Windows Vista RAM question

[Japan-Games.com]

Hey

I've heard that Vista can use the RAM from a USB drive as system RAM. Has anyone tried this? Are there any limits? Better performance?

Thanks!

[Alchy]

Heard about them elsewhere and have been wondering about them too, what exactly is in these Vista dongle things?

[mairsil]

If you are regularly exceeding the amount of physical RAM you are using (subsequently churning the virtual memory on the hard drive), then using flash memory would give you *slightly* better performance. However, there is no substitute for more physical RAM.

[cahaz]

I don't know if you can, but if its real it's sure to be not as good as goo' ol' ram.

[kammedo]

RAM is the quickiest you can get. Point.

[Barc0de]

you probably mean virtual memory. The whole purpose of work ram is to be integrated into the system and provide a super-fast work space. It's what seperates every other storage medium from the main system.

It's impossible for a USB or other user-interface port to have the speed of RAM firstly, and there are many other complications as well.

[madhatter256]

Vista ReadyBoost. You need a USB Thumb Drive that meets Readyboost specification. They recommend putting in at least 1gig or half of the amount of RAM you currently have. Depending on what you do on your computer you will notice a performance increase very noticeably or marginally.

[opethfan]

My 1 gig PNY stick 'didn't pass'. Not that I care, Vista's horrible.

[ServiceGames]

Madhatter is this basically just virtual memory or is there more to it?

[the_steadster]

However, I have found that it is very hard to find something readyboost-able. I have tried 12GB of flash, none of which is readyboost capable. then again, i do buy cheap-ass flash.

[ServiceGames]

What the hell is the requirement?

Is this really any different than virtual RAM or is ther a lot more to it that I should read up on?

[PhreQuencYViii]

From what I've read, theres a pretty negligable speed increase, but I have yet to try it on my vista.

[the_steadster]

It requires flash of a certain speed - it tests the disk when plugged in. it is supposedly faster than hard disks for caching small files, as there is no seek time, even if sustained transfer is better from a hard disk

[ServiceGames]

Ohhh I see, I'd like to try this.. Now all I need is Vista

[Barc0de]

you ll lose many more resources than any speed boost gained by this trick :p VISTA is a resource whore and don't see the point behind the OS. Professionally, it would be much lighter and efficient to run any X window Linux/unix variant , leaving resources for tasks instead of bullshit.

[ServiceGames]

That is why I don't and most likely won't own Vista.
It just seems to much of a pretty pile of shit with visual flare and mass appeal. I'm sure there are some sort of revolutionary features burried in there, but I don't plan on digging through crap to find it until I have to.

I say all of this and then realize that at some point I'll need to be familliar with it inorder to perform repair work... Curses I say!

[Jamtex]

I have a Core Duo 1.73Mhz Laptop with 2GB RAM and my laptop has a built in card reader and using a high speed 2GB SD RAM card with Readyboost I do notice the difference. Your Flash memory unit has to be reasonablely fast doing about 2.5MB second in random reads, which is funny as some units are blazingly fast when copying items from copy to stick but suck at the random test.

If you run a lot of large applications (I run Quark, Filemaker, Openoffice and Internet Explorer (normally at the same time...)) then Readyboost will give a noticable difference when switching between apps. Otherwise you'll notice between a slight difference to none at all.

[Japan-Games.com]

OK, thanks. The unit I have now has just 512 MB. I was going to install more RAM but I can get an 8 GB USB clip drive for less these days, plus I can use it as a regular transfer drive when I'm not using Vista. I didn't think it would give me an actual 8 GB boost but with that much extra added on I figured it had to do something good.

[Jamtex]

You are better off buying the RAM as that will give you a much better improvement. 1GB of RAM would give you a very noticable improvement and 2GB would make you think you have a faster machine.

As you only have 512MB of RAM, Readyboost would only use a maximum of about 1GB of the flash memory anyway, so buying an 8gb stick for this would be a waste of time. Even with 2GB of RAM, Readyboost would not use more then 2GB. The difference on a 512MB machine would have some improvements if using more then one program, but not as much as buying more RAM.

[the_steadster]

I would say to honestly not use vista with less than 1.5-2gb of ram. My install idles at nearly 1gb.
Before bashing ram usage, bear in mind that XP wouldn't run well with less than 256-512mb, and that 5 years went between the 2 OSs - a 4x increase in ram in that time is more than reasonable

[Jamtex]

I still find it funny that my Toshiba Liberto with a overclocked 166Mhz Pentium with a huge 32Mb RAM (and a 2GB CF card as another hard drive) running Windows 98SE still boots up and can load up a couple of webpages quicker then Vista on a Core Duo 1.7Ghz with 2GB RAM can boot.

[mairsil]

Before bashing ram usage, bear in mind that XP wouldn't run well with less than 256-512mb, and that 5 years went between the 2 OSs - a 4x increase in ram in that time is more than reasonable

Uh, no, actually it isn't. I have yet to see any real reasons why Vista eats up more RAM than XP. Hell, I'm irritated that my XP currently idles around 400MB.

