ReadyBoost, ReadyDrive, Vista, Windows 7 - anyone tested these?

[davegmail]

I'd be very interested on how ReadyBoost, ReadyDrive compare on laptops, desktops, fast large drives, slower drives with Vista, Windows 7, core2 duo, quadcore, AMD, Intel.

A good test might include video rendering, CAD & virtual reality, 3D apps, gaming. So far I've found these links:

http://www.anandtech.com/systems/showdoc.aspx?i=2917&p=7

http://www.anandtech.com/systems/showdoc.aspx?i=2917&p=6

Thanks, Dave

 

[dilettante]

ReadyBoost was meant for low-RAM machines as far as I know. If you have 2GB (Vista32) or 4GB (more wasteful Vista64) you don't see much gain, but it can still make some difference in heavy-paging scenarios according to some reports.

 

[Infinity306]

More Wasteful X64? explain yourself please? just because x64 can access above the 3/3.5 GB cap on memory due to hardware drivers that X32 has you call it more Wasteful???????????????????

 

[davegmail]

Thanks Infinity306. dilettante hasn't used ReadyBoost maybe? Pls explain yourself dilettante... Dave

 

[RedBarn2]

Actualy Readyboost is meant to speed up systems with slower hard drives. It caches a copy of all smaller sized entries in the swap file on the Hard Drive to a USB or other speedier storage device.

The idea is that when the PC needs a hit from the swap file (Virutal Memory) it will check if it is on the faster device first, if it is then it eliminates the delay of waiting for a slow hard drive to spin up. However if the entry is large enough then even accounting for the delay on the hard drive it will be faster to transfer the larger file from the hard drive copy.

Readyboost will help little on a machine with not enough RAM because when a PC is low on RAM it is swapping large files constantly to the swap file on the Hard Drive to compensate for the lack of physical RAM. This will not make the Readyboost file very efficient, meaning that it will not have many entries it can get from the faster storage and so will still be constantly pulling and pushing data to the Hard Drive.

Something else to keep in mind: If you upgrade your PC to a new solid state drive then the Readyboost effect is negated and in some cases it can actually slow down the PC slightly because the OS is busy sending copies of the swap file to the slower USB drive/stick.

If you have the means to get hold of a new solid state drive, I highly reccomend it. I found a Kingston upgrade kit for my desktop. 128GB for about $250. It's not the fastest ssd on the market, but for the money it is still faster than the fastest platter based hard drive. It even comes with a utility to ghost your current hard drive over to the new one, then you can use the old one as a second storage drive.

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RedBarn2

 

[dilettante]

Running in x64 mode means the registers are twice as wide. This also impacts addresses and other scalar data elements.

The result is that the CPU works with 64-bit instead of 32-bit items a lot more, and this consumes extra space in various levels of cache. You're then making heavier use of the available bandwidth between CPUs/cores and memory. Code as well as data tends to be larger.

This is pretty much inevitable. We saw the same sort of consumption increase when moving from 16 to 32 bits, but that move actually bought you a larger increase in capabilities then going from 32 to 64 did. These are also factor of 2 increases in consumption, not merely linear increases.

Some of this is discussed in Visual Studio: Why is there no 64 bit version? (yet) and other Microsoft blogs. A lot of software will remain 32-bit for the foreseeable future. There just isn't enough payback yet except for niche applications.

 

[dilettante]

ReadyBoost has been around as long as Vista, though it had limitations prior to Vista SP1.

Some of this may be new to those who didn't move to Vista when it came out nearly 3 years ago. It is primarily meant to assist low-RAM machines by reducing the amount of paging to hard disk. There can be some extra benefit for laptops which often have slow HDs, which slows HD paging.

For a 512MB machine the benefits are clear. Once you reach 2GB of RAM those benefits fall off dramatically because you normally aren't doing as much paging. When running 64-bit Windows you can double those numbers because of the increase in paging I/O under 64-bit Windows until you reach 4GB.