Anyone here using Readyboost in Visa/Win7?

Firegod · 9 Mar 2009 at 19:12

I've just been reading about this feature and it seems like a neat little thing to have in order to speed up small I/O operations. (I think that's the correct terminology).

Just wondered if anyone on here uses a USB device plugged into their PC and if they have noticed an improvement in responsiveness, etc?

Thanks.

bledd · 9 Mar 2009 at 19:19

from what i've read, the less ram you have, the more beneficial it is

it won't hurt your pocket to try it out

Firegod · 9 Mar 2009 at 19:26

bledd. said:
from what i've read, the less ram you have, the more beneficial it is

it won't hurt your pocket to try it out

Yeah that's what I thought. To be honest you're right, I can get a 4GB OCZ ATV key for like £9.78 inc.VAT which is apparently Readyboost Compatible. And I suppose if it's no good, I can use it for carrying stuff around as I don't own a USB key at the moment.

Gunnar · 9 Mar 2009 at 19:47

Hi,
Hope I'm not making this up, but I'm sure I read that with Windows 7 you can also use memory sticks eg. SDHC cards (which are faster than USB in terms of access). So long as they're recognised by the OS as a drive.

Ratbag · 9 Mar 2009 at 20:23

Readyboost doesn't seem to do much at all to be honest. My laptop is precisely the sort of machine that should benefit - Vista, Celeron, 1GB, slow hard drive. Using a 4GB readyboost enabled Sony device delivered zero quantifiable performance hike.

Gunnar said:
Hi,
Hope I'm not making this up, but I'm sure I read that with Windows 7 you can also use memory sticks eg. SDHC cards (which are faster than USB in terms of access). So long as they're recognised by the OS as a drive.

You can actually use SD cards in Vista, not that it makes any difference. I tried that too.

Smit · 10 Mar 2009 at 08:26

I use it but don't notice any difference.
My laptop is a T7300, 2GB running Vista Business.

bledd · 10 Mar 2009 at 09:13

Firegod

Sandisk Cruzer Micro 4gb (the 'skin' one) should be perfect

it's nice and tiny

i'll check tonight for you if it works with readyboost

it has ~29mb/s read speed, so i'm assuming it will

sgc2000 · 10 Mar 2009 at 09:14

I used a 1GB memory stick with 2GB of RAM and it seemed to make performance worse. It did help when I only had 1GB of RAM though.

SlyReaper · 10 Mar 2009 at 09:30

What does readyboost actually do? I have 4GB of DDR3, would using a 16GB memory stick give a noticable boost to performance?

steve258 · 10 Mar 2009 at 09:35

no noticeable difference here, but have a spare 2gb stick so might as well.

Firegod · 10 Mar 2009 at 12:52

bledd. said:
Firegod

Sandisk Cruzer Micro 4gb (the 'skin' one) should be perfect

it's nice and tiny

i'll check tonight for you if it works with readyboost

it has ~29mb/s read speed, so i'm assuming it will

Awesome. Cheers.

Firegod · 10 Mar 2009 at 12:52

SlyReaper said:
What does readyboost actually do? I have 4GB of DDR3, would using a 16GB memory stick give a noticable boost to performance?

I think the max you can use is 4Gb. So even on a bigger USB device, it'll still give you only a 4Gb cache max.

godsense · 10 Mar 2009 at 22:31

SlyReaper said:
What does readyboost actually do? I have 4GB of DDR3, would using a 16GB memory stick give a noticable boost to performance?

I think anything over 2gb ram, the difference will be extremely small

theheyes · 10 Mar 2009 at 22:43

I used a 4GB Sandisk Cruzer Micro with Vista/2GB RAM. It did speed up my virus scans a little but nothing amazing.

Suffice to say I ended up reclaiming the space back off my USB drive as I considered it the more useful out of the two. Nice idea but if it disappeared overnight I wouldn't miss it.