My WindowsExperience "Graphics" test result is poor - why?

[crossy]

I'm looking for a little advice with a niggle I've got with a pair of Windows 7 machines and specifically the Windows Experience "Graphics: Desktop performance for Windows Aero" Index value.

System 1 is an old AMD Athlon64 single core, coupled to an equally old Geforce 8800GTX card. Running Windows7-32bit

System 2 is a hex-core AMD processor, this time coupled to a Gigabyte GF460 "OverClock" card. Windows7 again, this time 64bit edition.

System 1 gets a Graphics WEI value of 4.2 and the newer System 2 only gets 3.8.

I'm assuming that this can't be right - sure the 8800GTX card was good in it's day, but surely it can't beat a modern card by that much? Both systems are pretty much up to date vis NVidia driver versions.

This being the case, I figure that there's got to be something amiss with System 2, but my second problem is where to look for this. I tried the usual places but nothing jumped out.

What's concerning me is that if the WEI figures are that "bad" then maybe performance in desktop and gaming is being effected.

So, to recap, do I have a problem, and any suggestions where to look for a solution (other than here of course!).

Thanks.

[Ulti]

Aero doesn't put a significant workload on your graphics card so they will be in lower clockspeeds/power saving states etc and so it will offer as much performance as it would do with the clockspeeds in gaming. If you look at the WEI for Gaming Graphics it'll probably be higher right?

I think the Aero measure in WEI sucks, they should just have CPU, RAM, Graphics, HDD where Graphics = Gaming Graphics.

[scaryjim]

How much memory does your GF460 have? Graphics memory seems to have a fairly major impact on WEI Aero. Plus, as Ulti says, it seems to be a completely arbitrary and meaningless measure! I've never worked out exactly what it's meant to show, but the fact that both high end graphics cards score so low indicates it's a poor measure of a graphics card!

EDIT: to give you an indication of how ridiculous your scores are, my work SB laptop with HD3000 gets 6.4 for both Aero and gaming graphics. I wouldn't trust WEI as a measure of anything, personally

[Spank]

I might be wrong here, but it could be down to them changing the scores so that the 690 (& AMD equivalent) score 7.9 everything else has to drop down.

[Ulti]

I might be wrong here, but it could be down to them changing the scores so that the 690 (& AMD equivalent) score 7.9 everything else has to drop down.

I doubt this is true though, Windows 8 has upped the max to 9.9 now. My SSD only scores 8.1 with everything even lower

[Spank]

It's still 7.9 on Win 7

[Ulti]

Yup, but the cap hasn't changed in Windows 7 from what I've seen; it always stayed the same so after a certain threshold/benchmark (the cap), they'd all be rated as 7.9.

[SUMMONER]

My oldish ASUS GeForce GTX 460 DirectCU TOP - 768 MB GDDR5 scores 7.5 in Graphics/Gaming Graphics (Win7 64bit).

Try installing the latest motherboard chipset drivers.