Windows Vista ReadyBoost Research

While waiting on my new E1705 w/2 Gb Ram to show up next week with Vista Ultimate, I've been looking into Vista's ReadyBoost feature that uses thumb drives or flash memory cards as disk cache acceleration devices. I at first dismissed the idea but based on several users' positive results for decreasing certain tasks' load times, I'm going to give it a try as discussed below. The basic idea is to use a flash card or thumb drive to accelerate system response as a "booster" cache area for the window's page file. Even 2 Gb Ram systems typically still use the page file to some degree, so accelerating it should provide noticeable benefits on certain types of applications.

I saw a YouTube video that demonstrated a reduction of login time to the desktop from the Login screen with a normal time of 44 seconds reduced to just 14 seconds with a ReadyBoost device enabled. Other articles have described noticeably snappier index searches and general responsiveness increases, so I'm going to delve right into it for my machine.

My goal is to use the laptop's internal 5-in-1 flash card reader to tuck the media out of sight, so the focus of this post excludes USB thumb drives. Also, balanced performance among read/write/access speeds is noticeably slower for thumb drives compared to the latest flash memory cards acording to what I've been able to determine. Some thumb drives achieve similar access and read speeds of 1 ms and 20 Mb/s respectively, but they usually have write times about 1/3 or less than those of hi-speed flash cards.

Therefore, I've selected a flash card as my target device. The biggest question to me at this point, without having my E1705 laptop to test yet, is whether the internal Dell readers are any good? I see a lot of variation in the stats site below regarding which reader was used since the bottom tier of readers were over 10 times slower than the best ones.

To start with, here's a really great site for tracking down access and transfer speed differences among a lot of flash cards in various formats and in various readers:

http://www.hjreggel.net/cardspeed/

The focus of the above site is for digital camera usage, so it's worth a look-see for that reason as well.

Here's a RB (ReadyBoost) compatibility listing site for over 400 flash cards and thumb drives:

http://www.grantgibson.co.uk/misc/readyboost/

Based on these sites, I've selected the ReadyBoost compatible 2 Gb SanDisk SD Extreme III card as a $50 low cost addition to my Dell order in hopes that the E1705's internal 5-in-1 card reader performs decently with this hi-speed card. My experience with gaming applications is that optimizing your page file to the start of your disk drive's platter or better yet to a separate drive helps a great deal. So I'm hoping this feature can approach that type benefit for a system with just a single hard drive.

If it doesn't perform in the range of 19 Mb/s read and 18 Mb/s write speed with access latency of about 1 ms per testing when I receive the laptop, I'll look into the 3 or 4 card readers listed at the 1st site above that do reach those speeds. I'd much rather not have to since it'll be buklier than a thumb drive, but I'd just velcro an external reader to the lid of my machine if the internal reader is too slow. Thumb drives don't typically achieve the faster access times of flash cards, and for this application fast access is very important as described further below.

The 2Gb SanDisk SD Extreme 3 card is among the top 3 flash memory cards tested per the sites above and can currently be bought at Dell's accessories store for $71 with a $20 MIR for end price of $51 here:

http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/p...x?sku=A0918866

You might find it cheaper elsewhere, but I'm financing my Dell order and it was best for me to just buy it from Dell since it's a very reasonable price after the rebate and it has free shipping too. If this doesn't work as expected, then I'll just use the SD card for my digital camera even though I plan to keep its full 2 Gb size dedicated for ReadyBoost.

The SanDisk's 1 ms access performance level is roughly ten times faster for small file access times compared to hard drives that usually have latencies of 8 to 10 ms, so this should be an ideal route to go with for the RB cache feature. In addition, a lot of laptop drives actually fall to the 20 Mb/s speed level at the slowest portions of their platters. This means in fact that the fastest flash cards shown at the site above can now transfer data sequentially at speeds approaching those of single hard drives. This brings ReadyBoost into a new realm of possibilities.