[Fonzie]

I add something to offtopic, sorry... but it is something that irritate me too ^^

I think there is also something wierd with nowadays OS... my very crap laptop (DELL inspiron 1000 with Celeron 2ghz + 160MB of ram) dont have problem to run Photoshop+Illustrator+Indesign at same time (using XP)...

But the lastest Mac latptop (core2Duo, 1.4ghz, 512MB of ram) barely run photoshop only....

Another exemple is application switching... My Windows98 (depsite its memory issues due to the OS itself) can react to click at lightening speed even with several tools opened... (when u open a folder, or click somewhere). While all the others OS I have or could try (especialy MAC OSX and a bit XP) are just pure lagging... like a boat, you know...

I know the memory management is different and more complex and secure... but where is the point when your Keyboard do not respond imediately anymore... I could saw that on MacOSX, expecialy...

As an exemple of pure processing waste : Why having giant unreadable icons of 128*128pixels jpeg-real-time-scalled while a 16*16 bitmap could do better the job... why?, because its hype? WTF! Please leave processing to our applz! ^^

[peekb]

The one thing everyone misses about Vista's RAM usage: It's pre-caching applications, DLLs and data in empty RAM on your most used apps to speed their launch. You've got 2GB of RAM, why do you want 1.5GB of it to sit empty? Why not pre-load your commonly used apps into RAM so the data's there when you start?

You'll notice that as you start using applications your RAM usage will go up, and then as it starts to hit the upper boundary, it'll start dumping out pre-cached stuff and hover.

As an example, at idle, my 2GB machine uses about 1GB at idle. I'm currently running SQL Managment Studio and one instance of Visual Studio 2005 along with Outlook, Firefox and various other apps, and it shot up to around 1.5GB or so and now it's back to 1GB without closing anything. I'm adding process yet the RAM usage is the same as it was when I started the machine.

In reality the machine is only using 500MB of RAM or so...the rest is pre-cached info that it loads/dumps as required.

Go read up on Superfetch. Turn it off if you want your RAM to sit idle and unused. It's like filling up a glass of water with enough for one mouthful and going back to the sink every time until you're not thirsty anymore. Just fill up the glass!

[the_steadster]

Uh, no, actually it isn't. I have yet to see any real reasons why Vista eats up more RAM than XP. Hell, I'm irritated that my XP currently idles around 400MB. Well what does XP/2000 do over NT4 to explain the amount of RAM usage? very little - new OSs use more RAM - Its been that way for a long time, and it's unlikely to change.


I add something to offtopic, sorry... but it is something that irritate me too ^^

I think there is also something wierd with nowadays OS... my very crap laptop (DELL inspiron 1000 with Celeron 2ghz + 160MB of ram) dont have problem to run Photoshop+Illustrator+Indesign at same time (using XP)...

But the lastest Mac latptop (core2Duo, 1.4ghz, 512MB of ram) barely run photoshop only....

Another exemple is application switching... My Windows98 (depsite its memory issues due to the OS itself) can react to click at lightening speed even with several tools opened... (when u open a folder, or click somewhere). While all the others OS I have or could try (especialy MAC OSX and a bit XP) are just pure lagging... like a boat, you know...

I know the memory management is different and more complex and secure... but where is the point when your Keyboard do not respond imediately anymore... I could saw that on MacOSX, expecialy...

As an exemple of pure processing waste : Why having giant unreadable icons of 128*128pixels jpeg-real-time-scalled while a 16*16 bitmap could do better the job... why?, because its hype? WTF! Please leave processing to our applz! ^^ Running photoshop CS2? if so it isn't native to intel chips which is why its running slowly. upgrade to CS3 if you can and you'll get a decent speed boost

[mairsil]

I understand that each new OS takes up more and more RAM, but that doesn't mean that the increase is reasonable instead of just lazy programming. :lol:

[graciano1337]

That is why I don't and most likely won't own Vista.
It just seems to much of a pretty pile of shit with visual flare and mass appeal. I'm sure there are some sort of revolutionary features burried in there, but I don't plan on digging through crap to find it until I have to.


But you can play Halo 2 on Vista! Surely that's worth the purchase of a new OS. :icon_bigg

[the_steadster]

I understand that each new OS takes up more and more RAM, but that doesn't mean that the increase is reasonable instead of just lazy programming. :lol:
Well we're agreed there. I was just pointing out that the increase from xp->vista is no more than any other transition

[retro]

Also known as how to kill a flash drive (which can rewrite something like 10,000 times) very quickly!

It isn't a good idea. Flash memory is SLOOOOOW. We're talking slower to access than most hard drives.

I ran some tests with fast Flash memory as virtual RAM in XP. Whilst it offered a small boost over using C: as virtual RAM, it wasn't really worth it - and using a spare hard drive would be faster.

[PhreQuencYViii]

It isn't a good idea. Flash memory is SLOOOOOW. We're talking slower to access than most hard drives.

I thought flash was fast? :confused:

[madhatter256]

Just to clear the smoke and answer some questions. Vista Readyboost is good when you put the system in hibernation. It stores the data (as much as it can) into the flashdrive designated for Readyboost. This is where you see its advantages as Vista will load faster on a Readyboost drive than loadiing from the HDD.