skyrim, for example). also MMOs tend to benefit a lot from SSDs.

So, in the end, if you end up installing games that DO benefit from a SSD on your 128GB SSD, you'll only install a couple of them because those games are huge. If you install games that DO NOT benefit from a SSD or benefit very little, you're effectively wasting your SSD space with games that could very well be running on a HDD.

I hope this helps.
 

johny12

Member
Sep 18, 2012
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SSD is always a better upgrade option. You could go for Sandforce based like Intel, kingston v300... which has a very good read/write speed, faster performance as well less in cost comparison too.