Winsat

 

Applies To: Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8

winsat assesses various features, capabilities, and attributes of a computer running Windows Vista®.

Syntax

winsat <assessment name> <assessment parameters>

Assessments

Assessment

Description

winsat dwm

Assesses the ability of a system to display the Aero desktop effects.

winsat d3d

Assesses the ability of a system to run Direct 3D applications, such as games.

winsat mem

Assesses system memory bandwidth by simulating large memory to memory buffer copies.

winsat disk

Assesses the performance of disk drives.

winsat cpu

Assesses the performance of the CPU(s).

winsat media

Assesses the performance of video encoding and decoding (playback) using the Direct Show framework.

winsat mfmedia

Assesses the performance of video decoding (playback) using the Media Foundation framework.

winsat features

Enumerates relevant system information.

winsat formal

Runs a set of pre-defined assessments and saves the data in an XML file in %systemroot%\performance\winsat\datastore.

Remarks

  • Please review the parameters for an assessment before running it. Assessment parameters are required for accurate testing.

    Warning

    Running an assessment without parameters may result in system performance problems or system instability.

  • Membership in the local Administrators group, or equivalent, is the minimum required to use winsat. The command must be executed from an elevated command prompt window.

  • To open an elevated command prompt window, click Start, click All Programs, click Accessories, right-click Command Prompt, and click Run as administrator.

Additional references

Command-Line Syntax Key