readyboost?

[thecomputeraddict]

If you had 4 gigs of ram in your computer running ultimate, would using an 8 gig flash drive for ready boost free up most of it?

 

[GushpinBob]

No.

1. IIRC Vista only supports readyboost on certain flash drives up to 2 (or 4, can't remember) gigabytes.
2. You'll only see a benefit if you have between 512 and 1GB of system RAM installed (and in those scenarios, if possible, just upgrade your RAM; It's cheap).
3. With the amount of memory you have installed, readyboost could actually decrease the performance of your rig.
4. Again, Vista is different from XP/2000/NT/on and on... in terms of memory management. It utilizes most of the free memory to cache programs for faster startup. If a program demands more memory, Vista is smart enough to free up enough RAM for it to use.

 

[calebb]

Why would you want to free up that RAM? You spent good money on it and you should utilize it!

I've noticed that when I use a fast 4GB ReadyBoost drive, after I exit an app that uses a lot of memory, like TF2, the SuperFetch cache is repopulated much faster - which is definitely a good thing! The more memory you're using, the faster and more responsive your computer will be.

Here's a recent post I made about SuperFetch:

"Utilize" would be the better choice of words

You spent hard earned $$ on that RAM! You don't want it to go un-used, do you?

Superfetch analyzes your computer usage and preloads frequently accessed blocks of data into RAM. It will use (IIRC) up to 50% of your available un-used memory.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-vista/features/performance.aspx

Windows SuperFetch

A new memory management technology in Windows Vista, Windows SuperFetch, helps keep the computer consistently responsive to your programs by making better use of the computer's RAM. Windows SuperFetch prioritizes the programs you're currently using over background tasks and adapts to the way you work by tracking the programs you use most often and preloading these into memory. With SuperFetch, background tasks still run when the computer is idle. However, when the background task is finished, SuperFetch repopulates system memory with the data you were working with before the background task ran. Now, when you return to your desk, your programs will continue to run as efficiently as they did before you left.

Technology like Superfetch is why Vista is so responsive compared to other OS's like WinXP.

 

[DeaconFrost]

Wow, I thought this topic was dead and put in a grave already. Anyone, the general thinking with ReadyBoost is, if you have 1 GB of system memory or less, look into using a drive for ReadyBoost. If you have over 1 GB of system memory, don't bother. Also, don't disable the ReadyBoost service, because you'll also disable something called ReadyBoot as well.

Bottom line, you have 4 GB of system memory, so ReadyBoost shouldn't even be entering into your mind at all.

 

[TheGamerZ]

We all need to get past the old mindset that less is more.

If you have 4 GB of memory, you want to use it, right?

You don't try to keep your gas tank as low as possible, do you? Ideally, it'd be forever full

 

[GushpinBob]

We all need to get past the old mindset that less is more.

If you have 4 GB of memory, you want to use it, right?

You don't try to keep your gas tank as low as possible, do you? Ideally, it'd be forever full

How 'bout "OP wants his cake (and lots of cake) but doesn't want to eat any of it"?

Something I should add to that #2 in my previous post: If you have 512MB-1GB RAM and you want to install Vista, buy more RAM. Otherwise Readyboost is great especially if your computer can't use more than one 1GB of RAM (lots of laptops from ~4-5 years ago).

 

[Joe Average]

ReadyBoost was designed to complement a low RAM system attempting to run Vista adequately. Knowing that some folks would make the attempt to run Vista on machines with under 2GB of RAM (inefficient as it is), the developer's came up with the idea of using Flash-RAM products to complement the system RAM in several ways, one of them being SuperFetch. ReadyBoost works in conjunction with SuperFetch in that when a piece of data needs to be paged out (written) or even paged in (read) if it's located on a piece of Flash-RAM media the access time will be quite fast compared to making the request for the same piece of data on a physical hard drive.

With Flash-RAM products having .1 millisecond access times on average, and hard drives (even the fastest) having access times around 5 milliseconds at best that's a 50x increase in the time necessary to locate the data. It doesn't mean Flash-RAM is 50x faster overall, like 50x faster in transferring data - this is a problem that people need to "get" once and for all - but it does mean it's literally 50x faster or even more in locatiing the data so the transfer can even begin.

