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- Nitrogen, on 10/12/2007, -1/+24Sure, for some people it might not be an advantage. For me, I have four of those headers on my motherboard. I have two front-mounted ports, taking up two of those headers. I have six more USB connectors on the back, which is more than I have devices to hook to them. So, the two spares on the motherboard go unused. It would be beneficial to me to get one of these because it uses up an unused header, and leaves the connectors on the back free for when I do need them. Additionally, it's one less thing hanging off my case. I like the idea.
- chingy1788, on 10/12/2007, -4/+25Clever? not so much
like said in the comments on that page
Instead of taking 1 USB port, It takes an entire USB header, effectively taking 2 potential USB Ports
I would appreciate something connecting to those PCI Express 1x slots or something to fill up those SATA headers, IDE headers and FDD if that still exists recent motherboards - EBFoxbat, on 10/12/2007, -1/+18I may be wrong buy I think Vista mandates that a RB device be on a USB bus. BTW, plugging into a header doesn't take up potential USB ports, it takes up 127, since you're talking about potentially wasted space.
- ahhell, on 10/12/2007, -0/+15Jesus you people will bitch about anything!
It's an OPTION to using an external USB key. Since not every case has a front USB ports, this sounds like a good OPTION for those people...like me. - mrsteveman1, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8You can use SD cards for readyboost as well.
On laptops where Readyboost is most useful, integrated SD slots are on the PCI bus which is a bit faster than USB (less latency). Plus, the card is basically inside, whereas if i have to insert a USB stick every time i open the notebook it's a huge problem. I've also found that inserting a readyboost USB stick after the system has been used a while makes the system a bit unstable. This happened on a number of sticks i tested, all different brands, all new.
The other advantage of SD is that with SD cards i can tell what the speed of the card will be, since most of them list speed on the package in some way, which means i can find a card that i know the speed of and know what i will be getting out of it. - Saint3k, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Yeah, because buying a new motherboard is both cheaper and easier than plugging a flash drive in.
- Invid, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7I tried it with a machine that has 2GB of RAM on an X2 3800+ @ 2.5GHz. As you can imagine, the difference, if there was one, was pretty small. Additionally, I had video playback problems (frequent hitching at SD resolutions, crashing) in iTunes and Media Player Classic that went away when I turned off Readyboost.
The video problem was repeatable, but may also be due to immature nVidia drivers (WMP had no issues though). I would recommend that readyboost should only be used when you have no options for additional RAM. - ozziegt, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9Well, actually 4GB of RAM is still going to run you $300-400 while this will cost around $30.
- smackkmonkey, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Ya, then we can have fun connecting multiple 'pass-through' keys together in a long series, forming lego-like lightsabers!
- rm999, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6"Not really... I believe this is most commonly referred to as RAM..."
No! This is not correct. RAM is volatile, meaning when you turn your computer off it gets reset. Flash memory, on the other hand, can be used to store data consistently that you may always need. Also, it is slower than RAM but an order of magnitude cheaper.
Flash's non-volatile nature does not make it suitable for storing the OS for boot-up, because that is generally a sequential read, whereas flash shines in random access. It would be ideal for large caches of information that cannot fit into memory.
Computer architects discovered a long time ago how to take advantage of the different storage technologies with different speed/storage/cost ratios. It goes:
Harddrive -> RAM -> Cache
Flash is simply being placed into this hierarchy between the harddrive and the RAM. - ozziegt, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6How does buying RAM save money? 4GB of RAM is $300-400! This is a very cheap way to get your swap file off your HDD and onto a flash device.
- conmulligan, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6"Save your money, buy more ram."
I have a similar setup to Nitrogen, but all my RAM ports are full. For 15 quid this would be a nice and easy way to speed up my machine. - goodbeershow, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Is Readyboost worth toying with? Has anybody used it?
- spyrochaete, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4ReadyBoost has nothing to do with swap files. It caches commonly loaded data from the most frequently executed programs which allows them to start up a little faster.
- stucktildekey, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5"Wouldn't it be the same as regular ram... but slower?"
No, it would be the same as a hard drive, but faster. ReadyBoost's focus is reducing the latency between moving files on the hard drive to RAM and flash memory provides a cost-effective way of doing that. - stucktildekey, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4"That whole 127 devices per channel thing really annoyed me because no manufacturer adds a female plug to let you daisychain USB gadgets together. That should have been a mandatory part of the standard."
