vista readyboost....does it really boost ?

i tried ready boost in vista with my sandisk cruzer 2gb drive today (for those who dont know whats ready boost: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/features/details/readyboost.mspx ) . i didnt notice any performance difference in either startup or normal work (i am not a gamer. i use maya and photoshop mainly. is it true that readyboost increases performances. pls share ur experiences. if so in what areas does it boost performance. does it decrease startup time. ??

 

It has a minor effect, which can not be noticed without doing benchmarks (even so it might not be noticed).
I'd say you shouldn't bother with it.

 

It does have effect on every system, but how much depends on how mcuh RAM you've got.
Readyboost works wonders for systems with 512Mb RAM or less. It isn't as fast a RAM, but its faster then writing to the HDD. The effect is minor when you have 1Gb or above. You should be fine with 2gb. No need for readyboost.

 

Yes, but I guess the percentage of people with Vista and 512MB of RAM is close to 0. The reviewers only did it for testing purposes to find out whether it works or not.

 

Same here, ReadyBoost is useless IMO.

According to benchmarks I read before, ot barely gives you 1 or 2 FPS more in games.

 

ah maybe coz I had 2 GB of RAM is why I never noticed the differenc with ReadyBoost

 

thanx for ur suggestions. I tried again with stopwatch to know the boot time and results were...well ridiculous

without readyboost: 36.63s
with readyboost: 38.89s

ha ha.. i wont ever use my sandisk on that. y did microsoft provide this feature then. i have heard that hard disks are faster than flash drives. this looks the other way round

 

Nowadays most systems come with 1gb if you buy one. Still some cheap-ass systems come with 512Mb but those are getting rare. Readyboost is a nice idea and it works to an extend, but the best way to go is just buy more RAM. 2gb is very affordable and really worth it, even if you don't game.

In the XP days most midrange systems had 512Mb. When Vista came around every shop just installed Vista on those things.

The worst deal I ever saw was a Celeron M 1,4Ghz with 256Mb RAM a 40Gb HDD and Vista Ultimate on it. OMG, which genius made that decision.

 

1 or 2 more FPS in games is a lot...

 

No, it's not and it can also be less than without ReadyBoost. Check some updated benchmarks.

 

Depends. If you get about 30 fps avarage in a game you'd be happy since it helps when you get to the heavy parts of the game. When you rarely dip under 40 you won't need it.

 

LOL that's funny.

I just saw a new laptop made by Acer that comes preloaded with Vista and has only 512 MB RAM

What kind og system engineers do these guys have????

 

i just bought a patriot xporter xt boost, so i thought i'd give readyboost a go - seems to have had a decent effect! startup has reduced from 34 seconds to just over 20 (i did a defragbootfiles with flash disk connected), and programs do seem to load that little bit quicker, especially itunes. still early stages though.

 

Readyboost is a nice idea and it works. Its just that if you need it all the time you might be better of just getting some extra RAM.

Its best not being a cheapskate on some parts of your computer. Even an XP system runs better with 1gb then with 512Mb. Still a lot of companies are being cheap when making their machines. I know some HP desktops in stores that also have 512Mb and still have to give 256Mb of it to their IGP. The worst insult is they still run on the good ol' Pentium 4. I think some companies just think were stupid or something....

 

@cahoole: you told that programs loaded faster. can you pointed out which programs loaded faster. i tried photoshop ,maya, word, dell webcam center and then again with all of them at once. Didnt find any performance difference. mayde different for ur system..... still we both have 2g ram and according to the punisher we shouldnt show any difference. i am again trying with a sony pro duo stick to see if there is any effect

 

Don't bother. You have 2gb, the system will only start using the readyboost memory when it runs out of RAM and would use the HDD. With 2gb RAM its unlikely you'll ever run out of RAM.

 

ReadyBoost doesn't replace the RAM, nor it wants to. It's used with a cache purpose in mind.

 

ok thanx guys........i wont go after this crap anymore

 

kuncheesh - i did try readyboost before, but with a standard flash disk, and didn't notice much difference. Now, however, that I am using what is considered one of the faster flash disks on the market, it has made a difference.

i've only just started using readyboost so i'll persevere and update.

 

I wouldn't say 1-2 fps increase is "a lot". It's barely enough to notice a difference.

 

Don't be so surprised - I got my mum one of those low-cost Acer laptops because her needs aren't too delicate, basically just browsing and email. It came with 512MB RAM Vista Basic; oh FFS, couldn't take it. Too damn slow.

So, instead of upgrading the RAM, I stuck XP on it. Worked very well. I then decided to be a bit of a prick and install Ubuntu on it... for my mum to use Turned out reasonably well, though it's a dual boot so if she ever gets fed up with the lack of polish in Ubuntu, she has a fallback option.

Basically, I wouldn't blame the engineers who put these machines together. I guarantee you, each and every single one would much prefer XP to be preinstalled on these low-power laptops, because everyone knows it works much better than Vista for these cases. But of course, Acer (like everyone else) has a deal with Microsoft and MS was at the time, only allowing Vista preinstalls. Us techs can't do much when marketing and business gets in the way.

 

Readyboost is almost worthless tech.

 

If you use photoshop and would like to see a performance boost, try to specify that your scratch disk be written on the memory card instead. I don't know if 2 gb is enough, but it is better than using ready boost and just have the card sit there.

 

Well people in third world countries always buy cheap. People here still buy 512Gb RAM, so this makes Readyboost a helping hand if you could not afford RAM

 

By the way - how to turn off ReadyBoost in Vista?

 

Go to the USB drives properties and click on the ReadyBoost tab.

I have dedicated 4gb sandisk usb plugged-in since my first laptop (2gb ram). dont notice the difference to be honest but i still leave it in there cause i have no use for it. I do notice the USB key's lights blinking often.

In my understanding it caches programs you use and since flash disks have a seek/read time of 1ms. It is alot faster to read from compared to the HDD.

Upgrading from 2gb to 4gb, now thats a real BOOST. Even though its only reading 3gb on 32bit. It made a a hell of a difference, everthing loads just like that.

 

flipfire
yeah, i know it, but how to turn off readyboost services and proceses?

 

You dont need to turn it off. The readyboost services and process only work when readyboost is in use. It functions like a normal USB stick if you dont use readyboost

 

ulpug it

 

If you want to disable the ReadyBoost service, go to Run and type "services.msc". Find ReadyBoost, right-click, go to properties and change "Startup type" to disabled.

 

I have a 1GB 133x high speed SD card in Readyboost (HDtune shows a data transfer speed of 20MB/s). I've been using it for a while and have noticed a good difference in performance when multitasking. It's smoother and more responsive when I have multiple apps running like media player, photoshop, firefox, Utorrent, etc.

For those who want to try test readyboost, I suggest getting a fast flash card (at least 12MB/s throughput) to notice any significant gains.