Windows Vista SuperFetch / ReadyBoost analyzed

While we're certain that you out there eager to get Vista up and running effectively on your new (or old) PC have already perused our Upgrade Guides with care, but if you're still curious about this newfangled caching approach used in SuperFetch / ReadyBoost, Tom's Hardware has you covered. Doing a bit of analysis on Vista's ability to use excess memory (and USB 2.0 flash drives in particular) to speed up the launching of your favorite applications, the gurus at Tom's found more useful than gimmicky. They noticed that SuperFetch indeed took care of buffering applications proactively, and although it kept nearly all of the system RAM occupied at all times, their favorite applications did indeed launch faster after a short "learning period." Furthermore, the crew found ReadyBoost equally impressive and infinitely useful, and while using both features in conjunction, opening applications such as OpenOffice and Outlook 2007 took around half the time as it would normally when using 512MB of memory, and while systems packing 2GB of RAM or more didn't notice nearly the same speed increases as those attempting to get along with half a gigabyte, they still felt it worthwhile to shove your spare flash drive into your PC when not using it for other tasks. Overall, it seems that benefits will (unsurprisingly) vary by system, but if you're interested in just how many nanoseconds these two features could save you, be sure to hit the read link for all the geeked-out bar charts that only the hardcore could love.

[Via Engadget Chinese]

[Kev50027 @ Feb 5th 2007 12:42PM]

This sounds pretty cool.. now as soon as I can get drivers for my 8800 GTX, I'll pick up Vista Ultimate..

[Jared Harley @ Feb 5th 2007 1:49PM]

I'm actually using a 1 GB CompactFlash card (via USB Card Reader) to supplement my 1 GB ram (Vista Ultimate). It's nice!

[Chris @ Feb 5th 2007 4:23PM]

My computer has 1.5GB Ram, and I use 1GB flash memory for Ready Boost. I don't really feel the difference. May be if the system has ram near 2GB, it won't really help that much, since the Ready Boost is kind of subset of RAM. If my system can't make full use of 1.5GB Ram, it might not be able to make good use of slower, less reliable usb memory.

[Osiris @ Feb 5th 2007 5:12PM]

What I don't understand is how can it be more beneficial than just having virtual memory on an alternate Hard drive?
Surely the read speed of a HD is faster than of a USB2.0 flash drive??

[Chris @ Feb 5th 2007 10:23PM]

Yes, transfer speed would be slower than HD, but the seek time would be in microsecond range, rather than HD's millisecond range. So the Ready Boost will make use of flash memory by putting small in size but frequently accessed files that isn't frequently acessed enough to be in the memory.

[SporkRocker @ Feb 5th 2007 5:17PM]

Might be useful for extreme multitasking but not for gaming.

[nigel @ Feb 5th 2007 6:59PM]

i think vista is great, better than xp or crapples os...once u get rid of the stupid animations its pretty quick on my 1gig.

[greg @ Feb 5th 2007 7:24PM]

i think this is such a great feature but wont really be utilized. This is great for people who are looking to upgrade and might make people more want to upgrade but sadly 75% of the people and average users wont know about this.

[Andrew Fong @ Feb 5th 2007 8:22PM]

They'll all know about it once they start using Vista though. Look at the AutoPlay window that pops up when you insert a flash drive.

[Kizza42 @ Feb 5th 2007 8:53PM]

Its all about bringing seek times down, its a nice stop gap till Hybrid drives hit the big time

[noein @ Feb 6th 2007 2:19AM]

I notice significant improvement in application launching and windows explorer performance when using ready boost with a 4gb usb stick on my 3 years old computer with 1gb ram. I've read the improvement is not as great on more up to date computers. But I think it's a pretty good deal since 4gb usb stick is still cheaper than 1gb of ram now days.

[Mario @ Feb 6th 2007 11:52AM]

I tried a 4gb drive but it was not compatible. Are there any lists of compatible flash drives out there? Google here I come.

[Mario @ Feb 6th 2007 12:00PM]

http://www.extremetech.com/print_article2/0,1217,a=189051,00.asp answering my own question. Does anyone know of any others?
Apacer Handy Steno HT203 2GB $65 Yes
Crucial Gizmo Overdrive 2GB $75 Yes
Patriot Xporter XT 4GB $85 Yes
Sandisk Cruzer Titanium 2GB $85 Yes
Sony MicroVault Tiny 1GB $45 Yes
Verbatim Store n Go Pro 1GB $49 Yes

[Allen @ Feb 6th 2007 9:03PM]

Does anybody know if you can use a flash card, i.e. SD, CF, Memory Stick, etc.; to be used as a ReadyBoost device on a laptop that have intergrated card reader/writers or even on a desktop?

[applesucksLeo @ Feb 6th 2007 11:02PM]

My only question is...When will Jobs claim he invented it and give us a RDF slideshow ?

[Josh @ Feb 7th 2007 12:20PM]

Hmmm.. It seems that the USB drive utilized in the tom's hardware test is not *particularly* fast (Kingston Migo DataTraveller II Plus 1 GB) 19 MBps Read/13 MBps Write, according to one online vendor.
I don't believe it would make much of a difference, but I wonder how a faster USB drive would do.

[Eduo @ Feb 7th 2007 2:19PM]

Applesucks: Well, I don't know about Macs, but Ubuntu has the very exact same screen for "What do you want to do with this new device", just lacking the "Speed up my system" option.

If it serves to feed your trollness, though, you may want to know that Macintosh sites have echoed the sentiment that this is indeed not a bad idea and MacOSX should include it somehow. Some high-profile ones even to the degree of proposing all systems come with 2GB of Flash Memory already built-in (something, I should note, the original macs had, as far as allowing even booting from the Flash Drive in case of emergency, which isn't a bad idea either).

[hozer @ Sep 12th 2007 10:16PM]

Ready Boost is a JOKE!!! Its too Slow!!

Lets do the math.............

Fact 1: The maximum data transfer rate on a memory stick is 24-30mb/s MAX!!!!

Fact 2: The data transfer rate on a hard drive is 80+mb/s

As you can see that memory sticks are about 2.5 time slower than a hard drive.

Told Cha!!! ;)

[ReadyBoost Memory @ Jan 9th 2008 6:28PM]

You can view a list of readyboost compatible memory here: http://www.readyboostmemory.com/

[sagar gupta @ Apr 15th 2008 10:36PM]

im having a 1gb ram inspiron 1501 machine with vista hme basic. i appended my 2giga usb stick to it. and its running pretty faster than before. i can easily make out the difference when doing multitasking.

the only question that i have now is can i use my 4giga usb stck with the same machine and install vista business on it? will i get a stable performance with all the resource hungry vista features like aero? please help.