Since Windows Vista, including in Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows System Assessment Tool (WinSAT) has been added into the operating system. WinSAT is a free benchmarking tool that measures various computer performance ratings, characteristics and capabilities, and display the ratings as Windows Experience Index or WEI score.
Normally, WEI rating score is just a few generalized numbers (which can be manipulated) of a relative performance scale, which do not give in-depth details about the computer performance. For advanced users who want to know the very details performance ratings for each components measured by WinSAT, there is trick to display detailed performance rating scores.
To view the PC performance details with WinSAT, open Command Prompt window as administrator, and enter the following command:
winsat formal -v >> output.txt
What the command does is it will run formal assessment on all system devices or sub-components to calculate the performance benchmarks, which is also used to calculate Windows Experience Index. All performance ratings will be saved and recorded in output.txt in the current directory. Unlike WEI, the content in the output file is comprehensive and detailed.
One of the example report from WinSAT is as below.
> Command Line 'winsat formal -v' > Running the Formal Assessment > DWM running... turnning DWM off > System processor power policy saved and set to 'max performance' > Running: Feature Enumeration v1.0.0.0 '' > Gathering System Information > Operating System : 6.1 Build-7000 > Processor : Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E4500 @ 2.20GHz > TSC Frequency : 3673500000 > Number of Processors : 1 > Number of Cores : 2 > Number of CPUs : 2 > Number of Cores per Processor : 2 > Number of CPUs Per Core : 1 > Cores have logical CPUs : NO > L1 Cache and line Size : 32768 64 > L2 Cache and line Size : 2097152 64 > Total physical mem available to the OS : 5.99 GB (6,439,579,648 bytes) > Adapter Description : ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT (Microsoft Corporation WDDM 1.1) > Adapter Manufacturer : ATI Technologies Inc. > Adapter Driver Version : 8.53.2.12 > Adapter Driver Date (yy/mm/dd) : 2008\11\13 > Has DX9 or better : Yes > Has Pixel shader 2.0 or better : Yes > Has LDDM Driver : Yes > Dedicated (local) video memory : 241.594MB > System memory dedicated as video memory : 0MB > System memory shared as video memory : 2815.09MB > Primary Monitor Size : 1920 X 1080 (2073600 total pixels) > WinSAT is Official : Yes > CPU LZW Compression 138.72 MB/s > CPU AES256 Encryption 83.63 MB/s > CPU Vista Compression 389.00 MB/s > CPU SHA1 Hash 659.23 MB/s > Uniproc CPU LZW Compression 68.89 MB/s > Uniproc CPU AES256 Encryption 42.67 MB/s > Uniproc CPU Vista Compression 194.23 MB/s > Uniproc CPU SHA1 Hash 329.92 MB/s > Memory Performance 5765.81 MB/s > Direct3D Batch Performance 234.66 F/s > Direct3D Alpha Blend Performance 235.59 F/s > Direct3D ALU Performance 89.68 F/s > Direct3D Texture Load Performance 95.26 F/s > Direct3D Batch Performance 225.08 F/s > Direct3D Alpha Blend Performance 230.11 F/s > Direct3D ALU Performance 81.39 F/s > Direct3D Texture Load Performance 79.46 F/s > Direct3D Geometry Performance 43.78 F/s > Direct3D Geometry Performance 41.36 F/s > Direct3D Geometry Performance 29.70 F/s > Direct3D Geometry Performance 42.48 F/s > Direct3D Constant Buffer Performance 119.06 F/s > Video Memory Throughput 6919.56 MB/s > Dshow Video Encode Time 5.54336 s > Media Foundation Decode Time 0.95649 s > Disk Sequential 64.0 Read 81.09 MB/s 6.2 > Disk Random 16.0 Read 1.20 MB/s 3.2 > Average Read Time with Sequential Writes 5.976 ms 5.7 > Latency: 95th Percentile 64.231 ms 1.9 > Latency: Maximum 239.770 ms 7.2 > Average Read Time with Random Writes 12.804 ms 2.8