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Vista but lack the capacity to support Aero. This rating gives you a sense of how well suited your graphics card is for the requirements for Aero. The original graphics card for this example system scored a 1.0 and did not support Aero. A relatively cheap graphics card with 256 MB graphics RAM provided Aero support and a middling score of 2.9. (The minimum graphics RAM for Vista Premium Ready PCs is 128 MB.)

Gaming Graphics The rating for gaming graphics is a specialized evaluation of the graphics system in terms of performance for demanding games and business presentation tools. A lower score here implies that more demanding games may not run or may not run well on a system. Virtual reality role-playing games demand more of the graphics subsystem than a card game does. In fact, even the new card games included with Windows Vista require 1.0 and recommend a score of 2.0.

Primary hard disk Hard disks are almost always evaluated in terms of capacity, which keeps increasing every year (not for the disks you have, mind you). This rating is less a measure of available space (a minimum of 15 GB free space is required to install Windows Vista) and more weighted toward spin rate plus caching. Most drives spin at 5,400 RPM or 7,200 RPM of course, faster is better. Caching or buffering can reduce disk reads by holding data temporarily; data found in the cache eliminates reading the disk. Larger drives tend to have large caches (often 8 MB versus 16 MB)larger isbetter. The example drive has the higher spin rate but a smaller cache.

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