WEI Score Index is over rated

Capt Zero.

My first home modem was a (you ready for it???) a 6 baud pocket modem. Not 60, 6oo, or 6k. SIX. Of course at work on the milnet we only had 12 bauds to start with and then went to the screamer 24 baud. My first 10 meg external hard drive was a CBM brand and cost almost $600. Cassette tape loading of software, only after you programed it yourself.

Actually the machine that I really liked the best was a Commodore 128D because it used basic AND unix. Which I still have in sorage. OH, almost forgot my Vic 20 and Commodor 64. I did not have a color monitor until I got the 128D.That was in 1975 or thereabouts. After that was my first DOS ver 1.2 , 33mhz ibm clone in 1980. (home made of course). A REAL PERFORMANCE MACHINE I might add.

By the way, I'm not that far from you. Tonopah Nevada...

Thanks for the memories... :)

WEI is not the most sophisticated benchmark tool... but it does good enough for the majority of people. I would not at all call it inaccurate or ficticious or some scheme to try to sell more hardware - Microsoft is a software company, not a hardware company (like Apple). As it stands, there is no reason to suspect Microsoft of skewing WEI scores for some ulterior motive.

That being said, there are two things that are going to affect your WEI score for graphics: your actual physical video card specs (duh), and also very importantly, the drivers that you're using. If you have crazy good video card setup (like SLI or Crossfire or whatever), but are using crappy drivers, your score's gonna suck. Especially on a brand new operating system that the drivers weren't designed for.

Bottom line, you need to download and install drivers that are specific to Windows 7. Otherwise, your WEI score could be half what they should be.

~ Nick

ENZO said:

Yes, i do, latest drivers from nvidia, i decided to run the checker again, and it comes up with 4.8 now :S

Enzo.

There's still something wrong coz I have a 8500GT and I got a 4.8/4.6 respectively... I think that's a good rate because my video card is a low-end one.

I don't see the problem with WEI, nor do I think it's overhyped. Heck, most people don't even care about their WEI except for us enthusiasts, and most of us know it isn't the end all-be-all of benchmarks anyways. I actually do think its a pretty nice measurement for relative performance of computers. A 1.0 system will usually perform worse than a 3.0 one =P

my zotac 9600gt is weird. I get 4.2 for aero graphics but a 6.3 in gaming graphics

I personally disagree with the Original poster. WEI is in my opinion a direction foward. Like you mention your scores where all 7.1 and higher except for one. If one was looking to upgrade because it was a hobby or wanted more improvement. He would know what the next step would be. A balanced system is always good. I humor myself when i see unbalanced systems from friends, where one component is amazingly good and about everything else sucks, also know as bottlenecking.

However that was not really the purpose of WEI, it was meant to be for users with little experience in computers. How many times do people go to forums or online and make a post " Can my computer run (Insert Name of new game here) "

What if games had a WEI score, now a user can see the game and within 3 mouse clicks figuere out his computer score and compare. Basic System requirement information is useful but not many people get it.
This can be taken a step further by also adding WEI scores to softwares.
The problem is some task require no power from GPU but are highly dependent on CPU power. Software boxes will need to add something like 3.0 CPU WEI score recommended.