I have a Dell insipiron 15r laptop with 2 usb 3.0 ports and tried ready boost with a 32 gb usb 3.o flashdrive and yes, quite a big difference. The Dell runs win7, with intel i5 and 8 gigs of ram. Usb 3.0 & readyboost works
Can you share some of the stats that were improved?
BDD
10 years ago
I ran a little test using redyboost, and without. The redyboost had better results when leaving the jump drive in place over a couple weeks. In my case it made for faster running laptop.
Honey Singh
9 years ago
My Core i3 with 2 GB ram can experience some annoying lag on Windows 8.1 After installing a 4 GB flash drive for ReadyBoost, the lag is completely gone and there are no stutters anymore so I’m happy with that.
Kim
9 years ago
How different would results be if an USB 3.0 drive was used instead of 2.0?
Jim-Bob
9 years ago
I found that using a SD card for ReadyBoost on older machines with low RAM makes a dramatic improvement. I don’t have numbers, sorry, but I can tell you that a piece of crap Intel Atom CPU with 2GB of RAM run 200% better with ReadyBoost.
ChangelingTomalok
9 years ago
I like how they do not give you the performance specifications of the USB flash used. What is the point of testing the change in performance of the system when you do not measure the performance of the medium used to improve the performance first? Please use a high performance full sized sd(<$20) or a Crucial/Patriot calibur usb drive and not some most likely crap HP cheapo.
You also do not explicitly state how much of the drive space is utilized for ready boost(ie completely dedicated to ReadyBoost use)
I am starting to think the market is getting paid to downplay the benefits of readyboost to bolster SSD and Hybrid drive sales. Not all bad for the sake of paying for R&D into new technologies down the road but still dishonest.
Albin
9 years ago
Very informative. But my understanding has been that RB works by gradually building up a repository of “go to” data for various apps. Before it has built this up it can’t have much effect, and that’s pretty much what your testing demonstrates. But how will does it work. or not work, after a week or two of steady use on the same configuration? That seems to be more relevant than “out of the box” performance.
Steve
9 years ago
Had some serious hard drive thrashing on my 4 year old i3 4gb system. wasn’t interested in investing money for an ssd so I just threw in a spare sdcard and set it up for readyboost. wow, huge difference in *real world* usage. That is, I may have 20 browser sessions, some with heavy flash/Silverlight applications, pdf docs open. Then when I open something like a large video file comes the pain – massive thrashing and jerky mouse cursor , total system meltdown. Now with readyboost that is all but GONE. I can even have tons of sessions open and open up google earth (memory hog) with no massive slowdown. Can’t do it without readyboost. So I think this shows that benchmark programs are not realistic and I personally gave up on them back in the late 90s when I realized they were just too synthetic to tell you anything.
Thomas
9 years ago
I purchased a computer recently.
acer aspire xc-603g
4GB of RAM
It has a 3.0 usb port and I bought a 3.0 flash stick for $16.99.
Before ready-boost my computer would load web pages and YouTube videos and freeze up while trying to finish the load. It couldn’t handle multiple pages open without constant hiccups. Trying to play my favorite browser based game was horrible even on low graphic settings.
After Readyboost, with 3.99GB dedicated, I smoothly have been able to run 3 YouTube videos while running my same favorite video game I mentioned previously with maxed graphics. I haven’t tested the boundaries but I will say that the improvement is phenomenal.
personet5
9 years ago
I tried using ready boost on several computers over the years…it has NEVER been the boon that so called “pro” computer geek sites tell you…probably they never tried it themselves…it actually slowed down a couple of the laptops I have and as SOON as I removed the ready boost sd card my laptop became FAST again…the ready boost thing is all bullshite
dave me
8 years ago
ready boost isnt doing anything for me i have an 8 gb flash drive using it in my 3.0 usb drive dedicated to readyboost, i have a brand new 500 gb 7200 rpm hdd 4 g ram and wether its in or out my pc/laptop is slow as hell i only have win 7 64 bit ,chrome, mozilla ff, vlc player, and, adobeflash player,if i run 1 program its fine,but the moment i open something else up major slodown ram spikes to almost max, no virii, malware, rootkits, spyware, or anything bad on my pc/(laptop) no disc errors or corrupted files or programs just slow, i seriously have tried everything to help this out but found nothing, the motherboard is 4+ years old and because i am not using the original oem os that came loaded on the computer,it cant find the maker and says the bios flash is for asus notebooks only, i have an asus X44l, is there any way i can fix these issues, without having to invest more money into my machine, i also tuned my pc for best preformance, turned windows features off and in the advanced settings unclicked to customize windows to be as plain and boring looking as possible not using a theme, High contrast black but this thing is a snail in a turbo boosted world i seriously belive its cuz my bios is out of date, i cant get my laptop apart to get motherboards serial,or model numbers t see if i can go about getting the bios update that way, help please
Anon
8 years ago
Should have used a USB3.0 flash drive. USB2 real performance (much lower than theoretical) is very similar to just accesing the HD. Main value with USB2 is that what is on the Flash drive is now sequential (likely fragmented on the HD).
