Windows Readyboost?

[Llama Juice]

Does anyone know how effective this is?

For those of you who are like ???? ... Windows Readyboost is a feature of Vista that allows you to use flashdrives/SDcards as ... essentially RAM

When you plug your flashdrive in, the autorun box pops up... the bottom option in it is "Use with Windows Readyboost"...

Someone at school asked me about this the other day and i thought that it would be too slow to be effective RAM but... I dunno. Has anyone toyed with this/know any more about it?

[Pyong Kawaguchi]

SD cards are slow, not effective for sd cards as i can tell

[Syuusuke]

If you have > 2gb of RAM, I don't think Readyboost would make a significant difference.

If your harddrive sucks (let's say non-SATA, those standard ATA drives =) it could have a difference. I think. I stopped caring after I stuck my flashdrive in from a few months ago.

[Amit]

Don't even bother with ReadyBoost. If you have 1GB of DDR2 RAM and up, the difference won't be noticeable.

[0m3g4Muff1n987]

If you have like 512MB of RAM, readyboost might help a little, but flash memory really can't match the speed and reliability of good old RAM. Plus, I'd hate to have a little flash drive prominently hanging out of one of my USB ports.

[randreach454]

i got 1 gig of ram in my laptop and a gig thumbdrive..

ive noticed my laptop wont freeze programs at all anymore, but yea things arent faster or anything, since readyboost wants you to have double the amount of ram on your usb thumbdrive.

[Syuusuke]

I thought readyboost affected the load time of programs...

[Zeph]

Readyboost just helps you load programs you often use faster. If Vista sees you play Halo 27 a lot, it would move a lot of the game into the Readyboost sector so it would load faster than flat off the hard drive. It's far from being as effective as RAM, but if you have a slow hard drive it'll make a noticeable difference.

[Kornman00]

Halo 27 lol

[Chronos]

The service alone is eating away precious memory.
I like to believe it's, yet again, one of Microsoft's idiotic features. So they can just add it to the Vista WOW factor.

I doubt this helps with games, I advise you to get RAM instead of a bunch of SD card. My two cents.

[Zeph]

The service alone is eating away precious memory.
I like to believe it's, yet again, one of Microsoft's idiotic features. So they can just add it to the Vista WOW factor.

I doubt this helps with games, I advise you to get RAM instead of a bunch of SD card. My two cents.

Too bad you dont understand the service enough to realize if your system is running out of free RAM, it will clear the portions of RAM it has set aside for unused programs.

[Chronos]

Ah, didn't know that, thanks for the heads up Zeph.
I thought ReadyBoost was usefull for external devices only? Such as USB sticks and SD cards?

[Syuusuke]

That's what ReadyBoost is used on, USB sticks and SD cards.

[randreach454]

I thought readyboost affected the load time of programs...

yea it's supposed to, but like i said, they recommend double the amount on the stick compared to your ram amount.

as in 1 gig of ram means to see any difference really, youd need 2 gigs on that flash drive..

thats why i dont really see a difference at all.

[JDMFSeanP]

I use to run 512mb with vista and readyboost did a ton, SUPER noticeable when working with large documents in PS and stuff, I was using an SD card for it as well through my psp.

[CrAsHOvErRide]

If you have > 2gb of RAM, I don't think Readyboost would make a significant difference.
Correct.



If your harddrive sucks (let's say non-SATA, those standard ATA drives =) it could have a difference. .
Wrong.
I hope you don't get fooled my modern media pretending that SATA is way faster than ATA drives. They are not.

All external devices, even ex HDD are bad for memory management. There is a reason we have technologies such as HyperTransport. :eyesroll:

[Syuusuke]

1/2 correct, thats's 50%, THATS BAD.
THANKS FOR RUINING MY TECHIE LIFE.

Wait then what the HELL? I should tell my friend this.

[Phopojijo]

Ah, didn't know that, thanks for the heads up Zeph.
I thought ReadyBoost was usefull for external devices only? Such as USB sticks and SD cards?Superfetch and Readyboost are kinda blurred lines.

One uses solid-state memory to cache stuff that you could potentially use. It's okay to use USB memory for it... in fact it's actually wise to do that if you are running a laptop (bigger chance of having your harddrive be idle... saving you power).

It's mostly useful for Hybrid (SolidState/HardDisk) Hard Drives. It'll be smart enough to move the most common stuff to the Solid state section, and the least used stuff to the hard disk section... allowing the HDD motor to stay off.

Superfetch is what Zeph's talking about I believe... it creates caches of programs in memory in the event you might use it. This again is mostly for laptops so you don't need to spin up the harddrive to access a program. Especially since Laptop drives are 5400 RPM and therefore... kinda lackluster in the burst data rates.

As for SATA versus ATA -- SATA is quite substantially faster... but obviously if you put shit drives in it -- well, you kinda limit yourself. iRAM, for instance, would see a huge performance increase though. That is, unless you have a server-class 15,000 RPM HardDrive... though you'd be using SCSI in that case...

[Xetsuei]

1/2 correct, thats's 50%, THATS BAD.
THANKS FOR RUINING MY TECHIE LIFE.

Wait then what the HELL? I should tell my friend this.

Don't worry syuu, you're ALMOST 100%


Correct.


Wrong.
I hope you don't get fooled my modern media pretending that SATA is way faster than ATA drives. They are not.

All external devices, even ex HDD are bad for memory management. There is a reason we have technologies such as HyperTransport. :eyesroll:

SATA - 2gb/s
ATA - 133mb/s

What are you smoking? I mean of course RPM matters, but SATA drives will always be faster.

[Phopojijo]

Xetsuei™;218522']SATA - 2gb/s
ATA - 133mb/s

What are you smoking? I mean of course RPM matters, but SATA drives will always be faster.Yea but RPM and seek time is a major issue... even PATA drives the bus was almost never actually full.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA#SATA_and_SCSI

Also ATA is 133MB/s -- while SATA is 2Gb/s =~370MB/s

[JDMFSeanP]

SSD - 40gb/s

WINNAR!