Windows has a secret PowerShell command that grades your PC— this is what it means

If you’ve used Windows Vista or Windows 7, you might remember the Windows Experience Index. It displayed a simple scorecard that rated your PC’s hardware in the simplest of manners.

Although Microsoft removed the feature years ago, the underlying tool is still present on Windows 11. In fact, you can still generate those scores today with a single PowerShell command. It’s nowhere near as detailed as modern benchmarking tools, but it’s quite handy if you’re planning an upgrade or simply want to see how your PC stacks up against your friend’s system.

Letting Windows grade your hardware is fun

A forgotten Vista-era feature you’ll love

The Windows Experience Score is by far the easiest way to get a rough evaluation of your PC’s hardware. If you’re a long-time Windows user who remembers the days of Windows Vista, you probably already know what I’m talking about. Back then, Windows showed these scores directly inside the Control Panel, so they were much easier to spot. The good news is you can still get these scores with a PowerShell command.

Once you run it, Windows will give you a series of scores for every key hardware component. It covers things like the processor, memory, graphics performance, and storage. The tool Windows uses to generate these scores is called Windows System Assessment Tool (or WinSAT for short). It’s essentially a built-in benchmarking tool that runs a set of tests internally.

Finding your PC’s Windows Experience Score is dead easy

Reveal your PC’s weakest link

Checking the Windows Experience Score only takes a few seconds. All you have to do is open the search menu, type in PowerShell and choose Run as administrator. Then, paste the following command and hit Enter:

Get-CimInstance Win32_WinSAT

PowerShell will display a list of scores for different hardware categories, like CPU, disk, graphics, memory, and more. All of these range from 1.0 to 9.9. And yes, the higher the score, the better your hardware is.

One value that’s worth paying attention to is WinSPRLevel. It’s not an overall rating for the hardware. Windows simply takes the lowest score from all the tested categories and uses that as the final rating. So if your CPU and RAM both score 9.5, but the storage only scores 6, WinSPRLevel will also be 6. There’s a reason for this. Windows simply wants to highlight the weakest link in your PC’s hardware. So if you’re planning a hardware upgrade, WinSPRLevel can give you a clue about what’s holding your PC back.

Sometimes, the above command can return blank values. This usually happens if WinSAT hasn’t been run on the system yet. And if that happens, simply open the command prompt, type winsat formal and hit Enter. It’s also better to run this command first if you’ve recently made any hardware upgrades and want to ensure the scores are accurate.

The whole test will take less than a minute, and if you’re using a laptop, you’ll need to keep it plugged in. Once the test is finished, head to C: > Windows > Performance > WinSAT > DataStore and find the latest XML files. Open these files one by one and search for CpuScore, MemoryScore, GraphicsScore, and DiskScore to view the individual results. Yes, it’s a bit more work, but after this, you’ll be able to run the first command too.

WinSAT is great for quick checks, not deep analysis

Benchmark tools still have their place

WinSAT is undeniably convenient, but it’s not a replacement for dedicated benchmarking tools like Cinebench or 3DMark. The scores it generates are intentionally simple and only meant to give you a broad understanding of your hardware’s capabilities.

WinSAT is still great for checking if a weak GPU is the reason for sluggish gaming performance or if it’s a slow hard drive that’s causing slow boot times. What it can’t tell you is how the hardware is performing under sustained workloads or in real-world scenarios. In many ways, being simple and less complicated is part of WinSAT’s appeal.

Of course, a benchmarking tool is still the way to go if you want a more detailed picture. These tools can run a series of stress tests that push the CPU, GPU, memory, and storage to their limits. They measure performance under load and, most importantly, identify issues like thermal throttling or unstable overclocks.

The good thing is that some of these benchmarking tools don’t actually require installation. So you can just download and run one of these. My favorite is FurMark 2, which you can download for free from Geeks3D.