Anyone Tried Vista's ReadyBoost Technology?

[madmatt]

I am thinking about buying a ReadyBoost USB drive. Has anyone tried out this new technology and care to comment?

Thank you.

 

[NetRyder]

I don't think it'll make much of a difference on a machine with 2GB of RAM or more. I've heard reports that it definitely helps on machines with 512MB though.

My Tablet PC currently has 1GB installed. I'm getting a high-speed SD card for my camera, and I was planning to try that out as a ReadyBoost drive as well. I'm not sure when it'll be here though...it seems to be on back-order right now.

 

[LordOfLA]

It did make some difference. Obviously not as much as if I'd had less ram but enough to be noticed when running ram intenstive applications like photoshop and larger games.

 

[American Zombie]

From Matt Ayers:
I'm the Program Manager in the Microsoft Windows Client Performance group and own the ReadyBoost feature. I wanted to give some offical answers based on the excellent questions and discussions that I've seen in this blog, to date. Also, I'll be using this as a starting point for the official ReadyBoost FAQ.

ReadyBoost FAQ

 

[Electronic Punk]

I honestly didn't notice a difference and found the readyboost certified device I was using would constantly stop working anyway (ie I would reboot open up the usb drive and find both no cache and no option to re-enable readyboost)

Tempted to just fill the card socket on my laptop though, may have better luck than with USB.

 

[LordOfLA]

well my corsair turboflash is getting a workout from o&o defrag right now and I have 2GB ram...

 

[madmatt]

I don't think it'll make much of a difference on a machine with 2GB of RAM or more. I've heard reports that it definitely helps on machines with 512MB though.

My Tablet PC currently has 1GB installed. I'm getting a high-speed SD card for my camera, and I was planning to try that out as a ReadyBoost drive as well. I'm not sure when it'll be here though...it seems to be on back-order right now.

At 4GB currently. I thought it would be fun to use...

ReadyBoost FAQ

And he goes onto say:

Overall, as many posters have pointed out, the feature is designed to improve small random I/O for people who lack the expansion slots, money, and or technical expertise to add additional RAM. As y’all know, adding RAM is still the best way to relieve memory pressure.

Which supports what NR pointed out.

 

[Tuffgong4]

how badly does readyboost degrade the card you are using, I don't want to kill the card I have because I stumbled upon a 4GB compact flash and don't want to kill it, (thinking of getting a high end camera and don't want to kill the card I got.

 

[Shamus MacNoob]

I use it and find it does help a little in the loading times for some larger applications.

 

[Sazar]

I use it. I find the flashing blue light when it is in use to be strangely soothing

 

[Shamus MacNoob]

:smoker:

I use it. I find the flashing blue light when it is in use to be strangely soothing

:smoker:

 

[ming]

you must make sure the flash drive is "ready-boost" compatible otherwise it won't work - or at least make no difference because of the slow write speed.

 

[Perris Calderon]

ooh ooh ooh

a virtual memory discussion

COOL

I love this from microsoft, something I've always said about virtual memory;

Q: Ok... 256M-4GB is a pretty big range... any recommendations?
A: Yes. We recommend a 1:1 ratio of flash to system memory at the low end and as high as 2.5:1 flash to system memory. Higher than that and you won't see much benefit.

lays to waste any argument that the more memory you have the smaller pagefile a person needs

the discussion also points out this is just to aleviate io's, not to improve pagefile performance per se, the hardrive is faster then the flash drive, all new data is still sent to hard disc via pagefile and the flash isn't a replacement for it

interesting stuff here, I don't run vista yet and never new about this "ready boost" thingy

 

[Shamus MacNoob]

you must make sure the flash drive is "ready-boost" compatible otherwise it won't work - or at least make no difference because of the slow write speed.

Yes you can spend money on a flash drive and find out it wont even work .. need to make sure you buy a Vista Ready flash drive

 

[madmatt]

Someone posted an article that allowed you to use ANY flash drive for ReadyBoost. I would search but I am lazy.

 

[Shamus MacNoob]

Yes I remember that but I am sure if it is a poor performance flash drive to start with and you need to hack to get it to work , I dont think your going to see any gain from it.