windows ready boost

does this really work like regular ram? i mean if i stuck in a 4gb flash drive would my computer reay run like i had 6 gb of ram?

 

No, from what I have read Readyboost uses flash memory as a cache volume for preloading commonly used user programs and such, thereby enhancing overall system responsiveness. It is not meant to substitute for RAM, which has much greater data transfer speeds.

 

If you have more than 1 GB of RAM, readyboost is essentially useless.

 

i don't know exactly why or how much it helped, but it has seemed to help when running Flight Simulator X... I just got a 4GB stick, turned on Ready boost to use 2Gb of it, and have 2GB of system ram. I'd get fairly regular hard drive reading which would cause occasional pausing, but now it accesses the memory stick instead and doesn't stutter. Like I said, don't know a whole lot about it, but wanted to atleast try it and it seems to help in that situation... as for anything else, that's been my only real noticable change.

 

Nope, not like your regular RAM..., but it will replace your paging file on Hard disk to be read from the flash drive, which is quicker when compared to reading from the hard disk......., read speeds of RAM are wayyyyyy higher than these......

 

It won't replace it. It's for caching files.

RAM > Cache > Harddrive. Instead of RAM > Cache.

 

Is for caching, it places the page file on the readyboost device, if you have more than 1GB of ram, its use is debatable.

 

It's not a page file.

It's a cache. Do you remember the .pfs in XP? Inside of those told the OS what files to load when an app was loaded.

Readyboost is just pushing it further and actually loads those files in to the flash. So when you open an app the OS knows to pull the smaller files from the Cache if it's there or pull it from the harddrive if it's not or if it's too big. The files that usual fit in the cache is either less or equal to the random transfer rate of the flash device, sometimes full .exes get loaded in.

 

so, wondering, assuming it might help a bit in certain situations, how would using a flash driver compare to using the internal intel turbo memory module? Same, turbo memory faster, or readyboost flash card faster?

 

Well it should technically be the same because it's the write and read speed of the flash that's the limit. This is assuming you have a really fast flash card that's as fast as the TM module.

Besides that the TMM should be faster because it operates on the PCI-E bus which eliminates the overhead of USB 2.0 which maxes at 60mb and you'll never hit the max. PCI-E also has a lower latency.

 

Don't forget that USB flash is actually pretty damn slow. Most flash drives out there don't meet the minimum "requirements" for ReadyBoost, and even if they do, it's still slow. With a properly configured system and the right/fastest drive out there, you're shaving off a second or two off a 30 second load time.. if that, even. ReadyBoost is a gimmick, nothing more.

 

I didn't mean 'replace' to be the exact term, but in terms of usage, the page cache would be read from the flash drive is what i meant....

sorry for any confusion i have created.....