Windows Vista RAM question

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!

 

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

 

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.

 

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

 

RAM is the quickiest you can get. Point.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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

 

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

 

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.

 

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?

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

you ll lose many more resources than any speed boost gained by this trick 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.

 

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!

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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