"There is a lot of variety in the hardware market: hundreds of types of processors, motherboards, hard drives, graphics cards and other components to choose from. And although consolidation has been going on for several years, leaving only AMD/ATI, Intel and Nvidia as the main players, along with a few motherboard makers and storage giants, finding the right products still can be an exhausting task. This is where benchmarking comes into play, because it helps to measure qualities and characteristics by applying a certain metric. Windows Vista now provides a built-in benchmarking solution to assess component and system performance, but does the so-called Experience Index correspond to what Tom's Hardware and other tech publications find on the test bench?"
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Member since:
2007-02-22
Member since:
2006-12-15
Benchmarketing...it's always been this way with any product,not just pc related.
For example,I almost believe that graphics drivers made by certain *big* companies work closely with,or make drivers specifically for boosting results in fps on 3dmark tests,not careing about all the games out there.
Member since:
2005-07-24
Member since:
2006-02-05
did you guys RTFA? he concludes that while it is not a hardcore benchmark, it gives a good estimate of what level your hardware is at (as the name implys), and this is a Good Thing. How many people do you know who have a computer but have absolutely no idea how good or bad it is, and stand in best buy looking at requirements in bewilderment? WEI fixes that.
Member since:2005-11-12
Member since:2006-02-05
It does need some tweaking. The WEI base score is determined by the lowest subscore, so you could have a CPU well below the reqs, but have a killer vid card and it would skew the base score. However, the base score is an idea of how good the box is, and the five individual scores are a fairly good idea of how good it will be for various tasks.
IMHO, remembering "4.6 Gaming performance" will still be easier for alot of users then remembering "Geforce Go 7600 w/ 256 megs of VRAM"
Member since:
2007-02-22
First, I will apologize for making assumptions in my post above.
Second, this is interesting... If you assume that every new number is the best that is available, and that this number is incremented by 0.1 every 6 to 8 weeks or so, then we have a slowly growing but stable index in which to compare hardware.
And speaking as a RPG gamer, a numerical index based on a solid real-world experience is a handy thing.
