Vista Readyboost and gaming.

hey all, i read conflicting reports on how readyboost might be able to help games out -- well i decided to test it myself with my new hp pavillion 9500... i was reluctant at first because i figured there is no way that readyboost could help a game out considering that is not what readyboost is made for. but was i surprised. i purchased a high speed hp flash drive (2 gigs) and plugged it in -- playing rainbow six vegas before the flash drive was good, definitely playable and definitely one of my favorite games. after plugging in the flash drive and setting it for readyboost, i started the game up and WOW. r6vegas runs so much smoother in terms of frame rate for some reason. it is so much more fluid. i didn't do any tracking of how many frames per second but all i can say is there is a definite noticable difference. some people tell me it is because you need a good flash drive for this to work correctly, and hp told me that the flash drive was tested on this computer with tremendous results for demanding applications. some people will tell you that readyboost will not do anything for your gaming experience, while others will tell you theres a definite increase in performance. well with my conclusions and testing, it DOES in fact increase the performance of a game (i am referring to r6vegas).

my suggestion is, especially if your running vista on less than 2 gigs of ram, that you get a flash drive and try it out - but make sure it is high speed and will be good with your processor and such. i didn't believe readyboost was anything to be excited about, now i am a believer that readyboost does help -- and this is through experience.

just thought i'd let you guys know if anyone was wondering about vista and readyboost.

 

just curious...what r u system specs?

 

You mentioned it was smoother, not necessarily much higher FPS. If I remember correctly readyboost puts the page file of your computer on an external flash drive. Freeing up your hard drive from the stress of the game AND the page file probably got rid of any stuttering. Often I'll have a high FPS that is not very fluid and in my case (Windows XP) I rebuild or defragment the page file. It generally helps, but I can see how completely separating your page file from your hard drive could really smooth out system performance, especially on a fast flash drive and especially on a computer with 1gb or less of RAM.

 

here are my system specs --
- intel core 2 duo t7500 2.2 ghz
- geforce 8600m gs
- 2 gb ram
- 160 5400 rpm hd
- vista home premium

hp told me (which i figured was just a sales pitch) that these flash drives they make are directly tested for readyboost with this computer -- my friend has a cheaper 2 gb flash drive that he has tried and it doesn't really do anything, and then i show him the difference on mine and he is amazed... i dont know if hp was just trying to sell me something - but they were right

 

i think it depends on ur system and what config u have. os, hardware ect. different flash drives will make a difference but very little.

 

kraz30g...what flash drive are you using to smooth out your gaming?

 

This is interesting, I second with washinton... which one are you using?

 

Does the speed of the drive really matter? I was under the impression that if a drive works, it'll work just as good as the most expensive/fastest drive on the market.(that is to say the bandwith req. is the max bandwith used)

Anyway, from what i have heard, its mostly a gimmik. Andy Walker wrote a book on vista and does a few segments for the 'lab with leo' and he said the difference is negligible, and had little to no impact in anything other the the windows interface... So you would prob. notice more impact in day to day use if you just disabled Aero. Course every bit counts, and even if its less then 0.5% increase in FPS in gaming, its relativly cheap(readyboost rated thumbdrives @ 256 megs are around or less then $20)

 

What would be the minimum capacity for a flash drive in order for it to work and be compatible with Vista? I tried my 1GB memorex flash drive and Vista doesn't recognize it.

Pls help.

 

I'm not too sure about the minimum capacity, but I'm sure 1GB is over it. Vista probably won't use that drive for ReadyBoost if it's access times aren't fast enough (which might be the case in your situation.)

 

The minimum for readyboost is only 256MB but a stick with the same size as the system ram is recommended. If the flash drive is not compatible it means it is too slow, compatiblity does not depend on the size.

 

readyboost is a really good idea. put the page file on flash instead of the hdd, because flash is comparatively fast and the what essentially amounts to using the hdd as ram is really really bad.

but the problem is, just adding more ram is going to do much more for you than adding flash memory for a cache. i mean, vegas is such a bad port, it needs probably about 1 gig of ram all to itself. vista also needs about a gig of ram just to do its thing. you just maxed out your system ram. i wouldn't be surprised if you would see a much larger performance improvement (even over readyboost) if you added another gig or so. whats going on i bet is that vegas is putting a small percentage of the files it is actually trying to work with on your hdd, that it couldn't fit into working memory. readyboost might smooth that out marginally, but adding more ram is really the solution to the problem.

 

not to go too off subject. but speaking of requiring alot of ram. fear is one of the most resource hungry games i have played. maybe its because im running it on vista or something. but i did use my Ultra II SD card for ready boost and did see a small improvement in the overall smoothness to the game. but i can see the point where my system either runs out of physical memory and switches to virtual memory or my computer just sawks

 

Wouldn't it be easier and cheaper just to buy more RAM for your pc?? Or how much does one of these ready boost cost?

 

i got a 4gb usb drive from bestbuy for about 40 dollars

 

readyboost is definitely cheaper (especially if you have 2x1 gig modules of ram and are looking to buy a 2 gig to replace one), but its also not going to help nearly as much as adding more ram would.

you can get a really fast usb flash drive for about 20 bucks. if you are looking at getting a $40-50 or more flash drive, maybe you should start thinking about adding more ram instead. the performance difference should be pretty large between flash cache and real ram if your original problem was hdd access.

