Hello
Iv been reading up on Vistas new feature of Ready Boost which utilises a Usb Storage device such as a Usb pen as a like large cache/Ram for use by the CPU and im wondering has anybody tried it first hand as iv read mixed reviews and wondering if its all worth it caused i have found some super fast Usb pens and one review said the faster the write read speed the better.
So any body had/got first hand experience or experiences with the New Ready Boost feature?
Many thanks
Damian

Pentium4 3.20ghz@ 3.8ghz
1Gb Corsair XMS
2 x 250gb
PNY 7600GSAGP @450/1000
ASUS P4P800 SE
Thermaltake Purepower 680w
Win XP Home

ReadyBoost is meant to serve as a temporary drastic measure & not a permanent solution. It does not replace *real* memory.

You're messing with the wrong guy

I have 2GB of RAM and a 4GB USB drive. It does speed up things a bit, but don't expect a night and day difference.

Some things you should know.

A. The USB drive has to be fast enough to support ReadyBoost.
B. Preferably, you need 1.5 - 2x the amount of RAM as the size of your pen drive for best results.

I personally used this drive...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...

Works great for ReadyBoost.

"Enough, enough bowing down to disillusion!
Hats off & applause to rogues & evolution!
The ripple effect is too good not to mention.
If you’re not affected, you’re not paying attention!"

...........if the stick is not being supported in Vista for ReadyBoost - you can override the denial in less than 30 seconds ;-)

Give it up for MC Rove

If the stick isn't fast enough for ReadyBoost, one must wonder why you'd even want to use it.

"Enough, enough bowing down to disillusion!
Hats off & applause to rogues & evolution!
The ripple effect is too good not to mention.
If you’re not affected, you’re not paying attention!"

Usb pen i found is an Adata pen which claims read and write speeds of 200x or 30mb/s read and 20mb/s write is this fast enough??
Thanks
Damian Cole

Pentium4 3.20ghz@ 3.8ghz
1Gb Corsair XMS
2 x 250gb
PNY 7600GSAGP @450/1000
ASUS P4P800 SE
Thermaltake Purepower 680w
Win XP Home

Your drive should be fine. ReadyBoost only require your thumb drive meets the minimum requirement below:

0. Capacity must be at least a 64 MB and no larger than 4 GB.

1. It must be USB 2.0 compliant.

2. It must also be capable of 3.5 MB/s read speeds for 4 kB random reads spread uniformly across the entire device and 2.5 MB/s write speeds for 512 kB random writes spread uniformly across the device.

http://windows.about.com/gi/dynamic...

Give it up for MC Rove

"Usb pen i found is an Adata pen which claims read and write speeds of 200x or 30mb/s read and 20mb/s write is this fast enough??"

"It must also be capable of 3.5 MB/s read speeds for 4 kB random reads spread uniformly across the entire device and 2.5 MB/s write speeds for 512 kB random writes spread uniformly across the device."

Key word is "random". Do not assume that a pen drive that is claimed to be 200x and have whatever read/write speed will work. It must have a certain *random* read/write speed, which is something you usually don't find in the specs of a pen drive.

"Enough, enough bowing down to disillusion!
Hats off & applause to rogues & evolution!
The ripple effect is too good not to mention.
If you’re not affected, you’re not paying attention!"

Read: Windows Vista's SuperFetch and ReadyBoost Analyzed .. at Tom's Hardware. They also give test results charts of various configurations and software being run. What you'll find is, ReadyBoost doesnt do much for systems with 2 gig of ram and more. It can give positive results(in some situations)on systems with 512mb and 1 gig of ram. At/after 2 gig of ram .. Windows super-fetch is generally fully utilized and readyboost provides very little if any improvement.

http://tomshardware.co.uk/2007/01/3...

I see that article referenced a lot, but unfortunately, they did not apparently think to follow best practices for what pen drive to use. It's been said over and over to use 1.5 - 2x the size of your system RAM for the pen drive for ReadyBoost.

Is it any wonder then that it appears to not provide any benefit for systems with 2GB of RAM? They should have tested ReadyBoost using a 3GB-4GB pen drive for a system with that much RAM.

I have 2GB of system RAM using a 4GB drive, and it does make a bit of a difference. It's not a massive improvement. However, if you consider how much an additional 2GB of RAM would have cost me compared to the pen drive, I doubt adding an additional 2GB of system RAM would have made a lot of difference for me either, so at least this cost me 1/3 what an additional 2GB of RAM would have.

Honestly, I've tried ReadyBoost on a laptop with 1GB of RAM using a 2GB drive, and that is what really made a good difference. Really, the point of ReadyBoost is to speed up access to stuff cached on the drive. With laptop drives usually not very fast, ReadyBoost can be very advantageous.

TECH-NO-LOGICAL ROMANCE!

http://www.homestarrunner.com/tgs12.html

This brings another point up about the Tom's Hardware article. If you notice, they're using two hard drives, one for data and the other for the OS; not only that, they're both Raptors, which needless to say is exceptionally atypical. If ReadyBoost is to alleviate disk i/o, you're not losing as much performance when you're running two Raptors.

I didn't notice that until just now. Normally, I like Tom's Hardware, but that article is ill conceived from the get-go.

TECH-NO-LOGICAL ROMANCE!

http://www.homestarrunner.com/tgs12.html

I am running a 2gig pen on a 1 gig of ram system. It does make a nice difference.

The only way to know what type of performance inprovement your going to get by using ReadyBoost .. is to just plug a stick and see, but, I'd rather set lowered expectations for those with 2 gig or more than high expectations.