Vicky
8 years ago
On an ancient machine running windows 10 with 1GB of RAM and a disk spin of 5500 RPM adding a 4GB Casche on a class 4 SDHC card decreased startup and launch speed by 60%. When I added another GB of RAM there was a small increase of speed. The computer became more responsive but the change was not as measurable as the startup and load speed increase with the cache on the low memory slow rpm system. The 10 year old machine is now acceptable.
Valerio
8 years ago
Well done, thanks!
Andrei
8 years ago
Hi
I did something else. I installed the programm Ramdisk and chose the created partition that is actually stored in the computers Ram for ReadyBoost.
My notebook has 8gb of ram but my goal was another. I wanted to reduce read/write access to the hardrive. The Ram has about 1800mb/ sec speed so its way faster than any usb flash drive or ssd out there. I havent got any numbers now to check the actual difference but everything works quite fast.
ps: this method is only for computers with enough ram because the ramdisk will allocate some space of your ram.
in my oppinion this is the best method to relieve your hardrive from excessive read/write access
David
7 years ago
(Reviving an old thread I know, but…)
What the tests missed was that some systems are running things like Antivirus scanners that keep reading bits from the drive as well, with the potential result that the drive keeps seeking. If you have a machine where you can see on the Task Manager performance details that the disk is at 100% but the actual transfer rates aren’t high, then you may have issues with it spending most of its time seeking. Under those circumstances ReadyBoost can have a dramatic effect on performance – applications that were then taking minutes to open starting in seconds – the kind of difference that you don’t need a speed test to confirm, because the application startup time difference is about enough to go and make a cup of coffee. On a machine with 8GB of RAM and an 8-core CPU (and usage far below 100% for both). Perhaps try the benchmark’s again with a couple of AV and Malware scanners active and see how things differ?
I have a Dell insipiron 15r laptop with 2 usb 3.0 ports and tried ready boost with a 32 gb usb 3.o flashdrive and yes, quite a big difference. The Dell runs win7, with intel i5 and 8 gigs of ram. Usb 3.0 & readyboost works
Can you share some of the stats that were improved?
I ran a little test using redyboost, and without. The redyboost had better results when leaving the jump drive in place over a couple weeks. In my case it made for faster running laptop.
My Core i3 with 2 GB ram can experience some annoying lag on Windows 8.1 After installing a 4 GB flash drive for ReadyBoost, the lag is completely gone and there are no stutters anymore so I’m happy with that.
How different would results be if an USB 3.0 drive was used instead of 2.0?
I found that using a SD card for ReadyBoost on older machines with low RAM makes a dramatic improvement. I don’t have numbers, sorry, but I can tell you that a piece of crap Intel Atom CPU with 2GB of RAM run 200% better with ReadyBoost.
I like how they do not give you the performance specifications of the USB flash used. What is the point of testing the change in performance of the system when you do not measure the performance of the medium used to improve the performance first? Please use a high performance full sized sd(<$20) or a Crucial/Patriot calibur usb drive and not some most likely crap HP cheapo. You also do not explicitly state how much of the drive space is utilized for ready boost(ie completely dedicated to ReadyBoost use) I am starting to think the market is getting paid to downplay the benefits of readyboost to bolster SSD and Hybrid drive sales. Not all bad for the sake of paying for R&D into new technologies down the road but still dishonest.
Very informative. But my understanding has been that RB works by gradually building up a repository of “go to” data for various apps. Before it has built this up it can’t have much effect, and that’s pretty much what your testing demonstrates. But how will does it work. or not work, after a week or two of steady use on the same configuration? That seems to be more relevant than “out of the box” performance.
