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General discussion

Windows rating tool

May 16, 2010 12:37AM PDT

I have run the windows rating in windows 7 it rates my computer as 5.9 what is the best rating you can have?
Processor Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T9600 @ 2.80GHz 6.4 5.9
Determined by lowest subscore

Memory (RAM) 4.00 GB 6.4
Graphics ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4670 6.7
Gaming graphics 2798 MB Total available graphics memory 6.7
Primary hard disk 426GB Free (466GB Total) 5.9

Discussion is locked

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It used to be
May 16, 2010 1:53AM PDT

It used to be 5.9, but if you look on the performance index page, it clearly says it's a scale between 1 and 7.9. The cumulative score is whatever the lowest rated component is, as also clearly stated, because your system will only be as fast as the slowest link. That's almost always the hard drive. Hard drives have seen the rest of the computing world pass them by, and then lap them a few times for good measure. SATA has done little to close the ever widening performance gap.

Just don't fall into the trap so many do, and start obsessing over the score. A 5.9 rating for a hard drive is about as good as you can get. Far too many people get sucked into the world of benchmarking and then spend their days obsessing over squeezing every last bit of performance out of their system rather than actually USING the system for anything. It's fine if you want to identify components underperforming by a large margin, but if we're only talking a couple of percentage points, it's not worth the bother. In your case, everything seems to be performing just as you'd expect. Leave it at that.

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Windows Rating Tool
May 17, 2010 5:51AM PDT

The windows rating tool is overrated at best. I got a 5.9 on my hard drive also, everything else was at the 6-7 range. This just means that the hard drive is the weakest/slowest part of the PC's processing power.
I have a Q9550 2.8GHz Quad Core CPU, 8GB PC2 6400 RAM, a Radeon 4730 1GB GDDR3 RAM Graphics card, DVD ROM, CD/DVD Burner, 530 watt PSU, and Windows 7 64 Bit Professional running, and I still got 5.9 rating! That's because of the SATA hard drive is THE slowest component in the machine.
It would be like putting a VW Bug engine into a Chevy Camero, sure the car looks great, rides nice, etc. but it goes down the road slow.