I was offered a nvidia graphic card from a mate and as my HP only had Intel onboard I decided why not. The graphics card is a PNY Nvidia 8400GS with 256mb. Now you would think that installing that card would have an overall improvement to the performance score that Vista gives your PC, apparently not. My performance score has not improved. I have removed the old Intel drivers but my score remains the same. Once the card was installed I went to Nvidia and downloaded the latest drivers and installed them. Am I underestimating the Intel graphics or has Vista got it wrong?? Tim

The Windows Expirience Index is not always right. Did you notice a performance change with the new card? I would keep the NVidia card in anyway, since the Onboard Intel graphics uses some of main RAM as video RAM, and the Nvidia card has it's own video RAM.

Thanks Trentm, the performance seem to be better (just normal windows use at present) and the colours look brighter so yes it is better So the performance monitor is just another worthless resource eating software service that comes with Vista!! Tim

Pretty much another Vista blooper, thats what a "PC World" article says. Your welcome, glad I could help! -Trent

The performance score that Vista gives your PC is the smallest of all of the individual numbers given for cpu, RAM, graphics, etc. Thus it is possible that some other compnent kept the overall score down. Was it the specific performance score for graphics which did not improve ?

The lowest score is for the graphics followed by 3d graphics ability, the score is 3 Tim

My Dad's Dell Inspiron 1525 has an Intel Core 2 Duo @ 1.67 Ghz, 1 GB RAM, and an Intel X3100 graphics card, and Vista rated it (Overall) 3.3. I found the following info on a forum - the following computer got a windows experience index of 5.8!! (Highest is 5.9): Intel Core2Duo @3.7ghz = 5.8 4 Gig PC6400 800mhz DDR = 5.9 BFG 8800GTX OC Graphics = 5.9 Gaming = 5.9 WD Raptor OS drive = 5.9 Man, think of how Windows XP would run with that computer!!