Does ReadyBoost make any sort of noticable difference?

[VirtualLarry]

How much RAM do you need to have or not have, in order for ReadyBoost to make any noticable difference in your day-to-day computing activities?

I have an Emachines laptop, that I got two years ago BF, at Walmart for $200. It serves me well, but it's a tad bit slow. It has a 1.6Ghz AMD single-core TF-20 CPU, 2GB of RAM (unsure if it's DDR2 or DDR3), and a 160GB HD. I don't need any more HD space, but it does use a good chunk of RAM. Not enough to run out, but it could stand to have more to use as a cache.

Would ReadyBoost be an effective substitute for more RAM?

I think I have some SDHC cards that I could use, I think the laptop has an SD slot. What class would I need for readyboost? I have a 4GB class 2, and an 8GB class 4. I could pick up a 16GB class 6/10 if need be.

 

[wirednuts]

its more for your slow spindle harddrive. i use an 8gb class 10 card in my netbook with 2gb ram. it makes a difference. but if youre gonna put any kind of money in it you might as well get an ssd and be done with it.

 

[Chapbass]

its more for your slow spindle harddrive. i use an 8gb class 10 card in my netbook with 2gb ram. it makes a difference. but if youre gonna put any kind of money in it you might as well get an ssd and be done with it.

This, x1000.

 

[Gamingphreek]

its more for your slow spindle harddrive. i use an 8gb class 10 card in my netbook with 2gb ram. it makes a difference. but if youre gonna put any kind of money in it you might as well get an ssd and be done with it.

Class 10 is the Write Speed, not the read speed-- additionally, any Flash Based device will be faster than Magnetic Disc virtually regardless of spindle speed. If you are paging anything significant, then performance will be significantly worse as a Flash Based memory doesn't hold a candle to HDD sustained or burst transfer rates.

The only place I could potentially see it being fast is if many small fragments were being paged to the USB Drive to the extent that the OS was doing multiple Random Access Read/Writes per second. More often than not, there will be no benefit or it will be slower.

Honestly, there is no reason to use Readyboost OP. Memory is cheap enough to the point that there is no reason not to just toss/replace a stick.

-Kevin

 

[lxskllr]

Honestly, there is no reason to use Readyboost OP. Memory is cheap enough to the point that there is no reason not to just toss/replace a stick.

-Kevin

I disagree. If you have an unutilzed flash drive, and want to boost the performance using ReadyBoost, it makes a subtle, but noticeable difference. Ram still costs something, and some machines aren't worth much of anything. I wouldn't buy a flash drive explicitly for ReadyBoost, but if you've got it, why not?

Edit:
To answer your question, 2gb seems to be the limit for ReadyBoost. When I went over that(in Vista), I didn't notice a difference. The cutoff is somewhere between 2gb, and 4gb. I never benched it, and I'm not sure how you would, but that was my subjective experience. I was using a CF card I didn't have any other use for.

 

[douglasb]

I disagree. If you have an unutilzed flash drive, and want to boost the performance using ReadyBoost, it makes a subtle, but noticeable difference. Ram still costs something, and some machines aren't worth much of anything. I wouldn't buy a flash drive explicitly for ReadyBoost, but if you've got it, why not?

+1

Before I got my SSD, I had ReadyBoost enabled, and it significantly cut down on my startup time. Not as significantly as the SSD did, but it still was noticeable.

 

[Gamingphreek]

+1

Before I got my SSD, I had ReadyBoost enabled, and it significantly cut down on my startup time. Not as significantly as the SSD did, but it still was noticeable.

ReadyBoost cannot, in anyway, affect your startup time. The service isn't even started until after logon...

[q]I disagree. If you have an unutilzed flash drive, and want to boost the performance using ReadyBoost, it makes a subtle, but noticeable difference. Ram still costs something, and some machines aren't worth much of anything. I wouldn't buy a flash drive explicitly for ReadyBoost, but if you've got it, why not?[/q]

Placebo effect? I just can't think of a significant set of cases where ReadyBoost will make a noticeable difference. Not to say there aren't any or that you are wrong, I still cannot think of how it might improve performance.