It's more of a power issue than anything. That's why USB splitters require external power the majority of the time. Not to mention, I doubt anyone has the case realestate for 127 USB ports. - conmulligan, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5"Wouldn't it be the same as regular ram... but slower?"
Yes but cheaper.
I suppose that's a moot point really; ram is dirt cheap these days. - grumpyrain, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4"I suppose that's a moot point really; ram is dirt cheap these days."
RAM may be cheaper than it has ever been but compared to flash it is still expensive. You can get 8GB of flash for around the price of 1GB of decent RAM. A 1GB USB flash can be bought for around $US20, and from all reports the performance benefits are quite noticable. Of course, it would go even faster with an additional 1GB of RAM, but it is a bang-for-your-buck argument.
I imagine with the price of flash falling the rate it has, motherboards will shortly ship with a couple of GB built in for Superfetch, and not sort of just hacked in like the one in the article. - spyrochaete, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I argue that front USB ports are the worst place to put a ReadyBoost drive. Seems to me there's a far greater chance of accidentally whacking it and snapping it off or something.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Searching for "readyboost benchmarks" on google comes up with few results and it seems readyboost doesn't do much.
- op12, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4@chingy: Yes, supposedly they've accounted for the limited number of writes you can do to a flash drive. But they're very vague about how they did it.
Q: Won't this wear out the drive?
A: Nope. We're aware of the lifecycle issues with flash drives and are smart about how and when we do our writes to the device. Our research shows that we will get at least 10+ years out of flash devices that we support.
From here: http://blogs.msdn.com/tomarcher/archive/2006/06/02/615199.aspx - jdogg707, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4I'm not sure where I see the advantage of an internal ready boost solution. Part of the bonuses to using Ready Boost is not having to do anything but plug a USB thumb drive into your computer, no opening the case up or any of that jazz. For those people who can and are willing to open their cases up, who not just add more RAM. Seems a bit misguided to me.
- yasth, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Ummm I believe internally most laptop mem card readers use USB.. But yes it works quite well. (and is one of the few uses of MemoryStick I have)
- spyrochaete, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3It works with SD as well. This is preferable for laptops because you don't have to have a big honkin' USB drive sticking out the side.
- ozziegt, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4OK, yeah I see that now. Well in that case people who are comparing this to RAM are just a bunch of numnuts...
- kalidav, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Wouldn't it be the same as regular ram... but slower?
- Eccles, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2If used smartly, this should also help speed up boot/wake-from-hibernation times, because the flash memory is nonvolatile.
- spyrochaete, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2That whole 127 devices per channel thing really annoyed me because no manufacturer adds a female plug to let you daisychain USB gadgets together. That should have been a mandatory part of the standard.
- ElSimo, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3why not just make a USB memory with key with a pass-through to another USB port? simple. problem solved
- immrlizard, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I agree with those wondering about it taking the header place of 2 (potential ) usb ports. My Motherboard has a good number of those ports plus the header for more ports so I would rather use them, but I dugg it for the added possibility. Innovation is good
- stephenwq, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Ummm.... No. USB ports only provide 500ma. You'd be draining at least half of that if you had one, let along a daisy chain of them.
- Invid, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Unfortunately Topher06, USB2 has a theoretical maximum of 60MB/s (480Mbps) which it can never achieve due to signaling overhead. Even if you could somehow manufacture a 100MB/s flash drive, it would be constrained by the USB interface. The flash drives that you see appearing in notebooks are on the SATA bus, which Readyboost can't leverage. BTW the flashdrive I used was a 2GB USB2 device.
One last tidbit...flash drives excel in random access, not sequential reads. Any decent, modern 7200rpm HDD will trounce flash in large sequential read throughput, though as you mentioned, performance is highly variable across the span of the platter. - ChumpChief, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1RB rather than RAM because it's cheap.
Internal rather than external so you can plug it in once and leave it.
Of course, adding RB AND more RAM would be ideal :) - cheddarlump, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1This would kick ass for a SFF computer's boot drive.. I think I might pick one up.. plenty of room to install Ubuntu onto..
