Show Us Your WEI (2)

[steve-pressman]

@ Dave I just looked at your specs and specifically your internet speed that made me chuckle man, sorry I mean it in a nice way, there is talk over here of Virgin Broadband having 400MB download speeds http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/virgin-media-already-looking-to-400mbps-broadband-698361 by the end of the year, I only manage 6.1MB down and 1MB up, sadly I can't get Virgin as I am not in a cabled area, but the slowest part of my system is the Internet, I remember in the old days I would be waiting on the Rig to catch up with the Internet now it is the other way around if that makes sense.


Steve

 

[jsettoon]

Not too shabby for an OEM that was purchased on 4/24/2008. Taken today on 6/26/2010:

Good scores

I've got pretty much the same computer, with almost the same scores.

If you shrink your windows partition to about 100 GB, it would bring that HDD score up a tenth or 2

My OEM, same as mentioned above, has an 80GB OS partition and still gets a 5.9.

It's the highest you can get with a good HDD, and no RAID.

I built my first machine in 2008, and have the same 5.9 for the HDD. Do you think moving the OS to an SDD will improve the score and the overall speed of my computer? Any thoughts would be appreciated before I spend the money on an SDD. Here are my scores:

 

[noobvious]

Not too shabby for an OEM that was purchased on 4/24/2008. Taken today on 6/26/2010:

Good scores

I've got pretty much the same computer, with almost the same scores.

If you shrink your windows partition to about 100 GB, it would bring that HDD score up a tenth or 2

My OEM, same as mentioned above, has an 80GB OS partition and still gets a 5.9.

It's the highest you can get with a good HDD, and no RAID.

I built my first machine in 2008, and have the same 5.9 for the HDD. Do you think moving the OS to an SDD will improve the score and the overall speed of my computer? Any thoughts would be appreciated before I spend the money on an SDD. Here are my scores:

View attachment 82617

The short answer is, yes.

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

I built my first machine in 2008, and have the same 5.9 for the HDD. Do you think moving the OS to an SDD will improve the score and the overall speed of my computer? Any thoughts would be appreciated before I spend the money on an SDD. Here are my scores:

View attachment 82617

Hello jsettoon, welcome to Seven Forums!


There's a lot of useful info in this tutorial and the "related tutorials" links at the bottom of the tutorial if you decide to get a SSD, have a look at the link below.
There's no need to do a "clean all" on a new drive but I'd do Option Three so I didn't get the 100MB boot partition added at OS install.


SSD : Optimize for Windows Re-Installation

 

[Dave76]

@ Dave I just looked at your specs and specifically your internet speed that made me chuckle man, sorry I mean it in a nice way, there is talk over here of Virgin Broadband having 400MB download speeds Virgin Media already looking to 400Mbps broadband | News | TechRadar UK by the end of the year, I only manage 6.1MB down and 1MB up, sadly I can't get Virgin as I am not in a cabled area, but the slowest part of my system is the Internet, I remember in the old days I would be waiting on the Rig to catch up with the Internet now it is the other way around if that makes sense.


Steve

I don't like talking about internet speed

Let's just say mine is in the lower single digits, very low

I've learned to live with it, well to be honest struggling to learn to live with it.
Someday, soon I hope, we might get into the high single digits, yahoo

I can remember a 'few years ago' I would have been happy to have my current internet speed. I've worked in some very remote places...

 

[Dave76]

Not too shabby for an OEM that was purchased on 4/24/2008. Taken today on 6/26/2010:

Good scores

I've got pretty much the same computer, with almost the same scores.

If you shrink your windows partition to about 100 GB, it would bring that HDD score up a tenth or 2

My OEM, same as mentioned above, has an 80GB OS partition and still gets a 5.9.

It's the highest you can get with a good HDD, and no RAID.

I built my first machine in 2008, and have the same 5.9 for the HDD. Do you think moving the OS to an SDD will improve the score and the overall speed of my computer? Any thoughts would be appreciated before I spend the money on an SDD. Here are my scores:

View attachment 82617

Hi jsettoon, Welcome to Seven Forums.

As mentioned already, Yes, a big Yes.

A SSD will give you a very noticeable increase in overall performance.
My little 40GB Intel X25-V gives me a 7.6 in the Primary Hard Disk WEI score.
My computer starts (18 sec) and shuts down very fast.
Programs start incredibly fast compared to my old HDD, which is a good HDD 500GB 7200 RPM 32MB cache with a 5.9 WEI score.

I would have to be dragged, kicking and screaming, to go back to a HDD.
Can't see it happening.

A SSD is arguably the best noticeable performance upgrade for the price, even at the current prices, available today.

Some may argue the point, but usually is someone that hasn't tried one yet,
(No offense intended towards anyone ), have never heard anyone that bought one mention any regrets.

But, that's just my opinion

With your specs, nice computer BTW, I would recommend a SSD.
Do your research, read up on all the info you can.
The OCZ forum has a lot of useful information on SSDs, good reading even if you don't get that brand.
When you see a lot of tweaks listed, these are for Gen1 SSDs. The newer Gen2 SSDs don't need hardly any changes.
Win7 will use the optimum settings for your SSD, do a fresh clean install.
Anandtech forum has some very good articles on SSDs.
They have a good comparison SSD Product Benchmarks tool that lets you compare SSDs side by side.

