Windows ReadyBooost - what's the best way to use it.

[Maxspeed996]

With Vista right around the corner , and hearing about ReadyBoost and it's ability to access a thumbdrive to use as paging room instead of a slow mechanical harddisk....what would be the benefits of this over say a PCI slot being used for an I-RAM device .....then it's internal , and protected. Discuss...

 

[Ayah]

I'd suggest an SSD.
The I-RAM uses SATA, it just sits in a PCI slot.

 

[Maxspeed996]

That's what makes me curious...doesn't the SATA interface offer 1.5 Gb/s transfer rate? That's faster than the transfer rate of a thumdrive isn't it? I'm just thinking about the limitations of USB 2.0 which granted 400+ Mb/s isn't anything to scoff at but at over 4x the transfer speeds wouldn't you think the I-Ram or RAM DISK would offer better performance?

 

[Ayah]

SATA's at 150MB/s. Thumbdrives are usually stuck at 50MB/s at their very best.

 

[Ayah]

I'd say a RAM based solution would be the fastest out of the two. Probably easily getting 100MB/s and potentially more depending on the interface.
(We can dream of a PCI-E x8 I-RAM)

 

[Maxspeed996]

Granted ,this will be the upgrade that "Joe Consumer" could just plug right in without having to crack open the case on his/her machine to upgrade. So that makes it a winner I'm sure in Micro$oft's eyes.
This just brings a piece of hardware to mind that I've not seen discussed much at all. I'd like to hear more people's thoughts on the I-RAM / RAMDrive idea and in comparison to the flashdrive option since the flashdrive seems to be the way that developers for Micro$oft are leaning. I'm curious why this is , given the potential of the former.

 

[Maxspeed996]

Now I'm reading more and more on this....

http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.aspx?i=2480

I guess didn't really show any substantial benifit of the I-RAM over adding more memory to your machine. I do have older DDR memory just laying around , but at the expense of probably $150-$200 for the add in card itself, doesn't make much sense.

So I come back to the main question. For those that are using 2+ gigs of memory , I've already changed my settings for windows to not use the hard drive for the pagefile , and I don't ever come close to using all of the memory. do you think this is going to just be the cheap easy way for "JoeBlow" to upgrade his/her performance a tick?

And the real question for Gamers would be , what will it equate to in terms of FPS?

 

[stogez]

They're leaning towards a USB drive because thats a cheaper and easier to use alternative that still provides some improvement in performance. I'm sure hardcore pc users/gamers would likely use i-ram as their paging file.

 

[Noubourne]

It won't be useful at all for normal users. Adding more internal RAM is by far the best solution. This is a stopgap solution for computers that can't have more RAM added, or can only have more added at great expense, with slow hard drives that also are an arm and a leg to upgrade.

In other words, it would only be something to consider for a laptop. There are far better ways to upgrade a desktop. This is a solution for when none of those better ways are available.

It certainly isn't for gamers, and iRAM was proven to suck hardcore as well.

 

[SuperNaruto]

there are some iram results on pics.bbzzdd.com

burst speed up to 273mb/s with avg read of 127mb/s

 

[Baked]

I-RAM v.2 is coming out soon. It mounts in the optical drive bay and uses DDR2 RAM.

 

[zephyrprime]

I-Ram is a lot faster but readyboost is cheaper and easier to implement.

 

[Noubourne]

I'd like to see one benchmark showing either of them was even worth the $50 you'd spend on a flashdrive.

 

[airhendrix13]

This looks a lot like a rocket drive. A rocket drive basically uses that same style of card and you can connect 4 ram modules to it and the card emulates those sticks as a hard drive. People who load windows onto the rocket drive can boot into windows in under 3 seconds......but those will run you about $1500 so i doubt that this is as good as a rocket drive....

 

[Maxspeed996]

I'm sure that's where the technology started , was with the Rocket Drive...but that thing is 5 years old. Prices for 1 gig sticks of DDR memory was not cheap.
The device that I was talking about , the I-drive is similar , but contains its own battery and doesn't need external power. And you can populate it with DDR memory of your choosing.
It sounds like a great idea , but there wasn't much in the AnAndTech review that suggested that it was a wave of the future or anything. But for around $150 it might be a cool toy to play with.