Microsoft tweaks Experience Index for Windows 7

Microsoft has changed the PC performance rating tool Windows Experience Index for Windows 7 to better measure faster graphic cards, multicore processors, and drives.

The index's top score will go up from 5.9 to 7.9, and add several new tests to more accurately measure the performance of hard-disk and solid-state drives, says a mid-January post at the Engineering Windows 7 blog.

[ From InfoWorld'sTest Center: Windows 7 benchmarks unmasked | Special report: Early looks at Windows 7. ]

Windows Experience Index, first introduced with Windows Vista, is intended to help users discover which parts of their system needs to be upgraded for Windows and applications to run well, or if the PC needs to be replaced.

Reviews of the first public beta of Windows 7 indicate that it generally runs faster and more smoothly than Vista, despite the two sharing a very similar codebase.

But critics have alredy begun questioning the revamped index's usefulness and accuracy. One beta tester, going by the handle 'Hurricane Andrew' on Microsoft's MSDN developer Web site, complained that an older hard drive using the slower IDE interface was awarded a much higher rating than his newer, larger hard drive using the faster SATA-II interface.

"I hardly believe that's accurate," he wrote.

Others complained that the new scale, from 1.0 to 7.9, was counterintuitive, or that the criteria for drive performance should not have changed between Vista and Windows 7 for consistency's sake.

Michael Cherry, an analyst with the independent firm Directions on Microsoft, said he "doesn't put much stock" in the index's scores.

A Microsoft representative said in an e-mail that the company was "closely monitoring" input from beta testers about Windows 7, including for the new index, but would not say if changes would result from the feedback.

Windows 7 apps may not run faster on quad-cores
The Windows Experience Index, found under the System Icon in Vista or Windows 7's Control Panel, quickly scans hardware befor delivering five results, including for: processor, memory (RAM), graphics for general desktop work, gaming graphics performance, and the primary hard drive's performance. The results are based on the rated specifications of each component, not on their actual performance history in the scanned PC.