-GP

 

[lxskllr]

Placebo effect? I just can't think of a significant set of cases where ReadyBoost will make a noticeable difference. Not to say there aren't any or that you are wrong, I still cannot think of how it might improve performance.

-GP

It speeds up application loading by caching bits to the flash drive where access is faster than an hd. If you have enough ram(4gb by my subjective experience) it doesn't help because the relevant data is in the fastest place possible(ram).

 

[HeXen]

In reality, its really a feature that should have been, or to say would be far more useful back in Windows 98/XP days. By the time Vista came out, considering Vista's hardware requirements for a smooth experience, it wasn't very useful.

great idea, good implemention...wrong era except for those using minimalst hardware maybe. i bet for those forcing Vista on 512mb's would see a drastic improvement. wish they had that back when i had 32mb's and Win98

 

[wirednuts]

the relevant data doesnt reside in ram once you turn off the pc though. it does stay on a readyboost drive, so i could see it help startup in the sense that once the desktop loads it should be a little quicker to get to that "useable" state.

i dont really know everything about readyboost though, so take my words with salt, but i was also under the impression that the information that readyboost stores is NOT the same info that sits in ram memory.

i would have to imagine that microsoft spent all that time and money to make readyboost because they thought it would help with speed on certain systems. and again, i dont remember it ever being directed toward low ram systems as much as it was for slow harddrive systems. thats why those hybrid harddrives were supposed to be a big thing, but i think the success of ssd's are what stalled that gravy train.

gamingfreek- thanks for the info. i really didnt know that either. i thought generally the higher class meant both faster read and write speeds.

 

[HeXen]

can't we all just Google?

Myth

We can accelerate the startup of Windows Vista and launch applications quicker on Windows Vista using ReadyBoost.
Reality

FALSE (but somewhat true anyway)
Explanations

This technology is still under development. It may even slow startup of Windows Vista. However the ReadyBoost speeds up some applications (like photoshop) but only a few seconds.

But note that: the SP1 (Service Pack) improves Windows Vista ReadyBoost a bit.

A system with 512 MB of RAM (the bare minimum for Windows Vista) can see significant gains from ReadyBoost.[8] In one test case, ReadyBoost speeds up an operation from 11.7 seconds to 2 seconds (increasing physical memory from 512 MB to 1 GB without ReadyBoost reduced it to 0.8 seconds, though)

 

[JimmiG]

It speeds up application loading by caching bits to the flash drive where access is faster than an hd. If you have enough ram(4gb by my subjective experience) it doesn't help because the relevant data is in the fastest place possible(ram).

Well, if that was the case, getting a SSD would also be pointless if you have 4GB of RAM or more. There will always be times when applications need data that isn't in the RAM. If the data consists of lots of small, discontiguous fragments, getting it from a solid state drive is going to be faster than a mechanical hard drive. If it's just one big 4GB file stored sequentially, the hard drive is going to be faster than USB drives. I think ReadyBoost is programmed to try to cache small files/fragments.

I have a spare 8GB USB drive that I almost never use for anything, so I use it for ReadyBoost. Can't say I notice any difference but if it helps shave .2 seconds off the application load time, and I don't need the drive for anything else, why not? However tiny, it's still a performance improvement, for free.

 

[Scotteq]

How much RAM do you need to have or not have, in order for ReadyBoost to make any noticable difference in your day-to-day computing activities?

I have an Emachines laptop, that I got two years ago BF, at Walmart for $200. It serves me well, but it's a tad bit slow. It has a 1.6Ghz AMD single-core TF-20 CPU, 2GB of RAM (unsure if it's DDR2 or DDR3), and a 160GB HD. I don't need any more HD space, but it does use a good chunk of RAM. Not enough to run out, but it could stand to have more to use as a cache.

Would ReadyBoost be an effective substitute for more RAM?

I think I have some SDHC cards that I could use, I think the laptop has an SD slot. What class would I need for readyboost? I have a 4GB class 2, and an 8GB class 4. I could pick up a 16GB class 6/10 if need be.

It's an older (Vista based) article, but shows the differences:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/windows-vista-superfetch-and-readyboostanalyzed,1532.html