Speed up PC with ReadyBoost?

I just found out about ReadyBoost. I have a 2 gig that it can use.. Has anyone tried this.. does it do more than just prefetch?

Again, I am reading a LOT of great things about using the exFat file system on your Flash drives with ReadyBoost.. anyone tried this?

You see, my thinking is I have a CQ61 with 2 gigs of ram and on board video with 128 ram shared up to 1 gig. Windows needs a gig and the games need a gig. At some point memory should get sluggish and effect either windows performance, the running game, or both.

I am trying to minimize the processes and services windows runs, and leave more available Ram for the games to make them run as best possible. The ReadyBoost thing is just one trick I am trying to do this as well as disabling tons of unwanted processes and services using tools like Autoruns by Sysinternals, Smart Utility by TheWindowsClub and IoBit's GameBooster.

(I do plan on getting more ram when I can afford it but this is just a temp measure)

Also your thoughts.. isn't a USB Flash drive faster than your hard drive? if so, why not use one for your page file? If that works.. wouldn't that be better to help out those times when you run low on ram?

Also, what do you think of using a ram drive with a USB drive to simulate extra ram in general? (Like with Ramdisk)

 

IIRC most of the tech review sites found that ReadyBoost was a gimmick and didn't really help at all.

 

Dapreview,

I am not sure I can believe that really. Flash drive seek speed are higher for small chucks of needed data where as for large chunks the HD would be faster. I am under the understanding it depends on what apps you run and what type of data they require from cache for you to see a difference.

If you read enough threads on people using readyboost you will see that FPS for some games did indeed improve and cause the games to run faster and more stable. It just depends on the game. This is very encouraging for laptop users like me who only have the 2 gigs of ram.

If readyboost was proven to be a gimick after it had been out in Vista for a few years microsoft would not have used it in Windows 7 if it really could not help. Plus with Win 7 you can make use of exFat which is optimized for flash drives and you can use up to 8 of them. So i'm testing this out.

I want to hear from people who have actually tried this with a system like my own and see what they have to say.

 

the first review i found in google basically confirms what i said...

http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=2160

little to no improvement with 1GB+ system memory

 

I use it with my hp 8510 , 6 gb of ram with a 4 gb usb used for readyboost . have seen no noticeable increase in speed ,maybe with 6gb of ram it is useless ? I don't know , but I see no improvement .

 

It really is only helpful if you have less than 2GB of ram

 

yes but you must realize that even the fastest USB flash drive sticks are MUCH slower then say an intel 160gb SSD. Even slower then a hard disk in almost all scenarios.

I reccomend disabling Readyboost and don't give it another thought... look into more ram; clean install; SSD.

 

Yeah, the ram for this is 47 bucks for a 2 gig stick,,(800 mhz) this comes with 2 1 gig so I would need 2 of them to up to 4 gigs. The ssd may be an option but I understand they are not cheap.

Thanks

 

I think what Okashira is trying to say is that this extra "boost" first has to travel through a USB 2.0 bus interface and is not as fast as the memory contoller so it totally defeats the purpose of doing it in the first place. Just think of trying to drive a Ferrari in 5 0'clock traffic.

I really wish manufactures would quit selling machines with less than 4GB! I have actually ran out of RAM with 4GB on my dv900 before but I was multitasking it way too hard. Save your $'s and get more RAM just make sure it is the maximum bus speed for your system. It will be worth the money!

An SSD is an excellent idea, but for around $200 you get a SSD that is barely big enough for an OS, installed software, games and your data files.

 

ready boost works REAL well on a vista basic system with 512 mb of RAM. Other than that don't bother. It might actually mean something on USB 3.0 systems, we'll see.