Win 7, anyone still use "Readyboost"?

[MooseParade]

Went to my friends house yesterday and, to make a long story short, he has a USB 2.0 4gb flash drive on his Windows 7 rig being utilized for Readyboost. Is this still relevant?

He's running Windows 7 home premium 64-bit, i3-550, 2x2gb RAM, no idea on the HDD.

Is this still relevant with todays components?

 

[tweakboy]

Once you have SSD, windows detects that and disables readyboost as you dont need it. If your on HD then you can use it. gl

 

[Mannymal]

I don't think it ever was relevant, and if you pull that stick out he will never be able to tell the difference.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Wasn't that more or less replaced by SSD caching?

 

[jacktesterson]

It was almost pointless when it was released.

 

[poohbear]

it was only relevant if the person had 1-2gb of sys RAM, beyond that and there's no benefit whatsoever.

 

[Cerb]

Is this still relevant with todays components?

It was relevant to early Vista test computers, and then Vista Basic computers with less RAM than we would ever have put in an XP box of the time period.

Wasn't that more or less replaced by SSD caching?

No. It was replaced by RAM prices dropping like a rock, after Vista did not spur new PC sales the way the memory companies had hoped. As we got to have 2GB in low-end PCs, 4-6GB in most, and 8+ in fancy machines, any benefits it could offer were outshined. The interfaces to SD, CF, or USB thumb drives directly (note: almost all card readers are USB, so even though CF's interface can be fast, it won't be, for ReadyBoost) are low-latency compared to HDDs, but so high-latency compared to RAM that it an appreciable cache would require more explicit use, on top of the CPU overhead involved.

SSD caching is a proper cache, faster in all ways than the HDD behind it.

In fact, looking for numbers to back it up, I got directed back to none other than AT, showing exactly what I expected, with even less RAM than I expected it to take to make up the difference:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2163/6

 

[joshcloud9]

I just transplanted a new motherboard in my computer, went well even after not doing a clean instal of Windows 7 64. And that was with a completely different chipset.
And I also upgraded my ram to 16GB

Anyhow I got a 16GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive and was wondering how to test it out and a light bulb went off and I tried Readyboost! I swear it made a big difference. Although of course I might just be imagining it since I also have gone from 8 to 16GB of ram...

System seems much quicker (same processor, hard drives, OS install etc) but I did make a few tweaks to caching in Firefox, but everything else does seem much more snappy

I did some speed tests and when comparing my rather old 500GB boot drive to the USB 3 drive...well the USB destroyed the spinning disks...Especially in the I/Ops

 

[anne704]

ReadyBoost is a new technology in Windows Vista, in the next-generation operating system Windows 7 following Windows Vista also includes the technology that utilizes Flash random reads and writes and bits and pieces on the document read/write advantages to improve system performance. It is the next generation of Flash memory hard drive temporary substitutes.
This technology is currently only supports USB2.0 interface, USB and Flash memory built-in card reader in your computer. Specific requirements are, 4k random read than random write speed of 3.5M/s,512k is greater than 2.5M/s.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Does anyone know of any good nano-sized ReadyBoost-certified USB flash drives? I only have 4GB in this laptop, and a good nano-sized USB3.0 flash drive might help a lot.

Edit: I tried out an 8GB Sandisk Cruiser Fit nano-USB, and it does work for ReadyBoost.

 

[Emulex]

any ssd drive should work for readyboost. then again readyboost is disabled on SSD systems so I guess it is pointless with an ssd.