What is Digg?102 Comments
- maninblac1, on 10/11/2007, -6/+65It should be said that this is a terrible evaluation, not to mention innacurate.
If this was overclockers, or tomshardware or hardocp where they publish the testing setup and procedure. And could give us a method to acquire reproducable results, then i wouldn't have any problem holding this review in high regard...but not enough is known about the setup, and test to give the article any credibility other than it's branding of PC World. - chris9902, on 10/11/2007, -6/+56http://tomshardware.co.uk/2007/01/31/windows-vista-superfetch-and-readyboostanalyzed_uk/
please, no more PC World. - chingy1788, on 10/11/2007, -6/+39I think ready boosts only helps for programs you access often
I read somewhere that ready boost uses the USB drive for caching files
so if you run a benchmarking program once, you might not see much of an improvement, run it a few times you might see an improvement
The article does not mention how many times the benchmark program(s) were run - maninblac1, on 10/11/2007, -21/+50Who are we going to trust, the MS architecture developers or PC world?
- davidcg, on 10/11/2007, -9/+27The ReadyBoost feature was build for current use and mostly FUTURE USE. It's only a matter of time until your usb drive (solid state) out performs a standard hard drive and that is what Microsoft is investing in.
In a few years you will see articles on how you SHOULD be using ReadyBoost. - L0t3k, on 10/11/2007, -3/+20PC World is garbage.
From the Tom's Hardware link Chris posted:
"The results are impressive: Using both features, Windows Vista shows off how it can effectively reduce application launch times to provide a better performance experience with your everyday software. At only 512 MB RAM, application launch times decrease from 9 seconds (OpenOffice Writer 2.1) and 10 seconds (Outlook 2007) to 2-4 seconds only. Adding our 1 GB USB 2.0 Flash stick helped to shorten launch times for these applications to 2-3 seconds only."
They go on to say that Vista on a machine with only 512MB of RAM just flat-out sucks... which I think we all knew. But I'd say that's a significant performance boost.... and as others have said, you can reproduce this yourself with the information supplied in the review. - jtjdt, on 10/11/2007, -10/+25It sure does boost thing up on a laptop with a 4,200RPM drive and 512MB of ram. Go ahead, see the difference.
- ninj3, on 10/11/2007, -2/+16@gotamd
If you have 2GB of high quality RAM anyway, why the hell would you need to use readyboost?
Readyboost is supposed to improve performance for those who can't afford extra ram but already have a memory stick handy. Readyboost is not meant to be better than getting more RAM. - grumpyrain, on 10/11/2007, -2/+13Why did they not mention how much RAM is in the boxes? It is probably the most critical measurement. ReadyBoost is not in a bubble. If you have enough RAM to make good use of Superfetch, then ReadyBoost is of no benefit. It is a stop-gap measure to cheaply take a low powered box with 512 MB RAM and get respectable performance on Vista. With 1-2GB, it is not going to be measurable.
- Doriath, on 10/11/2007, -0/+10The fact that they won't tell us if the test machine had 512MB or 4GB makes this test, and indeed the entire article, completely worthless.
In fact, I don't think the writer of the article has a clue what ReadyBoost is for. - 7of7, on 10/11/2007, -4/+14For a magazine called PCWorld they sure put out a lot of FUD. Next they'll be showing how Intel and AMD's CPU scaling features don't have any benefit when your computer isn't running.
- Jyuu, on 10/11/2007, -2/+10Here's the AnandTech article on the matter.
http://www.anandtech.com/systems/showdoc.aspx?i=2917&p=6 - rlg420, on 10/11/2007, -2/+10threepio,
"Microsoft's trying to push a $599 US DOLLARS operating system on me."
I don't know where you shop, but you might want to try a different place. Like this one maybe.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832116202
Yeah it's not the Ultimate yada yada. So here
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832116213 - L0t3k, on 10/11/2007, -0/+8Hybrid disks would be nice, but we have usb drives now.
- kozie, on 10/11/2007, -4/+11@gotamd
"I got a 4GB SDHC Class 6 (fastest speed rating) card card to use with my laptop with 2GB RAM and didn't notice any difference whatsoever,"
Class 6 SDHC is only 6mb/s, what do you expect? Most HDs are faster than that in the toughest situations. Get some 25mb/s SD cards and then try it again. - faclonX, on 10/11/2007, -2/+8Actually, I have 2GB of DDR2 in my desktop, I use a 1GB SD card for ReadyBoost, even with the 2GB of ram, I do notice an improvement with some applications, such as VMWare Server, SAM 4 with 3 encoders and over 4000MP3s, jEdit which is java based..., and firefox when I go on one of my 2+ week browse-a-thons where I never close a tab and end up with at least 50 open tabs in firefox. The down side is however, it takes a long time for my machine to boot with the SD card in, as it has to re-populate the superfetch cache on the card. The initial load of the cache is worth the improvement I get when I fire up 4 VMs all working on their own client side virtual network, and try to read digg, and any other sites at the same time...