The manufacturers all seem to tout the Sequential read and writes, but these are not very important for running your OS.
The most important is the Random Read, distant second is Random write.
Very important is the Input/Output ability of the controller. This is what made the Intel SSDs so popular, until the latest round of new SSDs came out, they are rated better than the Intels, for now.

 

[ZaLiTH]

@ Dave I just looked at your specs and specifically your internet speed that made me chuckle man, sorry I mean it in a nice way, there is talk over here of Virgin Broadband having 400MB download speeds Virgin Media already looking to 400Mbps broadband | News | TechRadar UK by the end of the year, I only manage 6.1MB down and 1MB up, sadly I can't get Virgin as I am not in a cabled area, but the slowest part of my system is the Internet, I remember in the old days I would be waiting on the Rig to catch up with the Internet now it is the other way around if that makes sense.


Steve

I don't like talking about internet speed

Let's just say mine is in the lower single digits, very low

I've learned to live with it, well to be honest struggling to learn to live with it.
Someday, soon I hope, we might get into the high single digits, yahoo

I can remember a 'few years ago' I would have been happy to have my current internet speed. I've worked in some very remote places...

If anybody wants to feel better about their internet speeds.... Come spend some time in South Africa. Our service providers are only starting to think of introducing 8, 10 and 12 lines now! Currently, the fastest we can get is 4Mbit/s (not MB/s), and even that never really runs at full speed anyway...

 

[Dave76]

I don't like talking about internet speed

Let's just say mine is in the lower single digits, very low

I've learned to live with it, well to be honest struggling to learn to live with it.
Someday, soon I hope, we might get into the high single digits, yahoo

I can remember a 'few years ago' I would have been happy to have my current internet speed. I've worked in some very remote places...

If anybody wants to feel better about their internet speeds.... Come spend some time in South Africa. Our service providers are only starting to think of introducing 8, 10 and 12 lines now! Currently, the fastest we can get is 4Mbit/s (not MB/s), and even that never really runs at full speed anyway...

ZaLiTH, I have spent some years in central and north Africa, and I have experienced your pain.

My internet speed is a little better than yours, but only a little bit.

Someday we'll all get reasonable internet speed.

 

[steve-pressman]

Ok I have just got my beast back from being repaired and before I sent it away I enabled AHCI didn't have a chance to do a re-test of the WEI. So I have just connected it all back up and done the test again and have gained 2 points gone from 7.1 to 7.3 so it really does make a difference and I swear it is running faster than it already was I am one happy Guy today


Steve

 

[jsettoon]

Thanks eveyone for the input. I'm sold on the SSD, but I want to make sure and get a gen 2. For my needs and budget I'll probably get the Intel X-25M 80G. Does anyone know the model number for the gen 2 SSD. Newegg has several X-25M 80G drives listed with different model numbers.

 

[Firestrider]

Thanks eveyone for the input. I'm sold on the SSD, but I want to make sure and get a gen 2. For my needs and budget I'll probably get the Intel X-25M 80G. Does anyone know the model number for the gen 2 SSD. Newegg has several X-25M 80G drives listed with different model numbers.

The ones with the silver casing are the 2nd generation. They have "G2" in their model number.

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

Thanks eveyone for the input. I'm sold on the SSD, but I want to make sure and get a gen 2. For my needs and budget I'll probably get the Intel X-25M 80G. Does anyone know the model number for the gen 2 SSD. Newegg has several X-25M 80G drives listed with different model numbers.

Howdy.


Below is a snip of my Intel Gen2 SSD, as long as it has a "G2" in it, that's what you want.

click image to enlarge

​

 

[Dave76]

Ok I have just got my beast back from being repaired and before I sent it away I enabled AHCI didn't have a chance to do a re-test of the WEI. So I have just connected it all back up and done the test again and have gained 2 points gone from 7.1 to 7.3 so it really does make a difference and I swear it is running faster than it already was I am one happy Guy today


Steve

That's good news, good service department.

Nice jump in the WEI score

AHCI is the best way to go, IMHO.

 

[oidicle]

...Nice jump in the WEI score

AHCI is the best way to go, IMHO.

Too bad it doesn't work with normal SATA HDDs, only SSDs... right?

 

[Dave76]

Actually I did notice an improvement in my HDD when I switched to AHCI, seemed to be a bit faster.

Just my perception of it, I never ran any benchmarks.

 

[cmoazz]

Hope the attachment worked.

 

[Dave76]

Welcome to Seven Forums cmoazz.

Nice scores

Nice rig as well.

 

[cmoazz]

Thank you so much Dave. My first custom built rig

At the time I ran test I had a bunch of programs open and was using firefox. You think I'll get a better score if I run it solo? I doubt it though they were basic programs.

 

[Mattz]

Drivers

New Drivers Gave Me a Tenth on the laptops Score

 

[Dave76]

Thank you so much Dave. My first custom built rig

At the time I ran test I had a bunch of programs open and was using firefox. You think I'll get a better score if I run it solo? I doubt it though they were basic programs.

Try closing all programs and let your computer sit for 15 minutes and run the WEI, you might get a better RAM score.

Let us know if it helps.