Vista ReadyBoost! - Does it work?

Ok, so I have Vista ultimate installed on a PC with 1.5 GB of memory.

it responds pretty well, better than I thought it would, but there are times, when it starts to slow down.

I found a pretty good deal on a 2 GB USB flash drive and was wondering if it would really make an improvement or not?

Nope (for me).

If system has 1024+ of RAM, than xxxBoost is worthless. No improvement.

ZippyV wrote:

I have 2 GB of RAM and I don't even know it Superfetch works. My taskmanager reports that only 700 MB is being used. It never goes higher unless I play a game.

Ummm, not to be a noob, but what is superfetch?

I guess what I want to know is will readyboost help with performance when using visual studio, burning dvds, video editing, etc...

I have 2 GB of RAM and I don't even know if Superfetch works. My taskmanager reports that only 700 MB is being used. It never goes higher unless I play a game.

phreaks wrote:

I found a pretty good deal on a 2 GB USB flash drive and was wondering if it would really make an improvement or not?

Is it ReadyBoost compatible though? Quite a lot of them ones out there aren't, or are so close to the lower limit on performance as to not make a great deal of difference.

But yes, it can certainly help.

Incidently, if you don't mind the minor hijack:
Does anyone know if ReadyBoost is supposed to work on Longhorn Server? I have the beta3 installed, and plugging in a USB drive doesn't prompt any "Use for ReadyBoost cache" option in the AutoRun menu. Couldn't find it in the drive properties either.

Save USB stick worked for ReadyBoost under Vista RTM.

My SanDisk 2GB Cruzer micro works wonderfully.

BlackTiger wrote:

Nope (for me).

If system has 1024+ of RAM, than xxxBoost is worthless. No improvement.

I don't think that's true...

As I understand it (and I'm not expert) Ready Boost doesn't really replicate ram, it's really just used as a paging file. The good think about this is that it's much faster to read from a USB drive (or in my case an SD card) then the hard drive.

Having said that, I'm running Ultimate with 2GB of ram and a 2GB SD card for Ready Boost. For day to day stuff I don't notice a big differecne. If I'm doing audio editing it does seem to do some tasks faster and I can have more tracks open at once without things getting slow.

I run 3 GB RAM + Kingston 2 GB flashdrive as a ReadyBoost device and I can tell when I don't have the flash plugged in.

It really helps when the reads are random.  Random reads from HDD are much slower than from flash.  I think when the reads are sequential Vista will hit the HDD instead of flash.

There's a pre-RTM interview on C9 about it.  Sorry I don't have a link.

ReadyBoost is about making less trips to your HD

In a word, yes and very well but there are some rules you have to obey to get the best from it at the moment but the future is bright!

And they are,

1) Size, don't bother <512 mb key you will not see much improvement
2) Speed, Get the fastest memory sticks you can afford! But don't get upset if something bigger/faster/cheaper appears next month.

Memory sticks are big business, they really are the media that has replaced the floppy, their simplicity and ease fulfilled the promise where CDROM and DVD didn't.

As this is the case som much R & D is going into making them bigger/faster/cheaper and each month shows a new innovation.

I would also keep and eye on Firewire memory sticks, it's only a matter of time before USB 2.0 is just to slow!

Ignore unhelpful remarks like 'Worthless', thats just poor fore-sight.

So does ReadyBoost make a difference, the answer is yes and with faster speeds and more storage is going to make an extreme difference to Vista, but you will need to be a bit patient.

BlackTiger wrote:

Nope (for me).

If system has 1024+ of RAM, than xxxBoost is worthless. No improvement.

How much memory did you use for ReadyBoost? Also, how much RAM do you generally use?

OK, great. Thanks for all the answers.

So, apparantly I can use either an SD card OR a USB stick?

Is one type of media better than the other?

I have 3 open firewire, and 4 open USB slots as well as a 7 in 1 media reader that reads SD cards.

Also, how do I find ot the write speed of a USB Flash Stick?

The ones I am looking at only specify USB 1.1 or USB 2.0 for speed.

Personally I bought a very fast SD card and that works much better than the USB.

Sabot wrote:

Personally I bought a very fast SD card and that works much better than the USB.

++ IMO they're cheaper. you can pick up a 4gb for about £30 these days, you'd end up paying quite a bit for a 2gb memory stick these days.

phreaks wrote:

apparantly I can use either an SD card OR a USB stick?

Is one type of media better than the other?

I like the SD card because I don't have to take it out of my laptop when I put it in it's bag.

Lloyd_Humph wrote:



Sabot wrote: Personally I bought a very fast SD card and that works much better than the USB.

++ IMO they're cheaper. you can pick up a 4gb for about £30 these days, you'd end up paying quite a bit for a 2gb memory stick these days.

Actually, they are both such a commodity that I find either of them vary cheap.

If you are lucky enought to have a Micro Center in your town, they usually have boxes of them (the MC house branded ones) sitting at the registers. I got my 2GB SD card for < $15 and I think that a 2GB USB drive as around $20

jb43081 wrote:



Lloyd_Humph wrote:  Sabot wrote: Personally I bought a very fast SD card and that works much better than the USB. ++ IMO they're cheaper. you can pick up a 4gb for about £30 these days, you'd end up paying quite a bit for a 2gb memory stick these days.

Actually, they are both such a commodity that I find either of them vary cheap.

If you are lucky enought to have a Micro Center in your town, they usually have boxes of them (the MC house branded ones) sitting at the registers. I got my 2GB SD card for < $15 and I think that a 2GB USB drive as around $20

ME=UK

Stop telling me about things I cant have