Windows 7 - Improving Your Windows Experience Index Score

In the Performance Information and Tools console, you can view detailed performance and configuration information by clicking “View and print detailed performance and system information.” the configured details are provided for each hardware component being tracked—you can print this information for future reference by clicking “Print this page.” For many computers, gaming graphics will have the lowest subscore. By examining the details, you can see the key reason for this and typically, it is because the video card has a limited amount of dedicated graphics memory.

In the example, the computer is listed as having 2,302 MB of graphics memory available. However, 1,790 MB is coming from shared system memory and only 512 MB is dedicated. During graphics-intensive gaming, this means the computer may borrow up to 1,790 MB of RAM from the available physical memory, leaving less physical memory available for applications and the operating system. For a better gaming experience, you’d want to upgrade to a graphics card with 1 GB or higher of dedicated memory. Alternatively, you could purchase a second graphics card for your computer, but there are several caveats to ensure proper operation. You’d want to check the computer to ensure a card slot is available and you’d want to ensure your computer can support two graphics cards. You’d want to check with the graphics card manufacturer to determine the proper configuration required to use the existing graphics card with another graphics card.

If your computer has no or low dedicated graphics memory, installing a new graphics card with 512 MB or more of dedicated RAM on the computer would increase substantially the graphics and gaming graphics subscores. You could then have Windows 7 recalculate the performance scores by clicking “Re-run the assessment.” Windows 7 would then begin rating your computer by evaluating the performance of each tracked hardware component. When this process is completed, each component is listed with an appropriate subscore and the computer’s new base score is listed in the Performance Information and Tools console. The rating process can take several minutes to complete.

The scores are meant to be helpful guidelines, and you can squeeze extra performance out of your computer in a variety of ways, but typically, this extra performance comes at a direct sacrifice to the way Windows 7 looks and behaves. For example, if your computer’s base score is low because of graphics/gaming graphics, you can improve overall performance by turning off graphics-intensive features of the operating system, such as Aero Glass, visual effects, live previews, backgrounds, and themes.

The detailed information tells you whether the display adapter supports WDDM and DirectX. In the Component list under Graphics, you’ll see the display adapter type and the level of WDDM support. In the expanded list under Graphics, you’ll see additional details, including the DirectX version supported.

Source of Information : OReilly Windows 7 The Definitive Guide (10-2009) (ATTiCA)