- theonlyvlad, on 10/11/2007, -2/+7When I read about readyboost, I thought it was primarily for those with not a lot of RAM. If you have the gigs, then your computer doesn't do too much swap, so it won't benefit much.
My experience with readyboost was very bad though. My machine seemed to behave slower, although I did not conclusively pinpoint problem to readyboost. I had other crap software (like antivirus) running at the time which I later killed. - kheldorin, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5Doriath is right. It's just a cache, not a swap file. That's why in cases when it doesn't hit the cache, it actually slows down performance since it ends up still needing to read the HDD. I don't know what can be considered significant for you guys, but a 6% increase is pretty significant for me just by plugging in a flash drive I have lying around. It's not supposed to be a replacement for ram. That's why I think some people have overly high expectations for Readyboost.
- ThinkFr33ly, on 10/11/2007, -0/+5From what I've found, Readyboost only gives noticeable perf improvements on machines with 1GB of RAM or less. A machine with 2GB seems to gain nothing.
Since PC World neglected to document the specs of the machine in question, it's pretty hard to come to any conclusions.
Furthermore, people whom have tested Readyboost on machines with less than 2GB have had much different results.
See: http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/12/07/183118.php - totorototoro, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4I'm guessing this is really one of those YMMV kinda things.
- Netmindstorm, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4"Class 6 SDHC is only 6mb/s, what do you expect? Most HDs are faster than that in the toughest situations. Get some 25mb/s SD cards and then try it again."
Wrong....Class 6 specifies that the *minimum* write speed is 6MByte/sec. A card *could* write faster than 6MBytes/sec and still be class 6. That being said, I have not found a class 6 SDHC card as fast as sandisk's ultra III SD (non HC) card. - grumpyrain, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3> Umm, I have never used Ready Boost so maybe I am off on this but the concept, as I understand it from reading the white papers, has been available for
> years under Linux. It is a pretty trivial task to mount a swap partition on a USB stick.
It is, but ReadyBoost is not a substitute for the on-disk swap file. It is a level between virtual memory and RAM that tries to take advantage of the relative cheapness of solid state to RAM and seek time advantage solid state has over disk. So yes, you can mount a swap file on a USB drive (not sure whether Windows lets you or not, never tried) but it is not the same thing. - deadbaby, on 10/11/2007, -12/+15I doubt it. ReadyBoost is a fundamentally flawed idea compared to true hybrid hard drives. The overhead of copying that data to the flash stick is always going to be a problem because USB adds a whole extra layer of complexity to the process. The data has to travel from your HD over SATA, buffered into RAM, then moved to the northbridge through the USB controller into the Flash stick. That's a ton of work (and CPU cycles) for a feature that is supposed to give you a performance boost. A true hybird HD (where the flash is located in the drive itself) is a far better solution and has the added benefit of being OS agnostic.
- killtherebel, on 10/11/2007, -2/+5What reputable source benchmarks with beta software?
- damndj, on 10/11/2007, -1/+4If you have 1 Gig of memory or lower, then ReadyBoost may provide you benefits. Any more RAM than that, then you could actually slow down performance.
- grumpyrain, on 10/11/2007, -7/+10> That's a ton of work (and CPU cycles) for a feature that is supposed to give you a performance boost.
Don't forget that the CPU cycles are measured in billions per second while hard drive seek time is measured in milliseconds. A modest CPU could do 10000 cycles before a server level SCSI hard drive could finish its seek time. Hard drives however have faster transfer speed for contiguous blocks. When it comes to reading small pieces of scattered data, reading from solid state is faster. - cynicist, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3I would rather just buy more/faster system memory...
- majmera, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3The statement "the only difference is that the USB drive is 10 times faster than the HD" is not entirely correct.
Readyboost tries to take advantage of the fact that USB drives have lower seek times than a actual HD (which probably requires mechanical movement of the head etc). Eventually though (after the seek), the HD is much more faster than a USB drive on the data transfer. So logically if you are only going to read small chunks of data , the USB drive could be faster than a HD.
If you were to read/write a large amount of contiguous data, the HD would be much faster than the USB drive. - DrThunder, on 10/11/2007, -1/+4Mac fanboys + Vista is bad story = 3000 diggs
- DrThunder, on 10/11/2007, -1/+4My Vista media center PC would take 30 to 60 seconds to go to sleep and wake up. With readyboost it is about 5 seconds. I guess that is little to no improvement, who knew?
- fredjorgenson, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3Lame article with an inflamitory headline! No details of the setup or amount of ram at all. They report that the apps load 5 - 6% faster and they still conclude that there is no improvement? Also, PCMark is a largely synthetic test that does not measure user impact. Application and document load time are what really mater. If the user percieves that the system and apps are more responsive, then Readyboost is doing it's job. It seems to me that this IS what they found.
Bury This! - Sasquatch, on 10/11/2007, -1/+4Hybrid hard drives have the benefit of boosting boot times, but they just cache recently used stuff, they don't have the intelligence of Readyboost. When large drives are completely solid state Readyboost is pointless though.
- inactive, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2This just in, Macs aren't really 'all that stable'. More at 11.