Had some serious hard drive thrashing on my 4 year old i3 4gb system. wasn’t interested in investing money for an ssd so I just threw in a spare sdcard and set it up for readyboost. wow, huge difference in *real world* usage. That is, I may have 20 browser sessions, some with heavy flash/Silverlight applications, pdf docs open. Then when I open something like a large video file comes the pain – massive thrashing and jerky mouse cursor , total system meltdown. Now with readyboost that is all but GONE. I can even have tons of sessions open and open up google earth (memory hog) with no massive slowdown. Can’t do it without readyboost. So I think this shows that benchmark programs are not realistic and I personally gave up on them back in the late 90s when I realized they were just too synthetic to tell you anything.
I purchased a computer recently.
acer aspire xc-603g
4GB of RAM
It has a 3.0 usb port and I bought a 3.0 flash stick for $16.99.
Before ready-boost my computer would load web pages and YouTube videos and freeze up while trying to finish the load. It couldn’t handle multiple pages open without constant hiccups. Trying to play my favorite browser based game was horrible even on low graphic settings.
After Readyboost, with 3.99GB dedicated, I smoothly have been able to run 3 YouTube videos while running my same favorite video game I mentioned previously with maxed graphics. I haven’t tested the boundaries but I will say that the improvement is phenomenal.
I tried using ready boost on several computers over the years…it has NEVER been the boon that so called “pro” computer geek sites tell you…probably they never tried it themselves…it actually slowed down a couple of the laptops I have and as SOON as I removed the ready boost sd card my laptop became FAST again…the ready boost thing is all bullshite
ready boost isnt doing anything for me i have an 8 gb flash drive using it in my 3.0 usb drive dedicated to readyboost, i have a brand new 500 gb 7200 rpm hdd 4 g ram and wether its in or out my pc/laptop is slow as hell i only have win 7 64 bit ,chrome, mozilla ff, vlc player, and, adobeflash player,if i run 1 program its fine,but the moment i open something else up major slodown ram spikes to almost max, no virii, malware, rootkits, spyware, or anything bad on my pc/(laptop) no disc errors or corrupted files or programs just slow, i seriously have tried everything to help this out but found nothing, the motherboard is 4+ years old and because i am not using the original oem os that came loaded on the computer,it cant find the maker and says the bios flash is for asus notebooks only, i have an asus X44l, is there any way i can fix these issues, without having to invest more money into my machine, i also tuned my pc for best preformance, turned windows features off and in the advanced settings unclicked to customize windows to be as plain and boring looking as possible not using a theme, High contrast black but this thing is a snail in a turbo boosted world i seriously belive its cuz my bios is out of date, i cant get my laptop apart to get motherboards serial,or model numbers t see if i can go about getting the bios update that way, help please
Should have used a USB3.0 flash drive. USB2 real performance (much lower than theoretical) is very similar to just accesing the HD. Main value with USB2 is that what is on the Flash drive is now sequential (likely fragmented on the HD).
On an ancient machine running windows 10 with 1GB of RAM and a disk spin of 5500 RPM adding a 4GB Casche on a class 4 SDHC card decreased startup and launch speed by 60%. When I added another GB of RAM there was a small increase of speed. The computer became more responsive but the change was not as measurable as the startup and load speed increase with the cache on the low memory slow rpm system. The 10 year old machine is now acceptable.
Well done, thanks!
Hi
I did something else. I installed the programm Ramdisk and chose the created partition that is actually stored in the computers Ram for ReadyBoost.
My notebook has 8gb of ram but my goal was another. I wanted to reduce read/write access to the hardrive. The Ram has about 1800mb/ sec speed so its way faster than any usb flash drive or ssd out there. I havent got any numbers now to check the actual difference but everything works quite fast.
ps: this method is only for computers with enough ram because the ramdisk will allocate some space of your ram.
in my oppinion this is the best method to relieve your hardrive from excessive read/write access
(Reviving an old thread I know, but…)
What the tests missed was that some systems are running things like Antivirus scanners that keep reading bits from the drive as well, with the potential result that the drive keeps seeking. If you have a machine where you can see on the Task Manager performance details that the disk is at 100% but the actual transfer rates aren’t high, then you may have issues with it spending most of its time seeking. Under those circumstances ReadyBoost can have a dramatic effect on performance – applications that were then taking minutes to open starting in seconds – the kind of difference that you don’t need a speed test to confirm, because the application startup time difference is about enough to go and make a cup of coffee. On a machine with 8GB of RAM and an 8-core CPU (and usage far below 100% for both). Perhaps try the benchmark’s again with a couple of AV and Malware scanners active and see how things differ?