[7up]

[smoothy]

Buy a new one...

Seriously, EVERYTHING has a factor in that score. And it would be cheaper to buy a new one than upgrade a 2.0 machine to a 5.0 machine.

Not being sarcastic... just realistic. 3.0 points is a HUGE jump to make. I assume you aren't weak on just one or two scores in that aggregate number to get a number that low.

Its sort of like putting a $10,000 paint job and custom made rims on a 1982 Lincoln continental with 200,000 miles put on it as a taxi cab, not little old lady miles.

You still have a turd you will never see your money out of... a shiney turd, but its still a turd.

[ITstudent2006]

Smoothy is absolutely correct. The little things you can do yourself to improve it (ie: increase RAM, better graphics card etc.. ) isn't going to improve your overall score a whole lot.

To be honest I have seen a multi-thousand dollar machine run with a base score of just over 4. Never seen one close to 5. Maybe others have but not me! Mine started at 3.2 and I got it to 3.6 but never higher.

Also, are you averaging your scores or using the score given? Because the score given is based on your lowest subscore. So you might be at 2.0 but if every other category is higher then you can work on the one category.

Ps. If buying a new one is out of the question then what areas are you lacking in. (can you print screen the scoring and show us?)

[smoothy]

A 2.0 score sounds like it was a budget machine from its inception... It likely has shared memory with onboard video and a celeron CPU or a low end AMD equivalent.

If it is... you can't build a Skyscraper using a tool shed as a foundation.

[ITstudent2006]

7up finds this helpful: processor: 2.8 / memory ( ram):2.9 / graphics: 3.7 / gameing graphic: 2.6 / primary hard disk: 4.0 / base score: 2.6

Your lowest subscore is your graphics. If you havea desktop try a new graphics card and add more memory. This will increase both of those subscores. But remember your base score is given from your lowest subscore, so even if you increase your graphics score and RAM score your processor is still at 2.9 so the highest your processor can go (without replacing CPU or overclocking) is 2.9

So with all the money you would put in to increase your subscores, your overall basescore would only improve .3

NOTE
Don't feel bad because Windows 7 Base Scores are out of 7.9 (Vista was 5.0) and at work my Lenovo IdeaPad is at a 2.0 out of 7.9 (it's a mini so I'm not expecting high results)

[smoothy]

Here is an FYI... its NOT a gaming rig. Its my main computer I just partially rebuilt salvaging parts of my old computer.

Asus Motherboard P5D I think it was (Paid $109)
Q8300 Quad core cpu (Paid $83)
8 gig DDR-2 Ram (salvaged)
120 gig OCZ Agility SSD boot drive SATA (paid $200)

Two - SATA 1- Terrabye data drives (Hitachi) (salvaged)

SATA Blue ray burner (Salvaged)

ATI video PCI-express video card... (was less than $100 2 years ago) (Salvaged)

Running Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit version



I got these scores...

Processor 7.2
Memory 7.2
Graphic 5.7
Gaming Graphics 5.7
Primary HD 7.3

And with these a base score of 5.7 for the windows experience

[Curlyben]

Nice stats there Smoothy.

Well my new box has finally arrived and rates:

Processor 7.5
Memory 7.6
Graphic 7.4
Gaming Graphics 7.7
Primary HD 6.9

Up from 5.2 on an aging XPS M1710, so slightly happy ;)

Oh yeah, the new one is i7 840, 8Gb, 2gb Nvidea GT 435, 640 Gb HDD, Win7 64 Ent.

[ITstudent2006]

Yea, I have nothing close to that. My laptop at my house is 3.6/5, this ideapad is 2/7.9 and everything else I own is XP

[Curlyben]

One advantage of being able to con my boss into new hardware.
Hey he wanted a new machine as well, but his cost way less as he insisted on an ultralight bookend ;)

[smoothy]

One advantage of being able to con my boss into new hardware.
Hey he wanted a new machine as well, but his cost way less as he insisted on an ultralight bookend ;)

I had to get this by the queen (othersie known as the wife)... couldn't pull of a new box... or even really justify it to myself when I still had good parts to reuse. I would have gone a different MoBo and DDR-3 memory and a high end current gen CPU and 2 tb drives and a better video card too... but it didn't make sense to me either. What I had wasn't all that bad. And best of was already paid for.