The "Windows System Assessment Tool" is a function integrated in Windows Vista that checks the performance of the computer and "spits out" a final score.
The performance evaluation is carried out directly after the installation of Windows Vista and shows how fit your computer is for games or applications. The Windows Tweaks Blog shows you what's behind it...
What is supported?
The Windows performance rating analyzes the performance of the CPU, memory modules, graphics card and hard drive and expresses this in the form of an overall rating. In the near future, games will be able to read this overall rating and adapt the graphics settings (e.g. resolution, level of detail, effects) to the performance of the PC.
This saves you a lot of time and nerves that you would have "wasted" by fiddling with the graphics settings. Of course, you can still change these automatic settings yourself. Let's hope that a lot of games will make use of this new technology in the future!
How is the valuation determined?
The score is always given by the weakest component of the computer. In my example (see above), the processor (Intel Core 2 Duo with 2.4 Ghz) is the weaker link. The graphics card (GeForce 8800 GTX) and the hard disk (one of the lightning-fast Western Digital Raptors, which manages 10,000 revolutions per minute) form the maximum of the rating - a 5.9. Modern games (e.g. Prey) will probably only run to a limited extent on computers below the 4 points mark. For normal office applications, a PC with a rating of 1, 2 or 3 is sufficient.
How to carry out the performance evaluation
Windows Vista carries out the performance evaluation immediately after installation. However, performance often changes drastically when hardware is replaced or new device drivers are installed. After such changes, we recommend that you run the performance evaluation again: Click on the Start button and select 'Control Panel'. Go to > System and maintenance > and click on > Performance information and tools. When you click on > Update evaluation? the test is run again.
Yours, Sandro Villinger