The flash card approach might therefore boost performance similarly to having a 2nd hard drive dedicated to a paging file like I do with all the gaming desktops I've built. Heck, it might even do better with proper card selection due to the 10x faster random access time and in fact similar sequential speeds. A dedicated page file disk significantly reduces game stutters even for fast vid card Core 2 Duo machines with 2 Gb Ram. Since significant stutters usually get you "killed" in fast-twitch first person shooter games, it's a big help to perform proper page file optimization.

It would sure be convenient if the E1705's internal reader works decently since we can just pop in the card and leave it without gettting in the way like a thumb drive or external reader. I've bent a couple thumb drives when I got up from sitting in a chair with the machine on my lap and forgot they were sticking out of either the side or back USB ports. And I also broke one of the USB ports while bending the thumb drive, so for clutzes like me the internal flash card seems the best route to take for a ReadyBoost device.

Has anyone tried any SD cards of this caliber yet to find out the E1705 or M1710 internal reader's performance? Slower thumb drives or flash cards that barely pass the minimum speed threshold of 2.5 Mb/s are 10 times slower than a disk drive. These will very probably not perform well enough to make them worthwhile in my opinion. And in fact this looks to me to be the reason that a lot of users have not seen noticeable improvements from ReadyBoost. However, using one of the latest hi-speed cards according to their specs should make ReadyBoost quite worthwhile indeed.

I'll make sure to follow up next week after I can test mine, and will also do performance timing comparisons of before/after adding the card.

Per the reference sites I show in the original post, a Transcend SD 150x 4gb card looks pretty decent as an RB compatible device. It's read access is good at about 18 to 20 Mb/s but its write speed is in the range of 10 to 12 Mb/s. This is compared to the 2 Gb SanDisk's 18 Mb/s write speed. It looks to me like the 4 Gb units tend to trail the smaller devices' write speeds, probably due to the overhead of accessing the additional space. The Transcend unit's latency is sub 1 ms range too, so that one looks pretty good "on paper" to me but have no data if a Dell will read it. I opted for the 2 Gb SanDisk unit for its faster write speed, and it's well balanced with both read and write speeds just below 20 Mb/s. Perhaps the additional space of a 4 Gb unit might tend to offset the slower write speed to some degree. Also note that I've no idea if the SanDisk card will register properly in the Dell readers yet until I get my machine. I've no idea regarding the relative "hit" balance between reads and writes for the RB cache implementation. That info would be interesting to help estimate the impacts of how a slower write speed affects overall performance. I'm going under the assumption that a balance of read/write speeds is best at this point. Hopefully I'll have a chance to do my new E1705's testing next week.

Maybe we could post around on the Dell forums asking if anyone's E1705/M1710 or other Dell laptops can recognize the 2 Gb SanDisk SD Extreme III memory card. I've ordered it "blind" hoping that it'll work Ok.

I'll be a tad ticked off if it turns out to have a problem with the laptop's reader, lol. I'm not a Dell forum member yet, but I'll try to make it over there or else just email Dell Support with that question.

Groove75- you might want to cancel that Newegg order if possible, where I get a lot of upgrades myself too btw, before we know for sure or not if it'll register in your reader. NewEgg is so darn fast that sometimes it's hard to cancel an order before they've already got it in work, so I apologize if it's too late. I was referring to compatible in the sense of the Transcend unit being rated at high enough speeds for ReadyBoost per that stats site, not for whether the Dell readers will see it.

If my E1705's reader doesn't see the SanDisk Extreme 3 card properly, I still intend to buy one of the top readers listed at the first stats site in my original post anyway since I'm kinda obsessed with getting the best possible performance for games. I HATE stuttering around and getting killed in multiplayer games because of that. So be it if they pwn me otherwise, hehe.

hi zzpulp, i had considered that up front but the extra cost of going from 2 Gb to 4 Gb was just too much for my budget. I can sill use the SD card for our family digital camera too. I also run two gaming desktops with associated upgrades from time to time for my kids, so I couldn't spring for several hundred dollars more compared to just a $50 SD card.

