Crappy Alienware performance on Vista ...

That is a perfectly normal score, and your memory isn't 400mhz . It is 667mhz DDR2 mem not 400 DDR. I have a laptop that runs the 667mhz memory and that's exactly what I get. I would hardly call that crappy.

So, you should ask yourself what that number means, and what exactly would score higher. And what the scale is. Sure, if it was 4.5 out of 10, you might have reason to be disappointed. Of course, the score is 4.5 out of 5ish.

Basically, the Windows Experience Score is a cross between a technical tool and a marketing tool. The numbers mean something, but they don't mean anything very solid.

Have you looked at this at all? http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/wi...es/458117.aspx

According to this, a simple 4.0 gets you:
"All Windows Vista features will run well with snappy performance."

If you were at 5.0 or higher,
"Level 5 PCs will dramatically exceed the Windows Premium logo requirements. They will easily run Aero-Glass on multi-monitor systems at high resolution."

Right in between those two descriptions sounds about right for a 5750. I wouldn't expect to see 5.0 or higher on anything short of a dual-graphics card system with over 2GB of RAM.

Additionally, if you check that link and go down to the section on memory scores, you'll note that it doesn't list anything higher than 4.5.

I wouldn't worry about it too much. If you're really concerned about getting that 5.0 or whatever, go out and buy 2x 2GB DIMMs for your laptop and that has the best chance of getting you over 5.

Also note that the highest score you can actually get right now is 5.9. Microsoft said they'll change that in the future as new hardware is released. They want to keep the scale the same so that in the future current hardware will keep the score it's getting right now.

vista=memory hog duh

I agree with all of the above points... Those scores you have are very nice... I would not be disapointed at all.

No, it's caching.

I'm a later arrival to this thread, but I would love to have those numbers. My rating is 2.3 on my desktop, due to my 'uber' Radeon X300 (128mb) video card.

My Area-51 m5500 however, with the 2 Ghz Pentium M, 100GB HD(7200rpm), and NVidia 6600(256mb) gets a 3.3 and I'm ecstatic about those numbers.

Vista has problems now, like any new OS, it will take time for driver updates to bring it up to speed of the last OS, then it will start to excel.

if you ordered Vista thinking it will perform better then XP, at this point that is incorrect, but it will, eventually