For each small piece of data that means 50x faster locating each one, and since reads tend to be sequential you can easily see how it adds up quite fast when locating data to read on Flash-RAM as compared to locating data on a physical hard drive. The formula looks like this:

Locating data faster + transferring it slower > locating data slower + transferring it faster

Yes, it really does work that way.

Finding a 4KB page of data in .1 ms and transferring it at 16MB/s (slow read speed on low end Flash-RAM for example) is actually faster (about 5 ms total if my math is right) than finding it in 5 ms or a lot more time and transferring it at 96MB/s - about 7 ms if I'm still doing the math right. Now, add that up for hundreds of data requests (pages are 4KB in size, so a 1MB file has 256 4KB parts to read in. 5 ms x 256 reads = 1280 ms, or 1.3 seconds roughly to read the file off the Flash-RAM media vs 7 ms x 256 reads = 1792 ms or 1.8 seconds. Almost 30% faster on the entire operation from start to finish by reading the data from Flash-RAM instead of a physical hard drive... and it just keeps adding up as more operations happen because of ReadyBoost.

And you have to realize that 5 ms is really fast for a physical hard drive and that's data at the dead beginning of the drive and the heads have to be right there when the request happens - most hard drives have an average random access time of about 9 ms - I said average meaning the average across the entire drive, can be as low as about 4.9 to as high or higher than 18-20 ms.

The issue comes from where is the point where ReadyBoost becomes rather ineffective. If you've got 4GB of RAM, ReadyBoost isn't going to do much for you, regardless of how big a piece of Flash-RAM you use or not, and the speed of the Flash-RAM isn't relevant in that either. Your system RAM will be populated as required by SuperFetch, paging will happen as required by the OS and the virtual memory subsystem.

So... let's lay this puppy to rest once and for all.

The Straight Dope on ReadyBoost... by Joe Average.

If you've got 1GB of system RAM or less, a Flash-RAM based product like a USB stick or even CompactFlash cards - as a multiple of the system RAM like 1x, 2x, or even 4x (meaning a 1GB 2GB or 4GB piece of media) can dramatically improve your overall system performance if you choose to run Vista. ReadyBoost will allow the system to store frequently accessed data in the cache on the device and you'll notice a snappier system as described above because there will be less requirement for the OS to read from the physical hard drive for paging operations as required - Windows always pages data, it's just how it works and you can't stop it from happening.

If you have 1 to 2 GB of system RAM, a 1GB or a 2GB Flash-RAM media product will still benefit your system, just not as MUCH as it does on low chip RAM systems as just described above.

If you have 2GB or more of system RAM, ReadyBoost will still provide benefits, but as the system has plenty of working RAM for most intents and purposes (unless you run applications that actually consume all of it) you typically will not notice any appreciable "boosts" as you might with far less RAM. With 2GB or more unless you're really maxing out the RAM usage (and I don't mean with SuperFetch, I mean you really have applications sucking down that RAM like Photoshop or some 3D graphics rendering apps, etc) then the system won't page as much in the first place because it has RAM to play with.

If you have 3GB or more, preferably 4GB or more, ReadyBoost will still help, but to such an extent that it's only going to provide benefits in situations where - as I just described - you have applications that are truly utilizing all the RAM in the system.

The basic concept is: paged data gets written to the physical hard drive AND to the ReadyBoost cache on Flash-RAM media as a type of "mirror" but it always gets pulled from the ReadyBoost device first - this is the most critical aspect of ReadyBoost that people don't seem to comprehend.

Data is written to both devices at the same time when ReadyBoost is operational, but reads come straight from ReadyBoost, not the physical hard drive, hence the "boost" as I described in detail above.

It's a hit-or-miss situation to some degree. ReadyBoost was designed to help with low RAM systems, by default, and works best in such systems, but it can still provide benefits in systems where available RAM is actually utilized by applications and not SuperFetch.

'Nuff typed.