ReadyBoost
Of course, not all systems have the luxury of large amounts of excess RAM, which brings us to another way of manipulating the cache hierarchy to extract better performance: inserting another level. Between expensive-and-fast RAM and cheap-but-slow hard drives, flash memory has quickly developed over the last decade as a storage medium that balances speed and size between hard drives and RAM - it's cheaper than RAM in similar quantities while still being an order of magnitude faster to access than a hard drive. ReadyBoost is Vista's technology to take advantage of flash memory as a new member of the cache hierarchy.
ReadyBoost functions as a compliment to SuperFetch, giving SuperFetch another place to cache data that - while not as good as RAM - is better than just reading data off of the hard drive. An important distinction however is that while RAM is both quick to access and has high transfer rates, flash memory only offers quick access times, with transfer rates below that of even hard drives. As a result ReadyBoost is only useful in situations where small random data accesses are required, whereas larger transfers that may need sequential access are sent directly to the hard drive. This makes ReadyBoost less readily beneficial than SuperFetch, but with USB flash drives going for under $20/gigabyte, it's a cheap and effective way to boost performance of RAM-limited computers in a number of situations.
ReadyBoost also serves as a read cache of the system pagefile, with the idea that swapping to disk is less painful if it's done to a USB flash drive. Don't worry about sensitive data being kept and lost on your USB drive though; the data is compressed and encrypted so that it should be fairly useless once the drive is removed from use.
While there's potential for ReadyBoost to actually reduce performance, if you have a very fast hard drive, Microsoft has done a lot to address this; before a ReadyBoost cache file is created on the flash drive Vista will run a quick series of tests to make sure the drive meets minimum requirements. If the drive fails these tests, you won't be able to use it as a ReadyBoost device. Most new drives will tell you on the packaging whether or not they will work with ReadyBoost. In our testing, ReadyBoost never reduced performance regardless of what hardware it was coupled with.
For all of our tests we used an 8GB Corsair Flash Voyager, but note that the maximum size for a ReadyBoost cache file is 4GB. You can also only use one ReadyBoost device per system, so don't get any crafty ideas of having 8 USB drives plugged in to improve performance.
Of course, not all systems have the luxury of large amounts of excess RAM, which brings us to another way of manipulating the cache hierarchy to extract better performance: inserting another level. Between expensive-and-fast RAM and cheap-but-slow hard drives, flash memory has quickly developed over the last decade as a storage medium that balances speed and size between hard drives and RAM - it's cheaper than RAM in similar quantities while still being an order of magnitude faster to access than a hard drive. ReadyBoost is Vista's technology to take advantage of flash memory as a new member of the cache hierarchy.
ReadyBoost functions as a compliment to SuperFetch, giving SuperFetch another place to cache data that - while not as good as RAM - is better than just reading data off of the hard drive. An important distinction however is that while RAM is both quick to access and has high transfer rates, flash memory only offers quick access times, with transfer rates below that of even hard drives. As a result ReadyBoost is only useful in situations where small random data accesses are required, whereas larger transfers that may need sequential access are sent directly to the hard drive. This makes ReadyBoost less readily beneficial than SuperFetch, but with USB flash drives going for under $20/gigabyte, it's a cheap and effective way to boost performance of RAM-limited computers in a number of situations.
ReadyBoost also serves as a read cache of the system pagefile, with the idea that swapping to disk is less painful if it's done to a USB flash drive. Don't worry about sensitive data being kept and lost on your USB drive though; the data is compressed and encrypted so that it should be fairly useless once the drive is removed from use.
While there's potential for ReadyBoost to actually reduce performance, if you have a very fast hard drive, Microsoft has done a lot to address this; before a ReadyBoost cache file is created on the flash drive Vista will run a quick series of tests to make sure the drive meets minimum requirements. If the drive fails these tests, you won't be able to use it as a ReadyBoost device. Most new drives will tell you on the packaging whether or not they will work with ReadyBoost. In our testing, ReadyBoost never reduced performance regardless of what hardware it was coupled with.
For all of our tests we used an 8GB Corsair Flash Voyager, but note that the maximum size for a ReadyBoost cache file is 4GB. You can also only use one ReadyBoost device per system, so don't get any crafty ideas of having 8 USB drives plugged in to improve performance.
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thebrown13 - Thursday, February 1, 2007 - link
This is TOTALLY false. Microsoft allows content providers to do what they want with their content. Again, THE CONTENT PROVIDERS DECIDE WHAT THEIR CONTENT PLAYS ON. MICROSOFT DECIDES NOTHING.MAIA - Thursday, February 1, 2007 - link
The architecture is still x86 with 64-bit extensions. The correct naming should be 32-bit x86 and 64-bit x86. Although some vendors use the x64 "slang", this only serves to create more confusion, making people believe it's a different architecture. More, editors and reviewers should use the correct definitions, they also have an educating factor which have to live up by a good standart.Ryan Smith - Thursday, February 1, 2007 - link
It makes little sense on our part to use something different than Microsoft's own terminology here when talking about Vista. The x86-64/EMT64/AMD64 versions of Vista are all called Vista * x64, so we're going to be consistent on using Microsoft's naming to avoid possible confusion among Windows versions.Myrandex - Thursday, February 1, 2007 - link
Eh I don't know how x64 can get confusing, but x86_64 is pretty typical as well.smitty3268 - Thursday, February 1, 2007 - link
Actually, it is a new architecture that just happens to be backwards compatible with x86. That is why there are twice the number or registers available and not just the same amount doubled in size. You're right that x64 is not the correct name, (it's technically called x86-64) but what does it matter? Everyone knows what it means.Gunlance - Thursday, February 1, 2007 - link
I wish I could agree about the new installer. My experience with trying to boot windows vista so far is worse than when I learned how to put NetBSD on an Apple G3.In fact I am still trying to get into the Windows Vista setup as I type this comment. I have been up all night :( I simply just don't get it. Every OS I have ever put on my desktop at least boots, and the vista beta's installed fine. Ugh.
The article was great! Heh. It has made me a bit more frustrated though. Because here I am with vista but still only being able to read about.
erwos - Thursday, February 1, 2007 - link
Your OpenGL performance numbers are radically higher than what Tom's has. Could you comment on the drivers and installation that you used?Ryan Smith - Thursday, February 1, 2007 - link
Normally I tend to avoid commenting on anything involving competitors, but...Assuming I'm looking at the right article here, they were using the Catalyst 8.31.100.3.2.1 driver, which was released back in December. We were using the Catalyst 7.1 driver(version # 8.33.something). ATI did not include an OpenGL driver until 7.1(and just barely at that).
ktgktg - Thursday, February 1, 2007 - link
I'm surprised that the article didn't mention how much ReadyBoost could lower the boot time. A member of notebooreview forums claimed that http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=1...">he lowered the boot time on a laptop (slower HD) from 80 to 43 seconds (including POST) with a 2 GB SD card. Remember that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_memory_...">SD cards are slow compared to USB and CF. Although they're all slow compared to RAM, they have the benefit of storing the data until next boot.SuperFetch seems to be just another reason for using standby mode.
yacoub - Thursday, February 1, 2007 - link
Any word on FireFox compatibility with Vista? That is, does it run just as flawlessly as it does under XP x86 and x64?Just wondering. The comment on the Conclusions page about IE 7+ being the new standard for Safari is what made me think to ask.