Price difference was same reason for not picking up a M1710 instead of the E1705, even though it was really tempting, lol. I'll settle for performance that's fairly close after I OC the 1705 a bit.

Sorry, it was from the normal Login screen to the desktop after all the programs have loaded up initially. That didn't make too much sense to me either that a system typically is hitting the page file upon initial loading, but I saw an article somewhere that explains your system is initially setting up the page file as part of the normal start-up time- but this is assuming either a "re-login" or a user switch after log-off, not the first login after boot-up or a reboot. ReadyBoost apparently helps with that by whatever algorithm they've implemented. My goal is for normal operations though, so I'm not testing this out for that purpose as a primary focus anyway. I know you can go without a paging file if you have enough Ram, but 2 Gb is simply not enough for task switching among more than 3 or 4 serious apps. While gaming, I typically have a voice chat app open, text chat, fraps, the game itself, email running, mouse and keyboard profilers, sometimes a browser I've forgotten to close or Alt-Tabbed out to, etc... for convenience sake. And the recent games chew up over a Gb each nowadays, so system Ram flitters bye-bye in a flash... so to speak, lol. So I'm hoping ReadyBoost is a way to enhance a system cheaper than shelling out several hundred dollars more by a simple SD card plugin. I make no argument that this is as good as doubling main system Ram. And the verdict is still out at this time as pointed out that this is a research effort very much in progress. Since ReadyBoost works in tandem with your page file as it's whole purpose in life, I'm hoping the benefits approach that of paying big extra bucks for main system ram as a "poor man's" fillet mignon.

Yep, I've also seen the tests where it didn't make much difference at all too. That could easily be a poor performing thumb drive issue rather than the merit of the ReadyBoost feature itself.

Looking at the wide range of performance specs, there's literally over a hundred fold difference in the slowest devices to the fastest ones. So there's obviously a HUGE range of possible performance levels tied DIRECTLY to the flash device utilized as well as of course the reader itself. That's why I listed the sites originally for folks to do the comparison research on both the media cards AND the readers.

I hope this helps generate interest for folks to start testing what they've got in-hand so we can start seeing the best combos. As I said, I started off skeptical myself but considered it a worthwhile idea after seeing the hi-end specs of the fastest devices to invest in a $50 SD card that's on the high side.

There's gonna be a wide range of results from no performance gain ranging to some that could be eye catching. We shall see...

Anyone got ideas for a set of benchmarks to run on these for comparison's sake? I'll start off with mine seeing if anything changes on 3DMark tests, but I highly doubt it since those are Cpu and Gpu intensive. We need some multitasking benchmarks, but it's been awhile since I paid close attention to the latest tools in the mags.

True, I think the minimum is 2.5 Mb/s for acceptable performance before Vista will use it. With the fastest devices running a bit over 20 Mb/s on some readers, that's approximately an order of magnitude range in speed. So for a task that gets only a 2 sec boost for a low-end combo, the high end combo might get a 20 sec boost if it were a proportional benefit.

Pirx- any ideas on benchmarks to give a whirl? Stuckinasquare3- Definitely the best way is to try it out. Per the stat site's specs, that card typically delivers 1.5 Mb/s write speed and 6.0 Mb/s read speed. It may get rejected due to the write speed being less than 2.5 Mb/s, so try it and let us know if it gets accepted or not. Ah, here ya go- the site says a similar 4Gb version is not acceptable: <table id="readyboostTable" cellspacing="3" width="100%"><tbody><tr style="background: rgb(215, 228, 220) none repeat scroll 0% 50%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;"><td>Sony Memory Stick Pro Duo MSXM4GS</td><td>4GB</td><td>Incompatible</td></tr></tbody></table>