Anyone tried Readyboost on the M14X

I see lots of older postings saying Readyboost can only help when you are low on RAM... but I wonder if it is worth re-examining this because:
1. Maybe faster/cheaper flash memory available now?
2. Windows 7 SP1 - could it have had any improvements to Readyboost?
3. M14X has USB 3.0 and apparently a PCIE card reader - how fast do they perform?

[I couldn't find much info on the Realtek PCIE card reader and no performance info. If you look under card readers on the Realtek site you only see USB2 card readers... so I suspect the M14X has a combined Ethernet/card reader solution?? Perhaps that described at
Realtek ? Anyone ahve any performance stats? ]

 

1.

I have used this 16 GB USB 3 stick
Flexi-Drive Extreme Duo | SHARKOON Technologies GmbH
It is rated based on the producer read/write 130 Mbps. In reality it runs on my M14x read 165/write 112 paired with 500Gig default M14x Hard Disk. Now, I have used Readyboost (4Gb from the stick reserved), combined with Eboostr (rest of the stick).
Using the two things paired I saw a boost, especially after a week or so. Loading time for games and applications mainly.

2.

I run Win7 SP1, re. improvements/no improvements I do not know.

3. See point 1 and btw. I formatted the stick to exFat largest possible cluster size (tested \ recommend)

If you need more info, let me know. Btw, now I run on SSD.

 

Thanks for that good info - yes it is the slowness of the M14X boot compared to the M1330 with SSD which has me frustrated.

I found a bit more information. It looks from device manager that the M14X has a Realtek 5209 card reader chip (The Ethernet is Atheros, not Realtek). I found some performance results for another reader based on the same chip at CARDSPEED - Card Readers and Memory Cards
That also sounds pretty fast to me.

 

I saw your attachment. I agree, I think that the speed itself is not so important. Access time is as in memory cards.
On the other hand when it comes to speed my 500GB Hard Disk used to max at 90 Mbps, small files as in ATTO were faster than my speeds of the USB 3 stick. After that my stick ate my hard disk.

 

Sorry to bump this one up, but I just did a WEI test for the ReadyBoost using the SDHC SD4 8GB card, and the original score was:

CPU: 7.5
RAM: 7.5
Graphic: 6.9
Gaming Graphic: 6.9
HDD: 5.9
And the new result was:

It's boost the RAM up from 7.5 to 7.8, which is not going to make any different but just if you want to know. Sorry I forgot to take a picture of the original WEI.

 

Thanks - hard facts like that is what we need, though I am not sure I would expect it to have changed the WEI score, other than perhaps the HDD - and only if the test takes into account caching.

I think the main speed-up I would be looking for is boot time.
Now first - there are two types of people. People who go for a coffee during boot and those who watch and wait for 'the pot to boil'. A speed-up would only help the latter.
Furthermore, from what I have read about Readyboost - for some users it speeds a boot from Hibernate - but others don't seem to manage to get that. If the Readyboost cache is considered invalid at boot then it has to be repopulated and you are actually going to get more disk activity at boot - not less.
I didn't find any confirmation that it is considered valid for a cold boot - when I would hope it would be most use.
I suspect this is Readyboost encrypts the cache and keeps the key in memory - which does not survive a cold boot.

Now apparently there is a way to disable the encryption.. .at least for internal memory like Intel Turbo Memory. I also wonder if having a TPM module might make it possible to store an encryption key through a cold boot. Well - this ReadyBoost is really rather complicated and it is hard to find really knowledgeable information on how it works. I am sure I have already spent more time wondering about it than it could ever save me!
I'll try and forget it.

 

After a good read of that, I think it is not really clever to test it on M14x since ReadyBoost only useful on the slower machine and this laptop is like the fastest of the 14" laptop.

For the boot time I didnt notice it but for the startup time and during when you install/uninstall stuff I did notice there's a little boost because usually when at startup it would take around 15sec to get everything running, but now I notice it would take only around 10sec, and I also have a test it, by removing the SD card and restart and it did start a little bit slower. So I think it would only boost during those startup and the installation/uninstallation (I having test this yet).