Create a hardware summary of your computer

This is an interesting feature I found while trying to compare Windows Vista Experience Index scores with my friends. Other than boasting purposes, this is also a good way to find out what parts your computer is made of, as well as the speed of your computer parts. It displays the model of your CPU, basic motherboard info, hard drive info, video card info, and network card info. I’ll also go into how to analyze the information for computer upgrades after explaining how to access this hardware summary feature. Although if you are using this feature for the purpose of upgrading and you are ready to download software, skip this tutorial immediately and go download PC Wizard. The reason why I wrote this was because many wanted a feature like this without having to download an extra piece of software.

So the first thing you have to do is to open the Start Menu, and type in performance info in the search bar.

You can just push enter, or if you wait a while, this will come up at the top…

…and you can just click it. Then you’ll get a window that looks like this:

If you’ve recently installed new hardware or have a base score of 0, then click on Update my score in the bottom-right hand corner. This is so Windows Vista can gather information on your hardware, as well as evaluate its performance. When you’re finished, click on View and Print details to the left to show the summary. This is what you should see:

As you’ve probably realized by now, I like showing off my specs ^_^, hence the numerous pictures. This is pretty much it but you can read on how to use this information to upgrade your computer.

• Using this information to upgrade your computer:

Basically, you will be doing a bit of research. I’ll briefly explain how to analyze each of the parts in the summary to give you an idea of how to shop for computer upgrades. Please note these explanations only serve as an introduction, and that further research into upgrading a computer is strongly recommended. Google (or your favourite search engine) is required to look up each part. You only need information on the part you want to upgrade.

CPU (Intel Core 2 Duo CPU E6750 @ 2.66 GHz):
What you are trying look for here is the socket of the CPU. The socket-type of the CPU needs to match with the motherboard’s socket type so your CPU can fit in properly. If you are upgrading a CPU, make sure you buy a CPU with the same socket as your previous CPU. For example, mine uses Socket LGA775.

Memory (2GB of RAM):
Windows Vista telling you that you have 2GB of RAM doesn’t help much at all. But what you CAN do is look up what kinds of RAM your motherboard supports. If you have bought a pre-built computer from a company such as HP or Dell and you cannot find your motherboard model on Google, it’s best to call them for more information. Or you can use PC Wizard.

Graphics (Nvidia Geforce 8800GTS):
You need to know if your video card is an AGP, PCI, or PCI-express model. In many cases, you may have an integrated graphics chipset, which cannot provide this kind of information. If that is the case, you can see what kinds of video cards your motherboard supports, consult the computer manufacturer, or use PC Wizard.

The rest of the information is good for reference and boasting purposes. Hope this’ll be useful for some of you.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, January 17th, 2008 at 3:47 am and is filed under Tips and Tweaks, Windows Vista. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.