Best Ready Boost media to use.

First my system.

Lenovo Thinkpad T61, core2duo 2.5ghz, 4GB ram (ddr2), SATA2 hdd.

I currently have 1GB of Intel turbo ram installed which I believe works similar to the way "Ready boost" works, but if someone can explain the difference, that would be nice too, but my question is about adding some flash memory so I can activate readyboost.

Since having a usb device sticking out the side of my laptop isn't desireable, I'm considering using the 4in1 card reader it comes with. I was looking at some SDHC cards (class 10) which are rated at 10MB/s, but there are some that are rated at 30MB/s too, although they cost a lot more. I believe usb2.0 is rated at 54MB/s? and are much cheaper, but it's a shame it would be so awkward on a laptop.

Are these cards going to be fast enough to be of any real help?

Should I get a 32GB class 10 for $40, or and extreme class 10 that is 30MB/s for twice as much, or should I just go with an SSD drive?

Or how about a cheaper cars, perhaps a class 6 or 10 in 8GB size ($5-10).

Am I going to see enough improvement to be worth doing this? there is also driver updates and compatibility issues I've read about with SDHC cards, so it may be more trouble then it's worth and I'm not really sure if having the turbo ram will negate much of the benefit of readybooost. I'm sure it's a lot faster then flash memory in any of these cards. I have a 512MB compact flash card I could use, it's old so it's probably slow, but it's only taking up space now, but microsoft recommends the readyboost memory be 1-3 times size of ram I think (4-12GB), so would a 512MB card be of any benefit? (min size for readyboost is 256MB)

Thanks in advance,

TuuS

Actually I'd like to go beyond 4gb, but this machine is limited to 4.

I do a LOT of multitasking with it. I normally have three internet browsers open and a couple dozen web pages, photoshop x64 and a host of other apps. I actually often grind it to a halt for lack of ram.

Regarding ram, while I got your attention let me ask another question. I'm aware that any 32bit app is limited to 2GB of memory, but is that 2GB of physical RAM or 2GB combined RAM and page file memory? The reason I ask is whenever I see an app grinding to a halt, it never shows near 2GB of memory in use, but (for example), I've seen Google Chrome (chrome.exe) using over 800MB of ram and grinding to a halt when I have 2GB of free ram available,so I'm assuming it's reaching the max that a 32 app can handle? perhaps the ram and paging memory combined are reaching the limits?

At the moment I'm no where near grinding to a halt, but Chrome is running 12 (chrome.exe) processes ranging from 50 to 500MB of ram each, so it seem they use a "work-a-round" of running the app multiple times to get past the 2GB limit?

So your probably thinking I'm insane for expecting my laptop to run so much at once, but hey... if it will do it, then why not, and if there is something I can do to get it to handle more, then I want to look into it.

ps. Anyone know much about the Intel Turbo Ram? and thank you for your opinions... I think you've convinced me not to spend a lot of money on a flash card.

Some of the browser based games that use adobe flash can run up the ram to unstable limits, and if you have several of them open at the same time, then it's definitely more then a 4GB machine can handle. I'm not saying your wrong, you can obviously run the apps you mentioned and keep things stable, but there are combinations of apps that are just to much for a 4GB pc to run .

As for the 2GB app limit, I thought the same as you, but having seen this happen so many times makes me wonder if the programs ability to address the memory is a total of all program memory, regardless if it's physical ram chips or harddrive space used as ram. I guess to be 100% sure I'd have to do a lot of research.

Again I thank you all, you've convinced me that readyboost isn't going to be something I'm likely to invest in, but I might try using my existing 512mb compact flash card to see if it makes any difference at all. I might experiment with a usb device too, just as a simple way of testing readyboost.

I would still like to know more about the Intel Turbo Ram, like exactly what it does. The product advertises moving popular processes into this memory chip that installed in a mini pci-expess slot. My best guess is that it works like readyboost except with much faster memory, like ram memory speed instead of usb speed (or slower).

I also have an older thinkpad with a Pentium4, 1.9ghz and 1GB ram. Unfortunately is only supports usb1.1 and has no cardreaders installed, so I'm wondering if readyboost would help it.

8gb ram is not an overkill. i play SC2 and it uses 1.8gb ram so i can use up to 4gb with all the services and some apps . unusable ram amounts to .8gb. superfetch makes use of the remaining ram. so i end up with .3gb free. superfetch cache applications that u always use. so 8gb makes sense.

readyboost compliments the superfetch with extra memory of the flashdisk drives which are good in random read/write. results are very noticeable in <2gb ram systems.

Microsoft seems to suggest that Readyboost is helpful, even with with today's larger RAM setups.

ReadyBoost - Windows 7 features - Microsoft Windows