perfmon /report shows poor hardware ratings in my refurbished laptop

[Siyeh]

perfmon /report shows "poor" hardware ratings

Hi,

I'm fairly new here and still learning about my newly-acquried laptop. I haven't done much with it beyond running tests. Just used perfmon /report for the first time. Here's what I found under "Warnings" in the System Diagnostics Report:

The "CPU" rating for the system is poor and may be the cause of performance problems.

The "Gaming graphics" rating for the system is poor and may be the cause of performance problems in multimedia applications or games.

The "Graphics" rating for the system is poor and may be the cause of performance problems.

The "Disk" rating for the system is poor and may be the cause of performance problems.

The "Memory" rating for the system is very poor and may be the cause for performance issues.

All of the drivers were pre-installed. The only change I made was installation of a AMD graphics driver update package from Dell. I needed the AMD Catalyst Control Center included in the update.

I was concerned about the very poor memory rating so I ran the Windows Memory Diagnostic Tool in automatic mode. No memory errors were detected.

Two poor ratings for graphics reinforces my suspicion of a graphics hardware issue. So where do I go from here? If more information is needed I'll do my best to provide it.

Thanks

 

[Mellon Head]

One thing that you should take into account before you start worrying too much:

Laptops in general do not score high in performance indexes. They just aren't top performers unless you get into some seriously expensive "gaming" laptops.

I get the same warnings from my similarly equipped brand new Acer laptop. It's just the way it is.

 

[Siyeh]

Thanks for the reassurance Mellon Head.

I'm curious, have you tested or benchmarked the hardware in your new Acer?
If so, what program(s) did you use?

 

[Mellon Head]

Thanks for the reassurance Mellon Head.

I'm curious, have you tested or benchmarked the hardware in your new Acer?
If so, what program(s) did you use?

I used Perfmon /report and SiSoft Sandra (an old copy) to benchmark the basics. I tried Furmark to bench the graphics card, but it overheated the discrete graphics card something fierce. It will run long enough without rebooting to get through Unigine Heaven and Valley with predictably dismal results (frame rates 10 - 15).

All in all, it's a predictably poor performer, but then most laptops are. It's why I don't buy them for gaming. I use a desktop for that. In my mind, a laptop is good enough for most business use and not much else.

But that's just me. Your mileage may vary.

 

[Siyeh]

Thanks again. Its been a while since I've owned a laptop. My last one was built before switchable graphics came along.

I tried Unigine Valley with the Extreme HD preset. It ran slowly using the integrated Intel HD graphics. Later, I used a custom preset and it ran faster and hotter; within a few minutes the GPU temp touched 80 C so I stopped the program.

In both runs--neither complete--the quality of the video in Valley was lower than I expected. I poked around on the web and found an older AMD Ladybug DirectX11 demo. The image quality was better, but there were no controls or any kind of readout, so I don't know if the demo was running with the AMD HD card.

I understand how switchable graphics is supposed to work. I'm looking for a test that can isolate the discrete card and at least show me whether its dead or alive. Software that could demonstrate the AMD graphics quality would eliminate any doubt. I'm not expecting a lot of speed or dazzling effects, I just want to know for sure that the discrete card works.

The newest Sandra Lite looks pretty elaborate. Maybe an older version dating back to 2014 or 2015 would be more helpful? If there's something better for what I want to do, I'd like to give it a try.

 

[Mellon Head]

The new Sandra should probably do the job for you. I'm using an older version that I downloaded years ago simply because I don't need to download the new one. I rarely use it anymore, since I've characterized all of my systems.

One thing to remember when looking for older versions of software though: Lots of times they are bundled with malware by the redistributors. Nothing wrong with an older version of stuff, just be careful. Heck, even a new version can be bundled with malware.