New Hard Drive Rates Poor in Win7 Performance Info?

My HP desktop is a few months old. Seems fast enough, but recently I did the "Windows Experience Index" "Performance Test" and found my HD is the bottle neck on my system. So says the test, anyway.

Most scores are 7 or over, and then my "Primary Disk, Disk transfer Rate" gets a 5.9!!

I am wondering how much getting a better HD will help performance, especially games?

Thanks!
Matt72
PS: Here are my PC specs:
HP Pavilion HPE h8-1360t Desktop PC
• 3rd Generation Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3770 quad-core processor [3.4GHz, 8MB Shared Cache]
• 16GB DDR3-1333MHz SDRAM [4 DIMMs]
• 1TB 7200 rpm SATA hard drive
• 2GB Nvidia GeForce GT630 [DVI, HDMI and VGA via adapter]
• 460W Power supply

 

Hi, Matt.

5.9 is as fast as a HDD gets in WEI, to increase that score, you'd need to install Windows to an SSD. Moving to an SSD won't help very much in games, sure, it'll be noticeable during load and porting/zoning but little else.

For gaming, you want to upgrade that graphics card, GT630's are mediocre; you may need to upgrade the PSU as well if you go that route, depending on the new card (you should just be ok with a 150W card, providing the current PSU is recent and of high quality).

For general purpose use, rather than gaming, an SSD would be a good upgrade.

 

Just spotted this, published yesterday: HDD vs. SSD Real World Gaming Performance

 

Yeah, 5.9 is not poor. That is actually excellent - for hard drives.

BTW, WEI scores are not good indicators of performance and the WEI is a lousy benchmarking program. In fact, it was never meant to be a benchmarking program or true indicator of performance. Because its scores are often intentionally misrepresented by some and misunderstood by many others, Microsoft removed WEI from Windows 8.1.

Boot times will be amazingly fast compared spinners. And disk intensive applications (which typically do NOT include games) will see significant improvement. The main reason you will NOT see any significant performance gains is because you have lots of RAM. With 16Gb of RAM, the OS and your CPU will have acres of playing room to work in, and to store (and preload) needed data. This means your system will not have to rely frequently on the Page File. If you only had 2Gb of RAM, or example, your system would constantly bang on the PF located on the [relatively slow] hard drive. With large amounts of RAM, needed data is instantly available in RAM.

 

Thanks for the replies, guys. Glad to know my HD is "ok".

Regarding the 5.9 limit on non-SSD, my other older desktop, also an HP, has a SATA drive and it gets a WEI of 7.7! So either the 5.9 limit info is incorrect, or there is a bug on that computer?

Anyway, bottom line is my HD is ok, which is the good news.

Thanks guys,
Matt72

 

Any chance Microsoft will redo the WEI based on technology upgrades since it was released years ago?

I'm waiting for the "Spinal Tap" update that goes to 11. :-D

 

Oh? Does it by chance have a 10K Raptor drive, or perhaps a hybrid?

As I noted above, MS removed WEI from 8.1 because it was misused by some and confusing for so many. So I doubt they will bring it back.