 

If you really want better performance from Readyboost you have to get a USB drive thats double the amount of RAM you have. Like I have 2gigs now, so I use a 4gig Cruzer USB Drive for Readyboost. It works alot better that way.

 

what do you have to back up that unevidenced and unexampled statement?

i think the capacity only matters to the extent that you need a cache in the first place. if you are short 200 megs of ram for the task you are trying to do... (run graw and windows vista system processes, lets say) then a 256 meg flash drive will suffice, so long as its as fast as possible. i can't imagine that you would need more than a gig of flash cache, unless of course you only had 512 megs of ram or something...

but at that point, you desperately need more ram anyway.

 

so i got this lexar express sd card. it uses ur express slot for flash memory. its pretty good. stays discrete and is fairly fast. ill have to run some tests but it is definitely faster than regular sd in a multi card reader. it ran me 100 usd though

 

http://www.winmatrix.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=12408 some benchies

 

I have 3gigs of RAM so....

 

y dont u get 4gb of ram i get a 5-15 fps increase in my games after upgrading from 2gb. sometimes more

 

dondadah your processor is quite slow... so i think the 4gb make it easier for it ^^

 

yeah i know my cpu is garbage but most games are gpu bound

 

FEAR isn't demanding at all. I have a very dated computer. AMD 3200+ @ 2.2 Ghz, 512MB ram, eVGA 128mb 6800 and I run the game at nearly highest settings with no AA. Just sayin...

 

Actually it depends on the game and settings really.

You can make them CPU/VPU/RAM bound based on the map size, bots and environmental feautres (like audio) or increasing resolution, texture quality and AA.

I think Brainer's link shows that some are more CPU/GPU bound like the HL2 and SupremeCommander (which is CPU bound more than GPU bound to an extent), but that games like Company of Heroes and Oblivion can really be RAM bound at the lower end. I know BF2 is greatly affected by ram also.

It would've been nice to see what Crysis would do, especially since I've seen it use above 1GB of system RAM before the patch to help with memory leakage.

I'm a little surprised that it would help so much, and I wonder how much it would benefit if you alread have 1GB of Robson TurboMemory as well like me.

I have an 8 GB VoyagerGT in Readyboost mainly to speed up recovery from sleep/hibernation.
The only drawback, sometimes it doesn't work and there's no cache there on the drive and then it takes longer than a spin-up from sleep.
Supposedly this is to be fixed in SP1, but the Beta sofar hasn't gotten rid of the issue for me. But now that Crysis is completed in DX10 mode, I don't care, back to XP and bye bye to both RB and TC for now.

 

Is your flash drive fast enough for Vista’s ReadyBoost? (ZDNET)

 

GameSpot also did some bench tests on ReadyBoost last year... but generally, it only helps the game performance if your computer has 2GB or less of RAM, anything over that, you just don't see any performance improvement.

http://www.gamespot.com/features/6167115/index.html

 

ReadyBoost is designed to improve performance in the instances you need it, not as a long term replacement for RAM. Plus I think if you have 2GB of RAM or more it really won't help much.

 

hmm i've got another quicky Q... can you use robson memory for vistas' ready boost? is there any standard speed of such a module?

robson's price tag at the shop i'm planning to buy is quite the same as for 2->4GB of 667MHz ram and only 10usd less than a switch to 4gb of 800mhz ram (yep i know sr won't use that, but i might be able to get cl4 on "faster" chips instead of regular cl5).
damn, the price for robson is also substantially almost the same as for aftermarket upgrade from regular samsung's 250gb @5400 to seagate's momentus 200gb@7200 with 16mb cache and sata2 (does notebook on sr really use sata2 drives? would there be a diff in games compared to rbson or eg ocz rally2 4gb?).

and the robson is supposed to grow in size with montevina, so in may there will be some 4gb internal flash modules... this way maybe now isn't the best time to buy such a module if you can get faster drive or more ram... but again, would the montevina's accepted intel memory module 4gb of size be accepted in the slot for sr 1gb turbo memory... if it would, and the price and performance of that robson technology is great, does it make such a substantial difference in games' fluidity compared to a switch to 4gb ram and faster hdd?

 

Yes you can split the two, but I wouldn't bother versus a good sized external memory stick unless you need quick return from sleep/hibernation when on the road. Speed is 40/20Mbs it's all Intel NAND, and you can get it in 512MB or 1GB sizes, although recently I haven't seen any 512 anymore.

800mhz still runs at CL5 in 667 just slightly tighter timings.
Out of buying Robson or upgrading the system memory, go with the system memory for speed. For battery life go with the Robson.

That would help more in stustained read/write activity like video more than gaming, so for loading a level it will be quicker but won't increase fps the way the other two do. Battery performance also drops.

The Robson module is in a mini-PCIe slot and will be upgradeable, most important thing is that the NAND speed will increase in the next versions, right now they match a fast memory stick (and slightly slower than some but without the bus latency and CPU cycles of USB).

 

if usb device is not supported for readyboost, try this out

1. Plug in the device.
2. Open the Readyboost tab on the device properties.
3. Select "Do not retest this device"
4. Unplug the device
5. Open regedit (start->run->regedit)
6. Expand - HKLM (Local Machine)\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\EMDgmt
7. Find your device.
8. Change Device Status to 2
9. Change ReadSpeedKBs to 1000
10. Change WriteSpeedKBs to 1000
11. Plug in the device.
12. Enable Readyboost!!!!