- computergod, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2No, RAM is faster then flash (0.5ms vs. 2ns). RAM is also much faster (few MB/s vs. a bit over 1GB/s).
- whisperedlie, on 10/11/2007, -2/+4i don't think people understand the purpose of ReadyBoost. It is intended to help increase performance on systems where memory is limited and hardware constraints will not allow for the addition of more.
Think of virtual memory: if you don't have enough physical memory, Windows will use the much, much slower virtual memory to compensate. Adding more physical memory in this case will result in a noticeable increase in performance. If there is less of a demand for physical memory, adding more will have little to no effect. The results of using ReadyBoost would be similar to this.
Some of the complaints presented in this article and in the comments sound like the statements my uninformed friends make when they upgrade from 2GB to 4GB and don't see a huge effect. So, in summary, ReadyBoost will only be effective if your system is starved for physical memory, but your hardware limitations will not allow you to add enough. And in that department, ReadyBoost performs quite well. - Doriath, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2"This isn't a separate page file store, but rather a cache to speed up access to frequently used data."
- Matt Ayers, Program Manager in the Microsoft Windows Client Performance group
http://blogs.msdn.com/tomarcher/archive/2006/06/02/615199.aspx - Doriath, on 10/11/2007, -5/+7"pros and cons of mounting a USB stick as swap"
This is NOT what is happening with ReadyBoost. It's a cache for the swapfile, which is still on your HDD, not a place to actually put the swapfile. - Mistuke, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2I don't get it, if the majority of the people agree that the article is garbage, would someone please explain to me, how it got 484 diggs? do people just press the digg button without reading the article?
- jonnyq, on 10/11/2007, -5/+7Linux users have been able to tell you for years the pros and cons of mounting a USB stick as swap. Not saying Windows can't manage it better by actually managing it, but there's an upper limit on the pros, and lower limit on the cons.
- computergod, on 10/11/2007, -2/+4PC world is just bloody worthless. Mind telling us how much RAM is in those systems? Care to note how much is being used?
It only works if your system is low on RAM, crunching away at the hard drive.
This *was* a good idea when RAM prices were through the roof because of price fixing. Now you can buy DDR2 for $50/gig. - Doriath, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Source is first hit on google: Tom Archer's Blog
"When a surprise remove event occurs and we can't find the drive, we fall back to disk. Again, all pages on the device are backed by a page on disk. No exceptions. This isn't a separate page file store, but rather a cache to speed up access to frequently used data."
Anybody who dugg down my prior comment about it being a cache for the swap file, not another swap file, really should go edumacate themselves. :)
http://blogs.msdn.com/tomarcher/archive/2006/06/02/615199.aspx - brownb2, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Answering my own post again, I guess it may be for data consistency.
- brownb2, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1@Doriath
Do you have a source for this - a write to hard disk for each would be pointless and delay the cache write? I've noticed a fresh boot of Vista (I usually hibernate for faster boot) using the sysinternals processmonitor that the readycache is loaded immediately (according to Vista specs with statistically frequent data I would assume would usually be in swap, i.e. configs, small dlls etc) - this really grinds a laptop hard disk. Once this operation is complete I don't see any further readyboost service specific process requests, but I do see the usb drive flashing continuously (but not the hard disk anymore). - estvir, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1> I doubt it. ReadyBoost is a fundamentally flawed idea compared to true hybrid hard drives.
Maybe that's why they have something called 'ReadyDrive' which is support for hybrid drives.
"Windows ReadyDrive
Windows ReadyDrive is a new feature in Windows Vista that enables PCs equipped with a hybrid hard disk—a new kind of hard disk that adds flash memory to a standard mobile PC hard disk drive—to enjoy better performance, greater reliability, and longer battery life."
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/features/details/performance.mspx
Is Vista the first OS to support them ? - grumpyrain, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1> MS even says a "2-1 ratio" is a good rule of thumb. 2megs of readyboost to 1 meg of real ram.
It is only a rule of thumb, probably based on profiling with many current machines to get an easy to understand figure. That does not mean it will hold true always under every configuration. If your RAM is sufficient to hold everything it will ever need inside the Superfetch cache, why would it rely on the slower ReadyBoost? It doesn't, so you will get no advantage. - kheldorin, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1@deadbaby
The copying of data is not done when you're launching your applications. So why would it affect the speed? Readyboost is about the faster seek times of flash drives compared to physical disks. It's about read time not write time. The writing to cache can be done at any time and probably be best when the cpu is idle, not when it is performing something. - Tenoq, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Tom's Hardware does somewhat reflect the PC World conclusion that in some circumstances, ReadyBoost slows down the system. Take a good look at the charts for 2GB systems - in a few instances applications launch slower with ReadyBoost than they otherwise would with just 2GB of RAM.
In reality, anyone trying to run Vista with less than 2GB of RAM is asking for a slow machine... 1GB is tolerable up until you add a security/av/firewall suite of some sort. 512MB is a joke, obviously. - BigglesPiP, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1In real world benchmarks with a very very small read Flash wins.
- gwolf, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Memory quality is very important. Oddly enough I got the best results with memory stick pro duo.
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