System Builder Tips: Vista Aero Performance Rating - Intel 945GM on Toshiba Portégé

A client brought in a brand new Toshiba Portégé M500 laptop to fix some driver related issues after he did an in-place upgrade to Windows Vista.

After booting up the laptop, we ran the Windows System Assessment Tool and achieved the following scores:


Desktop performance for Windows Aero scored 2.0 while the 3D business and gaming graphics performance scored 2.8.

The Intel on board D945GTP (points to the D945GTP assessment) based graphics scored 2.1 and 3.0 respectively.

We updated the graphics driver to Intel's drivers dated late March and the score did not change.

Other than perhaps demonstrating that there is a bit of a restriction in performance due to the laptop chipset, the performance is as expected.

The 945GM based graphics runs Aero.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists