Windows 7 & ReadyBoost

I just purchased an 8GB Extreme III class 10 card to dedicate to ReadyBoost for my Asus U81a. Presently I have added a 500GB 7200.4 Seagate and extra apps are Office 2007 H&S Visual Studio 2008 Express (VB, Web, C#, C++), Live Mail, MSSE and Expression Web. Also CPUz, SiSandra and other various system monitoring tools.

Now I am a bit dissapointed with the new card as with HDTune I only get about 19 MB/s read. My previous Ultra II 8GB got 17 MB/s read but this could be a limit of my internal reader. I can say the writes looking at the Resource monitor have sped up though.

It appears with RB though you don't get the benefits until the application cache builds. From what I can tell this happens after you launch the first application of say IE. Once this builds though there is a huge performance increase opening apps for the first time.

Once built the apps open almost at the same pace they would once loaded to cache and after closing opening a second time without RB. Over all the system responds much nicer but I doubt it is an improvement that will show up in any benchmark.

One thing I did notice with the Resource Monitor is that all files that were being hit to the SDHC drive had a total responce time of 1/3 or less for the transfer sizes/speed. So whatever Win7 is caching there seems to work well. I dedicated the entire 8GB but I somehow doubt it uses anywhere near that.


While this is no SSD by a long shot with Win7 once RB is loaded up it seems to be a worth while upgrade even on a 4GB ram system. I understand from reading other posts it was useless on Vista once you got to the 4GB mark.

Eventually I will go SSD but I am waiting for prices to come down a bit, well allot, and for the Trim and all stuttering issues to be resolved and/or more mature. One nice thing about ready boost, no stuttering issues. Now I just have to see how long the SDHC card will last........

 

I wish you would have asked about this before buying that memory card. ReadyBoost is really not very effective at all unless you have very little RAM. It's kind of pointless since you already have 4GB.

 

Readyboost pretty much only speeds up reads from the pagefile. Which isn't all that much if your got plenty of RAM.

Now if I could only buy more RAM to speed up my time in traffic.....

 

have you both read his post? he states that he has quite some gains from it. that was not a question, that was a .. dunno, mini-review?

 

Placebo effect.

 

Aye

:yes:

 

Nay-say'ers aplenty here. There is a gain, no placebo effect. Specifically I looked for one before posting this. There seems to be no gain though until ReadyBoost loads. this is event driven from what I've seen so far.

If at first boot you load again IE then RB seems to start loading up. You can even see this happening with Resource Monitor watching the RB drive. Once loaded up you can definately see the improvements first opening applications.

Now if at first boot you open those applications before RB loads there is no, and I repeat NO, speed improvement first opening those same programs. This is unlike a SSD that has the speed improvements immediately realized.

Now once you have loaded a program with or without RB it loads from ram cache and you will notice very little to no difference at all. So I can see where some people have tried RB and truely believe everyone else is just experiencing a placebo effect. You have to realize what it does and look for when it does it.

I am an old timer when it comes to PC's and look for any benefits I can. I am a realist too and know this specific benefit, at least for now, is worth it to me. I now realize too it's limitations and the fact it isn't always showing any benefit at all. So it is no miracle cure for a slow HDD but it has its place even in a 4GB system.

If you want to be a Nay-Say'er do what I did, enable it. from a fresh boot start Resource Monitor, sort files by name to watch your RB drive, open IE and wait for the activity of the RB drive to stop and then open say VB or even office. It will load exceptionally faster that it would after first boot without RB. subsequent opening of the same programs though are the same speed as they are now ram cached from the drives.............

 

I have to add an update. I finally booted with resource monitor and waited a bit. Not sure yet of the time it took but I waited and watched and RB finally built the cache on its own without an event loading it.

 

You can also try out eboostr. Using readyboost and eboostr together makes the computer much more responsive than readyboost alone.
On my netbook, readyboost+ eboostr + one of the fastest 5400rpm hdd is night and day difference compared with with HDD alone.

 

From restarts or cold boots, RB takes about 5 minutes to fill my 2GB SD card from whenever it decides to start loading the card up, anyway. The only reason I even use it is because I have a spare SD card I keep in the slot to keep dust out of it.

Sometimes, things seem slower if I remove it, sometimes. I've used it from the start so I'm used to the benefits and probably don't notice them now >.>

 

one thing that worries me: why does it build up the cache after a restart? i thought it should be filled from the start to show gains while/directly after booting?

 

Its sort of like Superfetching I suppose, but slower. If it were to fill while booting, the boot process would take minutes.

 

I tried out demo and wasn't impressed with ebooster. I might have been if I used the ram also as the default wanted too but I like my ram being free........

This is why I got a Class 10 SDHC, once is starts to fill it takes 1 to 2 minutes max to fill up with whatever. I am pretty sure it isn't filling the entire 8GB. It would be nice since these are non volatile memory if RB would just leave it filled and just add or subtract as needed. This would probably extend the life of the memory too.........

 

if it's just like superfetching, it's about useless... the use of the flash would be to store stuff during a power off. superfetch works great when power is on.

after 1-2 minutes, superfetch should have prefetched all you ever need anyways. are you sure, it's readyboost doing its job?

 

doublepost

 

Yes, I am using Resource Monitor to watch the activity on the RB file and the SDHC drive itself. the SDHC right now is dedicated to RB so there is nothing else there to be getting file activity.

 

I've been using a 30MB/sec Memory Stick in my Sony laptop (the one benefit of that stupid proprietary standard).

I don't have time to dig up the thread I posted on the Sony board now, but if you search you'll find it. I posted an article in there about RB being much better in Win 7 than Vista.

I haven't done any monitoring with resmon yet, but I do notice that the stick is accessed often, even though I have 4gb RAM. Obviously it's doing something. Also, my RAM usage is usually 33% or so. Unlike Vista, Win 7 doesn't utilize as much RAM as possible.

 

It definitely helps with my desktop at work! The first noticeable difference is the hard drive isn't accessing constantly.

 

Free memory is wasted memory...

 

I thought the same thing, but I am curious now. Anybody have an authoritative answer on whether or not there might be any benefits to ReadyBoost on machines with plenty of memory? Even maybe just speeding up the boot process? Or maybe also really speeding up application access? To be concrete, if I am talking about my 16GB M6400, would there be any point in using ReadyBoost? I actually once tried setting up my (blazingly fast) 48GB ExpressCard SSD for ReadyBoost, and I saw no difference of any kind, but maybe I was too quick to dismiss it? I must admit I didn't wait for some minutes, or through a couple of reboots, to evaluate this thoroughly.

 

ReadyBoost is the Prefetch from what I can tell. Windows will do prefetch to a point with out RB but then it will only to a small point. It is like a cache and once it fills it then can kick out some files. This unlike RB that usually has a much larger resource. so if the file is not able to be held in ram or disk cache it is available from RB.

It is no miracle cure and I do see here a speed increase in boot times but YMMV. at 16GB unless you use most of it up all the time RB may show little to no benefit. That is unless you use alot of different apps all the time. Another example where it could help is where you do alot of project codeing on large and varied locally stored projects.

Just remember RB is to speed up drive (read) access so a good size SSD instead is probably a better option for your monster.............

Edit;
Also rememeber the faster the HDD is the less benefit you realize in having RB enabled. I noticed there is less overal improvement with the system using the 7K500 than the 7200.4 but there still is a slight improvement but not as big..........

 

Try using eboostr and start using your ram as cache. Ram is many times faster than SSDs and increases the responsiveness of the whole computer dramatically.You can also use your SSD and use it as cache as well.

I find a combination of readyboost + eboostr (4 beta) to be the best

 

Ahh, yes, of course, but I can't afford nor justify those dual-500GB SSDs, yet...

Thanks, guys, for the input!

 

If your notebook can support dual HDD/SSDs, the most cost effective solution is a small 32-64GB SSD and a 640-1TB HDD...

 

I tried readyboost and it actually slowed down my computer.

 

Easily possible. If you have a fast HDD and slow USB device this would happen. RB only requires 1.0 ms access so if the read write speed is low this could slow you down............

 

Technically Ready Boost is a piece of code(Windows Services Actually) that needs to be loaded meaning it takes up system resources as well.
If your com is sufficiently powerful with enough RAM readyboost is redundant.
Not to mention mem cards and stick should be put to better use like storing real data.

 

It is a matter of the amount of ram that prefech can store and then also how fast the HDD is. At 4 GB ram the returns are minimal and above that possibly negligable unless you run alot of apps. Also once you get to say the speed of a Raid0 7K500 short stroked on the C:\ drive to say 128GB RB may become useless as well.

On an older laptop with a 5200 RPM drive or even 4200 RPM drive RB makes alot of sense. As always though YMMV............

 

I am running on 7200RPM but I never heard of 5200RPM although I saw 4200RPM before.
5200RPM is a weird number.

 

Some of the WD green hdd are 5200rpm i think

 

I there are I think some 5200 and primarily 5400, either case RB makes sense. The 7200.4 has horible latency, why I am not sure. The 7K500 has much better latency on random access. The WD Blacks seem to be the best but the sequential read is way faster on the 7K500.

It is a mixed bag but RB with HDD's does have some, if not limited, benefits. I think (my best guess) if there were a WD 640GB 10,000 RPM drive with say 64 MB cache short stroked on the primar drive then RB returns would be negligable..........

 

There would also be some cases where RB would make sense on even the 7k500. E.g. when the hdd is under stress, RB will improve the responsiveness of the computer overall. When the hdd is busy doing other things, the latency could go up as high as 30ms. If you had readyboost cache, the latency would still be very low for some of the critical system files.

 

Agreed, I have the 7K500 and see benefits. I am thinkig of getting 2x 7K500's for raid0 in my P7805-u and don't think RB will benefit me there though.......

 

In that case, you should probably try out eboostr 4 beta. Use ram as your cache. It's probably 10x faster than the fastest SSD and it has lower latency. Eboostr will cache frequently used files thus boosting the performance of the computer dramatically. Remember to prioritize the programs cached in eboostr if you decide to use it.

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=448208&highlight=readyboost

Article talking about RB being much better in Win 7 http://go.notebookreview.com/?id=525X832&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.connectedinternet.co.uk%2F2009%2F09%2F03%2Fwindows-7-readyboost-really-boosts%2F

Like I said, my system is using the 3gb+ I set aside for Readyboost. My RAM usage is usually around 33%, so clearly Windows isn't using much RAM for Superfetch, and even if it did, all that would vanish as soon as I played a game.

 

http://blogs.msdn.com/7/archive/2009/10/09/readyboost-changes-in-windows-7.aspx

 

I tried eBoostr beta around August of last year when Beta 4 was first announced. I was stunned by its effect on the feel/performance of the computer. I am still using the latest beta and also running a 7K500 too.

Back in August, I tried the v3 and was disappointed (relative to beta v4) and never tried it since, but I did test RB, eBoostr, RB + eBoostr and found with my 16GB Lexar SSD ExpressCard (worst purchase ever, this card is so slow) that only eBoostr by itself made my VAIO the fastest (with a Scorpio Blue 500GB drive at the time and Win 7).

I haven't tested to see if RB + eBoostr will be an improvement on the Hitachi 7K500 yet, but will certainly try it based on what I have read here.

TANWare, eBoostr is superior to RB because it doesn't have to build the cache file each time it boots (takes over an hour on my Lexar ExpressCard for 90% filled of 15,268KB). You really should try it and give it a fair test (one week should do it - leave the computer running while you're not using it so that it can collect and build the cache as large as possible).

What I would not recommend is using RAM as eBoostr's cache. Although 'benchmarks' will show its the fastest, it isn't in real life. I've tested this as well on my 8GB VAIO and my VRaptor/3xRaptor desktops. The fastest overall speed increase is to use a USB key (or ExpressCard SSD, like I am on the VAIO) exclusively.

This works so good that it gave better results than an Torqx SSD (when I was still using the Scorpio Blue). And it continues to work great and allows me to save my money/bide my time for an SSD that is capacious and speedy/dependable enough to upgrade to. Like the Intel 320GB SSD we're all waiting for.

I'll try to test RB + eBoostr in the next couple of days and report back if the latest beta version works better with RB than it did back in August last year.

Cheers!

Pirx, see my post above, but use your blazing fast 48GB ExpressCard SSD with eBoostr beta 4. Even your M6400 16GB RAM monster will feel better than new.

See:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=435052

Cheers!

 

Yes, I saw your post, and this does sound interesting. However, going to the post of yours you linked to above, I do notice that my M6400 is much faster out of the box than your machine already. My freshly installed Photoshop CS4 opens almost instantaneously (o.k., so maybe it's 2 seconds?), and that's without any ReadyBoost. Nevertheless, I may give this a try, using eBoostr with my SSD, or a Class-10 SD Card.

 

Thanks tiller. I have been trying to find out if eboostr rebuilds its cache every time you reboot but they don't supply that information.

 

While using my quadcore desktop with 3 hdds and 4GB of ram, using eboostr's ram cache made light and day difference for me. I use a combination of SD card cache, ram cache as well as readyboost on my acer aspire one netbook and it made a light and day difference as well.

 

No doubt that your M6400 is faster than my VAIO!

But eBoostr with your ExpressCard SSD should enhance your performance even more.

Just want to point out that CS4 opens with 3 suites of plugins for me - is yours 'clean'?

Cheers!

 

Yeah, the cache is stored on the memory card you're using/pointing it to.

It will periodically update itself (as I'm sure you know) while your computer is idle - try to not interrupt it when it does.

To me, eBoostr is giving a hint of what Intel's Braidwood is promising (based on, but nothing like the old Turbo Memory) and the best thing is that we can use it now while waiting to see how good Intel will implement their version.

I've said it before: if I was Intel, I would buy eBoostr now!

Cheers!

 

Yes, I thought that you might load a bunch of plugins, too. This is a brand-new install for me, and I haven't added nor configured anything yet, so it will probably load a lot less stuff.

 

eBoostr is mainly faster than just RB as it can use dedicated ram for cache. eBoostr without using ram for me seemed to have no real benefit when I tried it out.

If you have an SSD though RB is a waist but eBoostr may help but really how much faster do you need than an SSD?

 

Lol...

How much faster? Much Faster!

See:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=436882&highlight=The+SSD+Myth+Exposed


Here is how using RAM for eBoostr degraded my overall performance:

See:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=435052



Cheers!

 

if it would just work all the time that way, and would be a trustable software source.. just kidding.

then again, no. in my cases, it never delivered, and had repeatable data-loss bugs (hard reset a machine and the last saved file changes where lost). no thanks

 

Interesting... Well, it's Beta software right now, which means it's ruled out for my production machines. Generally speaking, I have grown extremely conservative regarding the software I allow to reside on my computers, and I will not install anything in a production environment that has not proven its value and reliability. As an example, that's why I will never allow any product by Symantec on any of my computers...

 

It works on saved files too? It would be good if you could restrict it to only caching DLLs and EXEs

 

well, it was a layer between os and hdd, and created some indirection delays.. no clue exactly. but anyways, i hate such layers, especially from third parties. unreliable

 

However, if the data the computer needs exist on such layer, the access time will be faster. The layer can be more than 10x faster with lower access time than the fastest SSD that you can buy currently.