Windows 7: Windows ReadyBoost does it actually work?

Agreed on SSD to improve performance but prices are still high and I like all my installation files on one partition in the C:\ drive so a 500GB SSD is not an option for me and many others.

On ram, I disagree. Ram can only and will only speed up your system of you actually make use of it. My system idles at 1GB out my 4GB and I never go over 2.5GB regardless of what I doing, bare in mind I do not use intensive Photo and Video editing software. So having 4/6/8/12GB of ram does nothing for me and for most users out there ATM, IMO.

This is where ReadyBoost kicks in, if you do not already own a SSD or 10, 000 RPM hard drive then ReadyBoost will help. ReadyBoost does little to improve on program loading and Windows startup times on system already equipped with 4GB or more ram. However, I noticed significant boosts when loading Photos/Videos and thumbnails of Photo/Video files even with 4GB of ram.

USB flash drives are cheap and you can always make other uses for them if you decide not to use it for ReadyBoost. But if you buy 8GB ram and never go over 4GB or buy a 128GB SSD for 4x the price of a 500GB hard drive knowing that you'll use 500GB then that's what I call wasting money.

i have X32 bit windows with 2gb ddr3 ram and i used a transcend 4gd usb as readyboost but i dont see any improvements.. is it necessary to use ready boost.. well i dont use my usb often so i dedicated it to readyboost..

I wouldnt. Ready boost is marginal at best and can cause BSOD's. Invest in Ram.

I have a crappy low end system I purchased hoping to upgrade it.
Once I got it home, however, I was saddened to find it was basically un-upgradeable in many aspects. It originally came with 2gig RAM and a 250gig HDD, no extra power ports and a RAM cap of 4 gig. on a 64 bit system this sucked..

Originally the computer was lightning fast, but as soon as I started playing my favorite xp games (Command and Conquer) things went south, major random lag problems when running anything in compatibility mode.. I installed the cap of 4gig RAM. and my xp games worked ok, just ok.

The other night, I plugged in an old 16 gig flash and dedicated 4gig to ready boost.
It frees up the little tidily processes so my applications dont lag anymore. I find this helps greatly with speeding up how the system works in compatibility mode programs.

All in all. When 4gig of ram is all you're allowed, and you have 3tb of drives, ready boost is a positive thing. I'm actually going to go out and buy a fast ready boost built drive.

I'm no expert, but thats my $0.02

Weaselwarrior,
You make a good point. With many systems the addition of a readyboost drive can speed things up. I used readyboost up till the recent addition of a SSD drive. In my case the use of the RB device added very little added speed but I can imagine in many systems it would prove valuable.

Quick Readyboost review on my end. I have an ASUS eeePC 1008HA (1GB ram, Windows 7 Starter). I put a 2GB 133x (Class 6 SDHC) card in and dedicated it to Readyboost. I just wanted to give it a try instead of ripping the thing apart to put a 2GB memory module upgrade.

At first I didn't think it had done anything.. but I guess it takes time to load all the prefetch and data and commonly used programs. The difference on this netbook is like night and day now. Everything is zippy. Boot time is probably 25-50% faster (subjectively as I didn't measure it). It definitely had a large impact on this machine. Of course it will never fully substitute a ram upgrade, but it was quite helpful. It may also help that I'm using one of the older SD cards that were manufactured with SLC and having faster write performance.

yeah, sd cards are perfect for readyboost - cheap, easy to install-and-forget, without bits poking out of the machine.



as you say, doesn't compare to 'proper' ram, but it's certainly a useful upgrade!

That's what I'm hoping. My new netbook has Home Premium installed with 1GB RAM, and I picked up a Class 10 4GB SDHC card for $7.00. I just stuck it in and set it up, so it will be interesting to see over the next few days how much it helps.

Am I correct in assuming that I do not want to assign my page file to the card, and I should leave all the virtual memory stuff alone?

if your system is performing well and you have enough RAM for the load, your paging file should be hit very infrequently. However, if you do move the paging file, even Microsoft recommends placing the paging file on an SSD (or similar) device, for what it's worth. Again, a properly scaled system should use the paging file so infrequently that it shouldn't be an issue, but drives designed mostly for read performance (like a CF or SSD) are good places for it.

Readyboost works great for me. I used all of a 4gb flash drive. I don't notice an improvement normally, but when I use huge applications its much faster. Especially if I run like 10 runescape bots at a time.