Questions about Vista Scores.

A

adamvk

Limp Gawd
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Feb 16, 2008
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I switched over to Vista Ultimate 64bit last night. So far I like it, but I'll see once everything is loaded on. :) Anyways My Vista Score is 3.2, this is because my HDD disk transfer rate is 3.2 so this is my rating. What does this even mean and what can I do to improve it? It is a Maxtor Drive @7200RPM. Also what is the highest vista rating?
 
Highest rating is 5.9. For the hard drive, you need a really fast one or RAID 0 to hit 5.9. A Raptor or the 1TB Samsung drives hit 5.9, it won't happen with the drive you have. :(
 
My Western Digital WD6400aaks cost $90 and it is a 5.9. It's based on the 1TB drive design so it's extremely fast.
 
Your HD drive score in vista seems to low to me.
My desktop pc with a plain old WD2500KS 250GB HD, gets a vista score of 5.4
Even my laptop 5400 rpm drive gets a 4.9 rating.

A HD score of 3.2 would have me searching for why it so low. Check and make sure DMA is enabled the drive. It could be running in PIO mode.
 
CpuMan said:
Your HD drive score in vista seems to low to me.
My desktop pc with a plain old WD2500KS 250GB HD, gets a vista score of 5.4
Even my laptop 5400 rpm drive gets a 4.9 rating.

A HD score of 3.2 would have me searching for why it so low. Check and make sure DMA is enabled the drive. It could be running in PIO mode.
Click to expand...

My desktop and laptop are both 5.9, but it took RAID 0 on both to get there. I guess the question here would be is this SATA or IDE? I have never really looked into it, but wouldn't it have to be IDE for PIO mode? Which it may be, it does seem like a low score.
 
It takes into consideration your HD capacity. RAM works the same way, speed + capacity.
 
So how can I figure out if DMA is enabled or not? Also sadly it IS an ide drive. With freaking Cosmos 1000, there was not enough space for my IDE-SATA converter.
 
xxEIEIOxx said:
I guess the question here would be is this SATA or IDE? I have never really looked into it, but wouldn't it have to be IDE for PIO mode? Which it may be, it does seem like a low score.
Click to expand...

Yes, both the desktop and laptop drives are SATA. I do not have any vista machines running a IDE drive.

A IDE HD would be a little slower then SATA drive, but I still think a Vista score of 3.2 is to low, unless its a 10 year old drive.
 
adamvk said:
Excuse my lack of knowledge, but what is DMA?
Click to expand...

Here is a definition I found,

"DMA is an abbreviation for Direct Memory Access, an access method for external devices where the data transfer is not done by the central processor, but by a small special processor called DMA controller. It uses a procedure called cycle stealing, where the central processor memory access cycles are delayed for very short times to intersperse DMA controller memory access cycles. Some newer, faster DMA modes are called UDMA (Ultra DMA).

The alternative, slow and inefficient data transfer mode is called PIO, Programmed Input-Output, where the central processor transfers data byte for byte or word for word. This requires many processor commands for each data word and therefore causes a high and unwanted processor load."
 
adamvk said:
So how can I figure out if DMA is enabled or not? Also sadly it IS an ide drive. With freaking Cosmos 1000, there was not enough space for my IDE-SATA converter.
Click to expand...

Go into device manager and right click on your ide/ata controllers > advanced. That will tell you if your disk is running in DMA or PIO mode.

On my desktop my WD2500KS is running in Ultra DMA 5 mode.
On my laptop 160 GB HD its running in Ultra DMA 2 mode.
 
I can answer the next question that usually follows. The scores are rather worthless, so there isn't much of a point worrying about why your system scores a certain score or not another score. With a little XML editing, you can make the scores whatever you want.
 
DeaconFrost said:
I can answer the next question that usually follows. The scores are rather worthless, so there isn't much of a point worrying about why your system scores a certain score or not another score. With a little XML editing, you can make the scores whatever you want.
Click to expand...

QFT. If your system runs fine, who cares?
 
CpuMan said:
Yes, both the desktop and laptop drives are SATA. I do not have any vista machines running a IDE drive.

A IDE HD would be a little slower then SATA drive, but I still think a Vista score of 3.2 is to low, unless its a 10 year old drive.
Click to expand...

It is about 6months old, it is a Maxtor Diamondmax 320GB HDD with 16MB Buffer and 7200RPM. It also says that the transfer rate is 100MB/Sec.

edit: I went into device manager and it said they were running in DMA.
 
adamvk said:
It is about 6months old, it is a Maxtor Diamondmax 320GB HDD with 16MB Buffer and 7200RPM. It also says that the transfer rate is 100MB/Sec.

edit: I went into device manager and it said they were running in DMA.
Click to expand...

there are some disk performance utilities out there.. (HDTune?)

i'd just grab one and check it.. i've had odd hard drive problems in the past where they seem fine but with large files they behaved slowly..

Vista Disk Score said:
The Disk Score
The disk score measures disk bandwidth (in Mega Bytes per Second). The conversion to an index number is set up in a way that all modern disks will score at least 2.0.
Click to expand...
 
Did you mention what mobo you had?

I'd make sure the drivers were installed correctly for the chipset. Then, Device Mgr > Storage Controllers > RtClick > Properties and make sure they are all in DMA5/6 (going from memory, haven't had an IDE drive in... a while).
 
xxEIEIOxx said:
Highest rating is 5.9. For the hard drive, you need a really fast one or RAID 0 to hit 5.9. A Raptor or the 1TB Samsung drives hit 5.9, it won't happen with the drive you have. :(
Click to expand...

my system score is a 5.6 (CPU score) and my 500GB hdd is a 5.9 along with every other component that it tests

a WDC 500GB caviar is sufficient to peg out the HDD score if your hdd controller is not too far out of date.....
 
Down8 said:
Did you mention what mobo you had?

I'd make sure the drivers were installed correctly for the chipset. Then, Device Mgr > Storage Controllers > RtClick > Properties and make sure they are all in DMA5/6 (going from memory, haven't had an IDE drive in... a while).
Click to expand...

its a 650i Ultra. Yes, all of the drivers are installed correctly.
 
xxEIEIOxx said:
Interesting. I have 3 of those in 2 machines. Never got more than 5.7 as a single drive. Mine are 320's. I assume your is larger?
Click to expand...



Hm, that's odd :confused:

Actually i have a single 250, and just to make sure that i didn't make a mistake i just ran the test 30 sec ago, and the only thing that doesn't score 5.9 in my rig is E8400... I guess you have AHCI mode enabled in your BIOS ?
 
GibsonEX said:
Hm, that's odd :confused:

Actually i have a single 250, and just to make sure that i didn't make a mistake i just ran the test 30 sec ago, and the only thing that doesn't score 5.9 in my rig is E8400... I guess you have AHCI mode enabled in your BIOS ?
Click to expand...

I did have. RAID 0 at this point. When I got the Q6600 the only thing holding back 5.9 was the drive, so I got another one. Strange the 250 would beat the 320. Might be a chipset issue.
 
xxEIEIOxx said:
I did have. RAID 0 at this point. When I got the Q6600 the only thing holding back 5.9 was the drive, so I got another one. Strange the 250 would beat the 320. Might be a chipset issue.
Click to expand...

I score a 5.6 with my single 320GB 7200.10, everything else is 5.9.
 
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