- Topher06, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Microsoft is making the reasonable assumption that flash memory will get faster, it really depends on how fast your flash memory is. USB has the potential bandwidth to exceed most desktop hard drives, and because flash memory doesn't suffer from differences in performance depending on where the data is stored (unlike hard drives which has significant performance differences across the platter) accessing application content from a flash drive is more optimal then from a hard drive.
This is a new feature and yes most current flash drives don't have the performance necessary to make ReadyBoost offer a significant improvement. I have yet to find one that actually can be used with ReadyBoost because its bandwidth and space isn't accepted by VIsta. When flash cards started having 100+mb/s access you will see performance improvements. - faizoro, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0InnoDisk uses (if available) internal mobo usb header pins.
Design is ideal. Beware- though this device does meet the requirements for speedboost, it is "not a speed demon".
Questions: 1. Are laptops likely to have available such header pins- if so is this thing going to fit? (I think not) 2. If dual booting say Ubuntu, any benefit/bugs?
Also concerning those who are talking about 'wasting usb header pins' or however you would prefer to express the notion: um- my mom and most people would have no idea about exploiting those pins in any other respect if they are not already in use. Clearly if there is some other dire-need for the header pins you should not use this device- but if you have pins to spare and don't need additional USB connectors man this is a good idea. Something tells me most of the people geeky enough to understand 1. what this is for and 2. how to install it are also reasonably capable of figguring out whether they are going to run into a "not enough header pins crisis- O what shall I do- Harikari or hemlock?" crisis. Call me crazy. - Topher06, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Its not the same as RAM guys, geeze, go find out what ReadyBoost is all about and stop comment spamming without any knowledge of what your talking about. You still have to LOAD applications into RAM, so having 1gb or 100gb doesn't speed up loading the application. ReadyBoost allows frequently run applications to be cached and launched more quickly, which is typically faster on a FLASH based device then a hard drive. There is extra overhead launching an application of a hard drive, and then depending on where the application data is stored on the hard drive, the speed can be much slower.
There is so much ignorance here about this feature, and the usual anti-microsoft pessimism. Stop claiming that more RAM will speed up loading an application, your ignorance is painful as well as the fact you didn't RTFA or even RTFComments.
"Couldn't this also reduce idle time power consumption if you're running something like folding@home, allowing the hard drives to sleep?" No because your not running folding@home OFF a usb drive, your just launching the application into memory from the USB drive. Unless you setup folding@home to use a flash drive to store its data, it will still access the hard drive. - Eccles, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Couldn't this also reduce idle time power consumption if you're running something like folding@home, allowing the hard drives to sleep?
- chingy1788, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2whoa whoa whoa...
hang on...
did they solve those problems with memory where after so many write cycles the flash memory goes bad?
if its doing cache work it will be accessed often, so how long will a stick of flash memory last with vista using ready boost? - Twango, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1What team of geniuses came up with a name like "readyboost"?
- stucktildekey, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1"@chingy: Yes, supposedly they've accounted for the limited number of writes you can do to a flash drive. But they're very vague about how they did it."
Very easily done... they continuously perform second or minute long read-write cycles on the drive and then clock how long it took to fail. - bigdroo, on 10/12/2007, -6/+3Guys, instead of buying a USB thumb drive for your computer, why not just buy more ram? That doesn't require any tricks to improve performance, nor do you have to worry about how solid everything else written by Microsoft (or for Microsoft) is.
- jmnormand, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1kinda nice having it inside but yes pci exp 1x would have been a better choice, this costs more usb ports than it saves.
- TheTrueAPlus, on 10/12/2007, -7/+2Clever.
- EBFoxbat, on 10/12/2007, -9/+4No, it's not. It has little to do with external USB keys. It's an *internal* USB key.
- EBFoxbat, on 10/12/2007, -8/+2Just curious: have ever actually done it? I thought RB had to be USB.
- Hello1024, on 10/12/2007, -6/+0If I'm gonna bother taking the cover off my PC, I might as well just add another stick of RAM - after all thats what readyboost is designed todo anyway - speed up low-ram systems.
- Mootabolife, on 10/12/2007, -9/+2Save your money, buy more ram.
- Vrail, on 10/12/2007, -9/+2Not really... I believe this is most commonly referred to as RAM...
- Slyer, on 10/12/2007, -10/+1Thats lame, its the same as a regular flash drive, just a different connector.
Why not get one of these boards? it has flash memory actually integrated.
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/107302/asus-p5b-premium-vista-edition.html
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