2gb extra in Vista didnt change Rating...?

Scope · 22 Apr 2008 at 23:10

I originally had 2gb RAM in my machine, and at first had a rating of 5.0 on the memory:

OcUK 2GB (2x1GB) PC2-6400C5 800MHz DDR2 Dual Channel Kit

OK, fair enough, I thought.. Im running 64bit Vista so bought another 2gb:

OCZ 2GB (2x1GB) PC2-6400C4 Dual Channel Platinum Revision 2 XTC Series DDR2

I kinda expected the rating to go up with the extra 2gb, but no, its still @ 5.0

I have not tweaked the timings for the RAM, so that could be an issue, however you would have thought the extra memory counting for something.

Should it? (and yes, I have rerun the test.

)

Fothsn · 23 Apr 2008 at 00:19

The only way it improves significantly is if you increase the speed, well it’s what I have found over the past year or so on various machines, try and clock your ram and the score should increase

Ender · 23 Apr 2008 at 00:33

Does the rating have any benefit? or is it more of a e-penis then anything else?

dbmzk1 · 23 Apr 2008 at 00:57

Ender said:
Does the rating have any benefit? or is it more of a e-penis then anything else?

It's an e-penis thing

VortexA1 · 23 Apr 2008 at 03:52

Ignore

steve258 · 23 Apr 2008 at 03:57

People take the windows experience index way too seriously, like all other synthetic benchmarks they don't necessarily reflect real world performance so I wouldn't worry about it.

Besides if you're not tweaking the ram speed/timing then chances are the motherboard default the speed to slower than DDR2 800 to match the fsb/cpu speed, especially when you're mixing 2 different memory kits.

Scope · 23 Apr 2008 at 10:24

OK,it might be a penis thing, and I was going to get another 2gb anyway, but I was just expecting the extra ram to improve Vista in some way, which I am sure it does, only not the Rating. Never mind.. I still cant believe that the first RAM i bought last year cost me £130 for 2gb, now its £30.. :-D

Fothsn · 23 Apr 2008 at 10:39

Yea 4GB in Vista 64Bit is much quicker then 2GB from experience, the whole OS feels much smoother.

I don’t know the Score give a good indication to the average Joe as to what speed his PC is etc..

Ethics · 23 Apr 2008 at 10:44

fothsn said:
Yea 4GB in Vista 64Bit is much quicker then 2GB from experience, the whole OS feels much smoother.

I don’t know the Score give a good indication to the average Joe as to what speed his PC is etc..

Hardly, AFAIK it just takes the lowest score on any component for it's overall, instead of averaging them.

Phil2008 · 23 Apr 2008 at 10:44

It goes on the slowest thing, and for me thats my hdd, so my score is 5.6. Apparntly the maximum is only 5.9

Fothsn · 23 Apr 2008 at 10:49

Ethics said:
Hardly, AFAIK it just takes the lowest score on any component for it's overall, instead of averaging them.

Who said average? I know what it does

To people such as those that view OcUK they know the rating is pants as they use much better bench tools but the average user out there the score IMO comes into its own as they have a general idea as to what their PC is like etc..

bledd · 23 Apr 2008 at 12:01

/pats 5.9

personally, i'd sell both ram kits and get 2x2gb sticks of ocz or something, about £50

Snakedoctor · 23 Apr 2008 at 12:06

I am suprised your score for memory did not actually go down a bit. The more memory you have, the longer it take to address it. With four sticks as well, this can slow it down a tiny bit too. You may lose a few points on 3d mark.

Ethics · 23 Apr 2008 at 12:07

fothsn said:
Who said average? I know what it does To people such as those that view OcUK they know the rating is pants as they use much better bench tools but the average user out there the score IMO comes into its own as they have a general idea as to what their PC is like etc..

I understand where you're coming from, i just think personally it's some arbitary value that means nothing (like a lot of benchmarks), you generally have nothing to compare it to. Even if you're upgrading say a graphics card, which (info from blog:http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsvista/pages/458117.aspx) "• Gaming graphics

3D graphics performance. Useful for gaming and 3D business applications"

Say they increase the value by 1, what do you do with that number? if you wanted to run a game you have to check particular specs and hardware, not your windows experience. What if it starts becoming a standard, on hardware instead of real specs you get "Guaranteed to achieve at least 5 in Windows vista experience"

Or a processor gives an increase in WE but its a quad core (more clocks per sec spread across the cores but each is a slwoer clock speed) but all their applications are single/double threaded. It's misleading to assume you're machine will be 'quicker' because your WE value is higher.

To me it's just a marketing ploy.

To get myself back on topic, what sort of increase are you expecting from the extra RAM? WE will only do certain increments (0.1? 0.5?) so obviously your changes have to give a relative percentage increase of current performance to increase, if that makes sense. So in order to increase from 5.0 to 5.1 you'd need to increase current performance by 10% and (info from same blog) "• Memory

Operations per second"

If your RAM speed is being reduced for FSB/CPU then it'd make sense that it's not doing noticeably more "Operations per second"

I've got myself curious now, let me know if i'm off in wackoland though.

Fothsn · 23 Apr 2008 at 12:17

Ethics said:
I understand where you're coming from, i just think personally it's some arbitary value that means nothing (like a lot of benchmarks), you generally have nothing to compare it to. Even if you're upgrading say a graphics card, which (info from blog:http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsvista/pages/458117.aspx) "• Gaming graphics

3D graphics performance. Useful for gaming and 3D business applications"

Say they increase the value by 1, what do you do with that number? if you wanted to run a game you have to check particular specs and hardware, not your windows experience. What if it starts becoming a standard, on hardware instead of real specs you get "Guaranteed to achieve at least 5 in Windows vista experience"

Or a processor gives an increase in WE but its a quad core (more clocks per sec spread across the cores but each is a slwoer clock speed) but all their applications are single/double threaded. It's misleading to assume you're machine will be 'quicker' because your WE value is higher.

To me it's just a marketing ploy.

True but it does give somebody who doesn’t run 3DMark SuperPI etc a general idea as to how good their PC is, I don’t think MS intend to set WE as some sort of standard it need a lot of work as you say it does mislead you somewhat with the CPUs.

Welshy · 23 Apr 2008 at 13:18

Vista rating is just a ball park estimate on the performance of your system, not usually really something to shout about.

Quite surprised adding 2gig more ram didn't affect it though :confused:

marc2003 · 23 Apr 2008 at 13:20

as that extra 2gb has made no difference to your score, can i have it please?

VortexA1 · 24 Apr 2008 at 21:16

Turophobic said:
I am suprised your score for memory did not actually go down a bit. The more memory you have, the longer it take to address it. With four sticks as well, this can slow it down a tiny bit too. You may lose a few points on 3d mark.

I thought having 4gb was better than 2gb..

Losing a few points on 3d mark..well I don't think that's correct.

:rolleyes:

steve258 · 24 Apr 2008 at 22:33

Benchmarks test purely the speed of the RAM, which is the same regardless how many Gbs you have and that's why windows experience score is the same.

Therefore you won't suddenly get loads more fps in games or encoding. What you do notice is faster loading time and more responsive windows if you have lots of applications running in the background.