Dave said:
It's built into Vista. If you run Vista (I triple boot Vista home
premium), run the performance index. It'll give you a numerical rating
of your hardware, based on the "weakest link". In other words, if your
video card scores 4, it's not going to matter that your hard drive
scored 6,
Firstly level 6.0 of the Windows Experience Index hasn't been defined yet.
Currently 5.9 is the highest achievable score.
your performance rating of your hardware will be 4. You
achieve top score in RAM with exactly 1.5GB, and a lower score
(variable) with less than 1.5GB. In other words, 2GB or 4GB or 8GB is
no better than 1.5GB, according to Vista (aka Microsoft programmers).
I believe you have misinterpreted the intention of the WEI and RAM ratings.
The WEI rates the RAM on bandwidth (or access speed if you will) but because
not having enough RAM degrades system performance the WEI also constrains
the
results depending on rhe amount of physical RAM available to the Operating
System.
The memory sub-score
Less than 256 MB scores 1.0
Less than 500 MB scores 2.0
512 MB or less scores 2.9
Less than 704 MB scores 3.5
Less than 960 MB scores 3.9
Less than 1.5 GB scores 4.5
The base score itself is supposed to be used as a guide to indicate how well
your system will run the eye candy in Vista itself and for software vendors
to put on the boxes to indicate minimum and recommended hardware
requirements to run the software. Obviously it was an idea that didn't take
off.
I've got a super duper high speed bells and whistles graphics card that
scores exactly the same WEI (5.9 max) as a mediocre graphics card
But then I've never seen a 1.5GB stick of RAM. So for the average
computer builder, I'd suggest using exactly 2GB of RAM (1 or 2
sticks). Even if you are a gamer, as no game written so far is going
to use that much RAM anyway.
If you peruse the Windows physical memory limitations here you will see that
in Windows 32-bit under default conditions the Kernel (or Windows itself) is
limited to 2GB of address space. Each 32-bit user process (or program) is
also limited to 2GB of address space along with the usual 4GB total
addressable physical memory limitation.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/aa366778.aspx#physical_memory_limits_windows_vista