What Is Your Computer's "Secret" Windows Benchmark Score?

What is Windows Benchmark Score ?

Did you guys know that your computer actually has a built-in Secret Performance Score that takes into account things like your memory performance, your disk performance, graphics performance. It puts it all into one number and then you can look at that and determine how good your computer is. Those of you who are a little bit more familiar with computers may know what I'm talking about it's called the Windows Experience Index.

Actually it was introduced in Windows Vista and was readily visible in Windows Vista and Windows 7. If you were to go to these system properties it would be right there and it would tell you this Windows Experience Index and give you a score.

But starting with Windows 8 and Windows 10 it's no longer in the system properties but they kept the scoring system in the background it's still there you just don't get it readily available in that system properties. So first let's talk about what the score kind of calculates and then we can go through exactly how you can look up the score for your computer. Basically the piece of software that does the calculation of this score is called the Windows System Assessment Tool or  SAT or WINSAT.

It's pretty much a benchmark tool so you've seen benchmarks maybe like 3d Mark, PC Mark, VR Mark which just create a score based on how well perform certain tests.

It's basically the same exact thing is that Windows built one into their own computer instead and the final resulting number is the Windows Experience Index and there's actually five different sub scores that go into this score so those are scores for,

• The Processor 
• The Memory
• 2D Graphics
• 3D Graphics
• Disk Performance

including SSD versus HDD it can distinguish those and one important thing to note is it's not just an average of these scores somehow it's weighted and it kind of takes all these into account. Actually the Windows Experience Index is just the lowest subscore.

But interestingly with this tool unlike a lot of other benchmarks is there's actually a score range so a lot of benchmarks software you probably know they just kind of have a score that as computers get better the scores go up maximum. 

What is a good Windows Performance Score ?

With Windows depending on your version of Windows it actually has a score range with a different maximum. So for example with ,

• Windows Vista the maximum score range was from 1.0  up to 5.9 maximum.

• Then in Windows 7 it went 1.0 up to 7.9 as the maximum.

• With Windows 8 and Windows 10 it goes from 1.0 to 9.9.

So that's one disadvantage and dumb with the score is if your computer already has a 9.9 then you upgrade it's still going to be 9.9. It's not really that useful in comparing computers that are already really high-end it's only may be comparable to computers that are lower end at this point. 

Because if you think about it when Windows 10 came out 2015 the maximum was 9.9 then and five years later it's still 9.9 and obviously processing power is greatly increased in that time.

So I don't really know if it's that useful it's more of just an interesting thing but it does have some uses. 

for example, software developers can use the score to potentially determine whether or not a person's computer is powerful enough to run software they could give them a warning that "hey your computer might not be powerful enough or each sub score might not be powerful enough".

Or another possibilities if you are looking to upgrade your computer and you're not sure which part to upgrade first which is bottlenecking then, you could look at the experience score and see which sub score has the lowest thing like maybe your disk score is really low you'd be, "oh well I need to get a SSD or if the 3d graphics" you could say, "oh well my graphics card needs to be upgraded that sort of thing" so if you're curious about what your score actually is.

If you're using Windows Vista and Windows 7, this is really easy. You just go into the system properties and it'll show it right there.

But if you're on Windows 8 or Windows 10 you do have to run a command with the command prompt in PowerShell to see it. So it's a little bit more involved but it is possible to still built into Windows so you can look it up.

How to Check Your Windows Experience Score On Windows 10

The following process generates Windows Experience Index (WEI) 

1. By going to the command prompt and then typing the command "winsat formal" so that's stands for Windows System Assessment Tool and formal.
2. Then it'll run the tests.

Your computer probably will slow down and lag a bit while this is running it's literally running a benchmark just like other benchmarking tools, it'll probably max out the CPU while it's trying to determine its maximum performance and all that.

Once the test is completed you actually have to go into PowerShell to see the actual results. Now there's other ways to do it like it does create a XML file in the windows folder but we're not going to worry about that.

The easiest way is to go into PowerShell which you're gonna search for in the Start menu and then type in this command and then that'll show you the results, so you're gonna just copy it. I'll put it this below or just read it off the screen.

PowerShell  Command :  Get-CimInstance Win32_WinSat

So with my scores, for example you can see here they're actually good even though my computer is several years old. You can see that the CPU score is 8.2, the D3D score that's direct 3D, that's graphics performance it's 9.9. The disk score is 5.7 and Graphics Score is 4.6 which is not good. Memory score 5.5 and then you can see Win SPR level I do believe that is the overall accumulative score and it's 4.6. So overall 4.6 out of  9.9 I'm not going to call that too good of a result.

You can do it on your computer and see whether you got a higher result, lower result. But like I said probably the most common use case for the average person is just gonna see where am i bottle necking, which of my components is getting the lowest score is it by far the lowest score and then you can consider maybe upgrading just that component.

So you could look at that if your computer is running slow and you wanted to run a little bit faster, but remember if your computer was fast at one time and now it's just starting to run slow over time that could be just because you've accumulated crap and it's lots of startup programs taking up resources.

I did actually write an article. I would recommend definitely talking about ways to speed up windows, so I'll put that link below if you want to check that out.


5 Best Tips to Speed up Desktop or Laptop Performance.


Amazing Windows Tips and Tricks | You Must Know.



So hope you like this article about Windows Benchmark Score and I hope you will definitely check your Computer's Windows Benchmark Score. So check and comment your score.