TZ and poor SD Card performance?

I purchased a Patriot Extreme Performance Plus SD card for my TZ, and noted that the performance was extremly poor. I've since verified this with HD Tach, 2.8MB/s and interestingly very high CPU usage. Plugging the same card into my desktop, HD Tach shows over 12MB/s and almost 0 CPU usage.

Is this an issue with the Ricoh controller the TZ is using, or the Vista drivers?
Has anyone else experienced the same thing, and possibly found a solution?

I was hoping to use this drive as a ReadyBoot device, but the TZ claims it's too slow, my guess is given the above results it will claim the same thing about any SD card, has anyone successfully used a SD card as a readyboot device on a TZ?

Thanks

 

I agree with the TZ.....the card itself is slow. I don't understand why you think this is somehow the TZ's fault.

And it's ReadyBoost by the way. I'm curious as to why you feel the need to use this feature on a brand new laptop? It is meant for older computers as a way to boost performance within Vista.

 

I established that the same card is 5x faster on my desktop, so yes I believe the problem is with the TZ.

Ready Boost is designed to move small commonly accessed files to flash media to increase load time for commonly used applications. Anecdotaly it makes a difference in launch times of applications.

 

Ok, so rather than put a bandaid over the problem (i.e. ReadyBoost), why not buy more ram and increase your cache size?

 

I already have 2Gb, and ReadyBoost isn't a band-aid, I use Visual Studio commonly, loading it requires a lot of small disc reads and seeks, flash memory will always be faster in this circumstance because it has better performance characteristics for that type of work load.

Tomshardware has some benchmarks for ready boost, of your interested.

 

Yeah I discovered a while back that both of the card readers are very slow. You can't use ReadyBoost with either one of them.

 

Thanks, a pity.
would have been nice if one of them were fast enough for Readyboost. I can't see myself using a USB key, just too inconvenient.

 

I have one 150X 2GB SD card.
On my TXN15 with Vista, it supports readyboost.
On my TZ17GN, it doesn't support readyboost.

So if I use the card slot driver from TXN instead of using TZ's. Will there be any difference?

 

If the TX uses the same chipset it might be worth a try.
Let me know if it works.

 

Buddy, if you read the threads you would have found out that ReadyBoost does not work, so why work yourself up in a tizzy about this?

 

Not really in a tizzy, just would have been nice.

I do beg to differ based on my own vista experiences readyboost does make a difference in app launch time, though it's highly dependant on how much memory and what apps you running. If your just running Office, IE and mail and have 2Gb I'm sure it's not a big win. But I run a much wider variety of software than that and on my other Vista machines it does make a difference and they have much faster drives than the TZ.

 

I have been using my TZ with readyboost for months before I switched to XP. I got a 4 gig Sandisk Memory Stick Pro Duo which worked great. I also use the SD slot for copying pics of my 8 gig sd card. The memory stick is fast, and the SD is just as fast as on my Desktop.

As for does readyboost work? It all depends on how you use your computer and what programs you are running and how big the programs are that use your memory. Some people will notice a boost and some won't. One thing is for sure if you are using readyboost while on battery power it will shorten your battery life, it is constantly using the port that you have it connected to and thus burning power.