Low "Windows 7 Experience Rating" for F3 Spinpoint?

[harriw]

Hey folks,

Windows 7 is up and seems to be running fine so far (knock on wood). Memtest86+ ran for 3 hours with no errors. Haven't gotten to Prime95 yet, but all drivers are now installed.

Just for giggles, I ran the "win 7 experience index," which came back with all upper 7's except for the hard drive. I only got a 5.9 for my Samsung F3 Spinpoint 1TB (7200RPM, 32MB cache, SATA II interface).

What gives? Do you really need an SSD to get a high HD rating from win7? Only thing I can think of is that I split the drive into 2 partitions of 200G and 730G. Windows is insatlled on the 200G, and I haven't yet formatted the large data partition so windows can't use it yet (it's formatting now). Would that reduce my score? Or is something wrong here?

Silly question I know, but I'm wondering if I stumbled onto something here...

Thanks a lot.

-Bill

 

[jefe323]

dont put too much stock in the WEI

my VelociRaptor 10,000 RPM drive got a 5.9 as well

 

[harriw]

Phew! Glad to hear that. This build has gone WAY too smoothly so far (nothign but a single stuck green pixel so far), and I thought I'd found something.

Guess it's just calibrated for SSD's to get the high scores?

Thanks a lot.

 

[anonymousdude]

Phew! Glad to hear that. This build has gone WAY too smoothly so far (nothign but a single stuck green pixel so far), and I thought I'd found something.

Guess it's just calibrated for SSD's to get the high scores?

Thanks a lot.

The highest score for a mechanical HDD is 5.9. Only SSD's will get above 5.9

 

[sminlal]

In Vista the highest possible score was 5.9. Windows 7 extended the range to 7.9 to account for newer, higher-performing devices such as SSDs. But as anondude said, a mechanical drive maxes out at 5.9.

 

[lmartinefc]

I have a Western Digital SSD....that only scored a 7. I use a Samsung F3 for my data though, as they are faster for continuous writes. SSD good for boot drive as it is trying to read at random during startup.

What is the rest of your build?

 

[lmartinefc]

Even the top end SSD that i've seen max out at 7.3...haven't seen any 7.9 yet...this will likely be the SLC top end (ultra pricey) SSD's, but MLC mid range suits me...and pretty much every other user without an itch to scratch.

 

[harriw]

What is the rest of your build?

MB: Gigabyte GA-890fxa-ud5
CPU: AMD Phenom II x4 955
GPU: Gigabyte factory OC'd HD 5850
PSU: Corsair TX950
RAM: 4G (2x2G) GSkill Ripjaws 1333 (CL7)
HD: Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB (7200RPM, 32MB cache, SATA II)
Optical: ASUS 24x DVD-RW w/ lightscribe
Case: HAF 932
Monitor: ASUS 23" LCD (2ms version) - has one pixel stuck green right out of the box

Running beautifully so far except for that one pixel. I was being a little impatient so I only ran Memtest for 3 hours and Prime95 for 1.5 hours, but no errors on either (and I have no OC's yet so I think that's probably sufficient for now). Stock HS on the 955, and my temps got to 61C max during Prime95. That sound about right? It's a bit higher than I'd like (I'll be adding a bigger cooler at some point in the near future, but should be fine short term).

It's like night and day compared to my current Athlon XP 3200+ rig

 

[Fetal]

New tech ssd's would get 7.9

 

[RetiredChief]

Intel G2 80 gig - 7.8 (in Desktop I5-750)
Patriot Torqx 128 gig - 7.4 (Toshibia A305 laptop)
WD blue 128 Gig - Low 7 ( 7.2, or 3 ) (Toshibia A205 Laptop)
Intel 80 Gig G1 - 7.7 Toshibia A205 Laptop)
Pair of WD 640 Blacks, short stroked, raid 0 - 6.0 (Desktop, I5-750)

 

[cjl]

Chef: you get 7.8 with a G2? That's odd - I only get 7.4 with mine.

 

[RetiredChief]

Good catch cji, I just double checked and it was 7.5, Could have sworn it was 7.8.
Just re-ran wei and it is 7.7 currently.
The 7.8 may have been right after a install and no other programs installed

 

[cjl]

That could be - I don't remember if mine was any better on a fresh install. All I know is that it's plenty fast for me in actual usage.

 

[sminlal]

My Intel 160GB G2 (in a stock Core i7 920 system ) is also 7.7