I think Microsoft’s heart was in the right place with the Windows Experience Index, but nobody seems to understand why it’s there. The rating really means nothing – it’s a guideline. If a game claims that it was designed for a system with a Windows Experience Index number of 4.0, and your computer is rated at 5.0, you’re set. Paul Genato asks:

I recently saw your segment on 4 GB or RAM with Windows Vista, and your other video segments which were very helpful and informative. I have another related question and I hope you can help me. I am a new Notebook PC owner and have a Windows Vista Ultimate 64-Bit Notebook PC with 4GB of RAM, an Intel Core 2 Duo T7700 CPU, and a 256 MB RAM NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GS video card. I am curious to know whether my Notebook PC is taking full advantage of the 4GB installed in it. One reason I ask is because of the 4.8 rating for Memory (RAM) on the Windows Experience Index which is close to the rating of a Notebook PC with 2 GB RAM, and with a similar CPU and video card installed in it. This 2 GB RAM Notebook PC turns out to have a rating also, of about 4.8. Why the discrepancy? I expected the 4GB of RAM to push the rating up to 5.5 or something like that since it has twice as much RAM. Is there something I can do to make the rating higher or make more use of the RAM available? I already followed Windows Help’s suggestion of increasing the Virtual Memory to the recommended setting of 6139 MB of initial paging size file of Virtual Memory. I increased the maximum size to 17517 MB for maximum paging size file of Virtual Memory, which was about 2 and a half times the amount of the initial size as the “Windows Help” screen suggested. I did this and the rating is still 4.8. Please tell me if this rating matters or not, and/or if it is accurate.

I am now running a tuner card to watch HDTV, I have open several internet pages, have a movie trailer for my Windows DreamScene desktop background running, and am running one or two applications at the same time without any hang ups. While I do this my task manager shows that 2.47 GB of RAM is being used. If I had this same set up having all those same applications running with 2 GB of RAM would my system start bogging down or crashing, or would it still just perform as smooth as it is right now? I wonder about that since the Windows Experience Index has around a 4.8 rating for a 2 GB RAM Notebook PC too. I hope you can tell me your take on it, I would really appreciate it. Thank you.

Hey, at least you’re running smoother than you were before!

Does the Windows Experience Index Number Mean Anything?

Chris | Live Tech Support | Video Help | Add to iTunes

http://live.pirillo.com/ – A new visitor to our chat room called in tonight. He had to completely reinstall Windows Vista 64-bit today. After the install, he noticed that his Windows Experience Index is down 1.0 points from what it had been.

To be quite honest, I don’t give the Windows Experience Index much credibility. It is designed to help consumers understand how well Windows Vista and the software running on it will perform on a specific PC. The index achieves this by assessing the capability of the PC and assigning a score to it. Higher scores indicate a better Vista experience on your PC. Basically, it’s just a benchmark that tells you how well your computer rates for software and gaming compatibility.

The idea behind this is that a regular person could walk into a store, and see a game they want to play. They wonder if the game would work on their system. The game will have a “rating” on it, let’s say 4. Depending on what the Windows Experience Index tells them, they should easily know whether the game will work on their particular system.

If you’re only down one point from what you were before, you have really nothing to worry about. I’m inclined to believe it is just a glitch with a driver you installed. Maybe there’s just a bit of different optimization to it than there was before. One point difference should not affect your system or how it runs at all.

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Windows Experience Index