Do flash drives in vista really make a differnce?

[aceofskies05]

I was thinking about buying a 3 pack of 1 gig flash drives to use as "ready drive" but do they really do anything?

 

[aceofskies05]

bump

 

[Dunbar]

I'd like to know too, I'll be building my new Vista machine this week and have a 2GB flash drive. I would think if you're not using all of your RAM than no.

 

[MrBond]

Check out the AnandTech Vista Performance guide:

http://www.anandtech.com/systems/showdoc.aspx?i=2917&p=5

That's a link to the section of the guide where they analyze ReadyBoost.

 

[aceofskies05]

can anyone sum this up?

 

[Dunbar]

Originally posted by: aceofskies05
can anyone sum this up?

I read it and the article concludes that as long as you have at least 1GB of RAM, ready boost has very little effect.

 

[zephyrprime]

Don't just buy any old flash drive fore readyboost. In many situations, ready boost slows a computer down rather than speeds it up. You should only buy the drive with the fastest small IO speed.

 

[Rubycon]

Why put a bandaid on the problem? Just purchase more system memory and be done with it.

 

[mithrandir2001]

I didn't read that article until now. As an XP user (and probably will remain one for some time) I was pleased by how well XP performs in the benchmarks compared with Vista. MS's marketing makes it sound like Vista is a step up in performance (such as when the P4's got hyperthreading) but apparently that's not really the case. Vista is competitive but not superior overall.

 

[her34]

Originally posted by: aceofskies05
I was thinking about buying a 3 pack of 1 gig flash drives to use as "ready drive" but do they really do anything?

cliffnotes:

you can only use 1 drive for readyboost, maximum size of 4gb.

quality of flash drive affects performance (which not many reviews have taken into account)

buying more ram is better than flash drive.

flash drive does seem to add ~%5 boost even if you do have tons of ram

2gb ram is ideal for avg user

 

[Imyourzero]

Originally posted by: mithrandir2001
I didn't read that article until now. As an XP user (and probably will remain one for some time) I was pleased by how well XP performs in the benchmarks compared with Vista. MS's marketing makes it sound like Vista is a step up in performance (such as when the P4's got hyperthreading) but apparently that's not really the case. Vista is competitive but not superior overall.

I'm an XP user too, but I remember when Win98 users said the same thing when 2000 (and later, XP) came out. Performance wasn't up to par in many areas, but in time they realized that it was a much superior OS.

There is more to Vista than just raw performance in games and apps (which will only improve). The OS is smarter about how it handles its workload, and I've read many comments of praise about the superfetching technology. I think as Vista gets more firmly rooted in the market, its improvements will become more apparent and it will really start to shine as the superior OS. Of course, I could be wrong and Vista could be Windows ME v2, but I doubt it.

 

[mechBgon]

Vista's out-of-the-box security scheme is also a big improvement. Symantec did some testing and found that out of ~2000 Windows malwares they tried, Vista broke about 95% of them. I'm sure the bad guys will keep upping their game, but the rules just changed :evil:

Oh, and if you're going to leave UAC enabled on Vista (which is highly recommended), then finish the job: set up a Standard user account on Vista. This is a major point of UAC; you can do your Admin work from your Standard account, and the rest of the time those powers are safely set aside out of the reach of malware. Running non-Admin on WinXP is more of a chore, and I would know

 

[Oyeve]

Originally posted by: MS Dawn
Why put a bandaid on the problem? Just purchase more system memory and be done with it.

Only reason I can fathom is cost. USB flash drives are much cheaper the ram.

 

[Brian48]

I haven't noticed a difference using it one way or the other. If you just happen to have a thumbdrive that you're not using, have at it, as it certainly couldn't hurt. I just wouldn't recommend actually spending any money on one just for the sole purpose of using Readyboost.

 

[zephyrprime]

Originally posted by: Oyeve

Originally posted by: MS Dawn
Why put a bandaid on the problem? Just purchase more system memory and be done with it.

Only reason I can fathom is cost. USB flash drives are much cheaper the ram.

Indeed. The spot price of 4GB of flash is only ~$5.25 right now! Flash drives are about to drop in price by a lot. 8GB drives will probably start to be common.

 

[Mem]

Originally posted by: MS Dawn
Why put a bandaid on the problem? Just purchase more system memory and be done with it.

Quite simple, Vista will use all available ram ,regardless of what type it is,I have my board maxed out with system ram and my 4GB flash drive still gets used.

 

[Matthias99]

Originally posted by: zephyrprime

Originally posted by: Oyeve

Originally posted by: MS Dawn
Why put a bandaid on the problem? Just purchase more system memory and be done with it.

Only reason I can fathom is cost. USB flash drives are much cheaper the ram.

Indeed. The spot price of 4GB of flash is only ~$5.25 right now! Flash drives are about to drop in price by a lot. 8GB drives will probably start to be common.

http://www.dramexchange.com/#fspot

Those are 4 Gigabit chips, not 4 Gigabyte. If you are buying 16Gb (2GB) chips, it looks like the price is about $7-8/Gigabyte.

If you look at what the cheapest flash drives are selling for -- there isn't a lot of profit margin in there. Prices are going to come down, but it will take time. And higher-density chips are not common right now, so significantly larger drives need more expensive and complex electronics to put together multiple flash chips.

 

[Imyourzero]

Originally posted by: zephyrprime

Originally posted by: Oyeve

Originally posted by: MS Dawn
Why put a bandaid on the problem? Just purchase more system memory and be done with it.

Only reason I can fathom is cost. USB flash drives are much cheaper the ram.

Indeed. The spot price of 4GB of flash is only ~$5.25 right now! Flash drives are about to drop in price by a lot. 8GB drives will probably start to be common.

I was tempted to jump on that 8GB drive in HotDeals, but I think I'll wait just a bit longer until the 16GB flash drives become more affordable. My current 2GB drive holds just about anything I need it to hold in the rare situation where I'm on a PC that can't access our network shares. I just need to carry the usual utilities and config files with me, not multiple ISOs or DVDs, lol.

 

[Auric]

On-board modules will prolly make a worthwhile diff'rence vs. USB. Then there's hybrid HDD's and pure SSD's.

 

[Rubycon]

Originally posted by: Mem

Originally posted by: MS Dawn
Why put a bandaid on the problem? Just purchase more system memory and be done with it.

Quite simple, Vista will use all available ram ,regardless of what type it is,I have my board maxed out with system ram and my 4GB flash drive still gets used.

The little bit of experience I have with (Vista) was different. It was using more than XP but nowhere near all of it. It was loaded on a 64 bit Xeon with 16GB ram.

 

[Mem]

Originally posted by: MS Dawn

Originally posted by: Mem

Originally posted by: MS Dawn
Why put a bandaid on the problem? Just purchase more system memory and be done with it.

Quite simple, Vista will use all available ram ,regardless of what type it is,I have my board maxed out with system ram and my 4GB flash drive still gets used.

The little bit of experience I have with (Vista) was different. It was using more than XP but nowhere near all of it. It was loaded on a 64 bit Xeon with 16GB ram.

My point was it will still use a 4GB ReadyBoost device even if your motherboard is maxed out on ram,Vista may not use all your system ram at once ,but it'll still use ReadyBoost device now and then regardless of total system ram on your motherboard.

 

[Xerin7]

Is that true despite the 4GB limit in Vista 32?

 

[Rubycon]

Originally posted by: Xerin7
Is that true despite the 4GB limit in Vista 32?

Yes you will see 2.75~3.5 GB out of 4GB in Vista 32 bit version depending on your configuration.