No WEI on Windows 8.1?


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Because they don't get how infuriating a feature removal might be to user X even if user Y doesn't miss it at all.

Would you rather: a) they get rid of stuff few people used...or b) spend all their time maintaining little used features for no reason at the expense of doing anything useful

 

Given the blog post link in your sig, I'd bet you'd pick option b.

 

If anything the WEI was always kind of pointless as it was never used for anything meaningful. As for system images...perhaps there was an actual technical reason. Who knows.

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I liked the WEI score, as it gave me a simple metric when comparing PCs at stored like Best Buy, in fact, it helped me when I bought my laptop in April when comparing it against the score of my old laptop that it replaced. 

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I liked the WEI score, as it gave me a simple metric when comparing

 

Maybe Microsoft didn't want you comparing the speed of your tablet (0.01) or your phone (0.05) to your desktop (999.9)

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It was a very good idea in theory but it just was never taken seriously by developers. Not to mention it was ultimately useless since even if your PC matched the score the game recommended you needed, it was no guarantee it would even run. It had potential though, could have really simplified system requirements and made seeing if your machine could run a game very easy and simple. 

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I used it for the details window that you could go to, and which showed information like VRAM that normally electronics stores wouldn't advertise. I'd go to each computer I was interested in buying in the showroom and bring up the details window in order to compare them.

 

Of course, in recent years, a lot of vendors have disabled desktop access and have instead displayed a custom app that displayed the computer specs, which wasn't helpful to me either.

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I used it for the details window that you could go to, and which showed information like VRAM that normally electronics stores wouldn't advertise. I'd go to each computer I was interested in buying in the showroom and bring up the details window in order to compare them.

 

Of course, in recent years, a lot of vendors have disabled desktop access and have instead displayed a custom app that displayed the computer specs, which wasn't helpful to me either.

 

That is a good point, I didn't even think of it like that! but yeah I've noticed that here in Australia too, the demo machines tend to be locked these days running a custom app with the specs or in some cases just locked.

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That happens here too, however they do it the lazy way by having a never ending pps file running in Kiosk mode, so alt+f4 soon solves the problem :)

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I always thought it was a bit useless. My Desktop 2GB AMD 7770 scored 0.7 higher than my Laptops Mobile 1GB AMD 5650M.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I always thought it was a bit useless. My Desktop 2GB AMD 7770 scored 0.7 higher than my Laptops Mobile 1GB AMD 5650M.

That is primarily due to the AMD HD57xx (and even HD67xx) not being that superior to the Mobility HD5xxx.  (Yes - I'm quite serious.  And I honestly wish I weren't.)

I upgraded (within the past week!) from Mobility HD5450 (despite its nomenclature, this particular Mobility part appeared in desktop PCIe clothing, primarily for HTPCs/SFF PCs, because it needed neither auxiliary power or even a fan) to GTX 550 Ti.

 

Typical video WEI subsystem scores for HD57xx are 7.0/7.0 (Windows 8, of course).

Mobility HD54xx has a typical WEI of 4.1/6.0 (same OS).

GTX 550 Ti?  7.1/7.2 (Driver 311.06 - older than mold).

 

In terms merely of application performance, GTX 550 Ti leaves HD57xx waxed - often severely waxed. (And as someone that has run nothing BUT AMD - and ATI before that - in terms of GPUs since the days of the original 3D RAGE, it's NOT exactly a fun thing to admit.)  The WEI differences are indeed in terms of feature availability - and those differences are reflected in a vendor-neutral way.  That is indeed why the WEI was useful.

 

However, the growing acceptance of Futuremark's benchmarking tools as a reference standard has mitigated,  if not outright mooted, WEI as a vendor-neutral benchmark tool.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Seems it has not been mentioned here:

 

cmd(admin), enter: WinSAT /?

 

:)

I think I ran it once. But it disappeared quite fast, without showing the results. Anyone knows how to stop or create a log file?

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That is primarily due to the AMD HD57xx (and even HD67xx) not being that superior to the Mobility HD5xxx.  (Yes - I'm quite serious.  And I honestly wish I weren't.)

I upgraded (within the past week!) from Mobility HD5450 (despite its nomenclature, this particular Mobility part appeared in desktop PCIe clothing, primarily for HTPCs/SFF PCs, because it needed neither auxiliary power or even a fan) to GTX 550 Ti.

 

Typical video WEI subsystem scores for HD57xx are 7.0/7.0 (Windows 8, of course).

Mobility HD54xx has a typical WEI of 4.1/6.0 (same OS).

GTX 550 Ti?  7.1/7.2 (Driver 311.06 - older than mold).

 

In terms merely of application performance, GTX 550 Ti leaves HD57xx waxed - often severely waxed. (And as someone that has run nothing BUT AMD - and ATI before that - in terms of GPUs since the days of the original 3D RAGE, it's NOT exactly a fun thing to admit.)  The WEI differences are indeed in terms of feature availability - and those differences are reflected in a vendor-neutral way.  That is indeed why the WEI was useful.

 

However, the growing acceptance of Futuremark's benchmarking tools as a reference standard has mitigated,  if not outright mooted, WEI as a vendor-neutral benchmark tool.

 

With that being said there are so many variables that give one a result and the result isn't always going to be the same each and every time it is run - you might have a very fast video card but the PCIe bus is aggressively saving on power or the GPU is aggressively down clocking to save power and reduce heat. IMHO the benchmark didn't really amount to a hill of beans given that the usual suspects kept shipping junk even with the WEI available so maybe the alternative is for the average person to pick up a few pointers from their tech savvy friends before making a decision regarding purchasing a new computer as to avoid any sort of problems.

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Why are they removing features that were in Windows 8.0? First System images then custom Libaries not being shown by default and now WEI. :(

 

Microsoft have been silently removing features for a while, they seem to have lost it the last few years.  I also liked the feature.

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my guess is that its not a COMPLETE product with changes and improvements being done. this was done in previous OS previews. it will most likely be in the final upgrade.

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  • 2 weeks later...

my guess is that its not a COMPLETE product with changes and improvements being done. this was done in previous OS previews. it will most likely be in the final upgrade.

 

perhaps it would be integrated into Modern UI

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Wasn't it necessary to run WEI in order for Windows to recognize an SSD and configure settings accordingly and enable TRIM?

 

for win7 only perhaps

 

don't believe it applies to windows 8

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