SD Card for Ready Boost

Hi again to all,

I've been looking around to buy a 4gb SD Card to put into my empty Card reader to use with Ready Boost.

Prices of SD's vary from 40$ to more than the double.
I find quite hard to get and view information of the transfer rate of many brands (most don't say on the box or just say Ultra speed or Fast..).

I was wondering if a SD with a read transfer rate of 8-9mbs and write 3-6mbs is fast enought.. or should i be looking at something like 20 mbs read..

Any recommendation would fully be appreciated. (brand and transfer rate).

DmZ

 

I don't pay too much attention to transfer rates and don't use "readyboost", but just make sure the manufacturer is specifying megabytes per second as opposed to megabits per second. To refresh your memory, there are 8 bits per byte, so some manufacturers make their speed claims in bits so as to appear 8X faster.

 

I use a 4GB SDHC card which is Sandisk Extreme III. Does the job great and have noticed a nice boost in application load time since using it. Outlook 2007, Firefox, Word etc open instantly.

 

Knightunit,
Do you think the results you are seeing are due to the SD card alone or some combination of the card and turbo memory. I don't have turbo memory but have toyed with the idea of getting one of those cards if it resulted in some noticeable improvements.
thanks.

 

Just for general information. The aforementioned applications will also open instantly on i.e. a X61/T61 with 2GB RAM (but no Readyboost device) running Vista/Superfetch. But maybe you are referring to load times prior to Superfetch caching the applications in RAM?

 

Thanks for your comments,
i was looking to buy a 4gb Sandisk Extreme III card, but those seem quite difficult to find around where i live...

There's a good article on Tom's Hardware about Windows Vista's SuperFetch and ReadyBoost

 

And here is an article and a Q&A session from the person at Microsoft who is responsible for the Readyboost function. I find it to explain more or less everything about the subject:

http://blogs.msdn.com/tomarcher/archive/2006/06/02/615199.aspx

 

I have used the machine with readyboost off and on for good periods of time. And for me I notice an improvement in performance, most people opinions are based on what they have read online. I admit its only a small performance gain and many see it not worthwhile, but the SD cards are cheap enough and I could have always used it in my digital camera.

Its a mixed bag of opinions on here.

 

Are all SD and SDHC Readyboost capable? What 8GB SD card is compatiable with Vista 32? Is there a compatible hardware site for Vista Business?