Windows 7 Scores, anyone having drops?

[_Jimlad_]

I started a thread in the hard drives section which did not get off the ground, basically my SSD dropped from 7.8 to 7.4, i ran the test in December and again last week.

NOW i know these scores are not anything to base your system on and a lot of people just ignore them and think they are tosh, but my point is my SSD dropped and i wondering do they update them (they did not in vista) ? or is there a reason it has dropped that i should look into, be interested to hear others views, this was discussed on an American forum i use and people seemed to disagree if the scores are updated.

 

[ejr22]

my SSD dropped from 7.8 to 7.4, i ran the test in December and again last week......is there a reason it has dropped that i should look into

Are you running an SSD that supports TRIM, and if so is it working automatically? If not, do you run any sort of application that manages your SSD in terms of garbage collection e.g. Wiper_Tool.exe (for Crucial SSDs).

If you have no TRIM functionality & you haven't been running an alternative then the lowering of your score in Windows Experience could reflect a read/write speed deterioration due to the drive cluttering up - or the drive thinking it is cluttered. Note that it should only be a temporary drop until you have access to TRIM/garbage collection - note also however that without these, over time, it would become permanent.

I would not lose sleep/celebrate over any part of the Windows Experience score decreasing/increasing considering the wild inconsistencies it tends to throw out. You would be better off monitoring your SSD speeds with AS SSD Benchmark or something similar. Make sure you do 2 or 3 runs at a time though to get a more accurate reading - often it will produce slightly different results per run so it is good to get an average.

Having said all that it could very well be that Microsoft have decided to periodically review & change the scoring system of Windows Experience - it would actually be a good thing and make sense.