is ReadyBoost really worth it?

[Wildside]

i have an 8GB Kingston HyperX 30MB/s read, 20MB/s write. It has MUGEN stuff on it but i was just curious as if it was a good idea to use it for ReadyBoost or not to speed up my system. If it's worth it, i might just get another one (4GB) just to speed up my system.

so is it worth investing 4GB into as far as real-time performance?

 

[saltynay]

Move your default paging and documents file onto it would be better imo. Depends on your amount of ram though and whether you use superfetch in vista or a paging file at all. It will eventually kill the usb drive if you do choose to do it as they have finite writes. I used to use a micro sd card to the same effect.

For a device to be compatible and useful it must conform to the following requirements:

* The capacity of the removable media must be at least 256 MB (250 after formatting)
* Devices larger than 4 GB will have only 4 GB used for ReadyBoost
* The device should have an access time of 1 ms or less
* The device must be capable of 2.5 MB/s read speeds for 4 KB random reads spread uniformly across the entire device and 1.75 MB/s write speeds for 512 KB random writes spread uniformly across the device
* The device must have at least 235 MB of free space
* NTFS, FAT16 and FAT32 are supported (Vista Service Pack 1 and Windows 7 also support the new exFAT filesystem)
* The initial release of ReadyBoost supports one device
* The recommended amount of flash memory to use for Windows ReadyBoost acceleration is one to three times the amount of random access memory (RAM) installed in your computer

 

[C0RR0SIVE]

IMO, it is far cheaper and more beneficial to just buy another stick of RAM...

 

[KSoD]

ReadyBoost shows no benefit when having more than 1G of System RAM. Plus to be able to get any benefit out of ReadyBoost you must use a Flash Drive that is double your current capacity. So if you sig specs are right you would need a 6GB Flash Drive to even be able to properly use REadyBoost. Per the info that slaty posted it wouldnt work cause 4GB is the max.

 

[Wildside]

aww well that sucks. Ok i wont use it then. Just curious.

 

[SuxoR]

Does ReadyBoost shorten the life of your flash drive?

 

[Jorsoft]

Yes it does, as flash drives can only take a million or so read/write operations (this number might be higher on newer drives).

 

[Wildside]

Yes it does, as flash drives can only take a million or so read/write operations (this number might be higher on newer drives).

that doesnt sound so bad if u put it that way.

 

[C0RR0SIVE]

It isn't that bad, but if you are using it as a page file, imagine how many times its being read and wrote to in a short ammount of time. It can easily die with in the year... Or it could be one of the random ones that don't wanna die very easily.