What about readyboost?

Hello

Well I recently bought an Acer Aspire 5920G.It has 2gb ram and runs vista 32bit.

I was thinking about using readyboost...But will I gain any performance improvement?? Has anyone done any tests??

Also my notebook has memory card reader.So what would be better?
Using an external usb flash or an SD card 150X??

 

if you are actively using more than 2 gigs of ram, your computer will start using your hard drive as virtual ram. it may or may not be obvious that your hard drive is VERY slow compared to your ram. so, readyboost lets you use flash memory as virtual ram instead of your hard drive. its better, but still not ideal by a long shot. "ideal" would be getting more ram if you are using more than 2 gigs.

the thing is, one 2 GB stick of ram costs about 100 bucks. a fast flash drive costs maybe 20 bucks, so if you don't have the money, readyboost will help a little bit, but if you have the money, adding more ram will help a LOT.

all that only matters if you are using more than 2 gigs of ram. running some individual games on vista, like GRAW 2, its possible that you could max out 2 gigs of ram completely.

readyboost is a budget performance patch, so i would recommend using whatever solution is cheaper- usb or memory card reader.

obviously- dont spend more on readyboost than it would cost you to buy a 2GB module of ram.

 

Even the fastest of the fash memory has much lower data transfer rates than a HDD or normal RAM but the access time is much faster than a HDD. ReadyBoost can enhance performance when one of your programs needs a small amount of data. If this is in the ReadyBoost cache then it can be provided more quickly than getting it from the HDD. However, if the data exceeds about 100k then the HDD will prove faster.

Vista is meant to watch your computing habits so it can intelligently predict what information you will need next, so ReadyBoot doesn't delivery an instant benefit but might help after a few days.

I did some tests and the one significant improvement I noticed is in the DVD playback time on battery, which increased by about 10%. The optical drive only ran intermittently and I think Vista was using ReadyBoost memory to cache the DVD data.

John

 

Thanks,very useful information...

Well so if only small files have benefit if being cached with readyboost,then I suppose a 2gb sd card will be more than enough..

As for the ram upgrade,I was thinking about it,but it costs a lot like masterchef said...

For a 2gb dimm from crucial I have to pay about 130e,and can't sell the old 1gb 'cause I 'll lose the warranty,when I can get a fast SD card for about 25e..

 

I agree that the fastest 2GB SD card you can find is probably the best investment for now. RAM prices seem to have stopped coming down significantly but an upgrade is quite a big investment.

John

 

are you sure flash doesn't have faster data transfer rates? im pretty sure it does. i could be wrong.


edit:

yep. no joke. latest flash is 50mbps read whereas latest hdd is 150mbps.

seek time is much faster on the flash chips, i know that. a few hundred times faster.

but if you were trying to load a level of hl2, for example, would a flash drive or a hdd win?

boot times are already crowned to flash drives from what i have seen.

 

from what i saw in review sites, readyboost is useless for systems with more than 1gb of ram

 

I attach some HD Tune plots for:

(i) 2GB Sandisk Extreme III SD

(ii) 4GB Danelec SDHC Class 4

(iii) 120GB Fujitsu 5400rpm 2.5" HDD

(iv) 250GB WD 5400rpm 2.5" HDD

This show both the data transfer rates and access times. Compare the numbers. You can do your own tests.

If you increase the cost level of the flash memory by 10 or 20 then you can get much faster performance. That's the stuff that they use in the solid state disk drives.

John