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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Lifted - Thursday, February 1, 2007 - link
That's odd. I can search network drives using XP Pro. Maybe it's a Pro vs. Home issue?
Was also wondering about the network test myself. 10MB/s file copy on XP Pro seems abysmally slow when using gigabit NIC's. Just testing right now I about 35MB/s between a pair of 5 year old servers (dual Xeon 1GHz) with Intel GB NIC's. I haven't checked transfer rates with XP as I'm on a 10/100 switch at the moment, but I can't believe it's really THAT much slower than 2003.
Aikouka - Thursday, February 1, 2007 - link
I remember running a gigabit cross-over (CAT6) cable between my roommate's computer and my computer in college. We achieved about 33MB/s (through FTP) running Windows XP Professional on each. So I'd say that you'd probably see about the same speed if you were running a gigabit switch.mjz - Monday, February 5, 2007 - link
i think windows xp sets a limit when downloading from another computer to 33MB/s..Nehemoth - Thursday, February 1, 2007 - link
Same here.I just wanna Vista for the improve TCP/IP Stack, now I'll wait for SP1
tallsummi - Thursday, February 1, 2007 - link
I'll wait for SP2 of vista and then go for it..keitaro - Thursday, February 1, 2007 - link
Perhaps Microsoft should have copied the idea from Novell's SUSE Linux Desktop (powered by XGL and compiz). The compiz software package (compositor and window manager) comes with its own alt-tab that surpasses Flip 3D in every way. http://www.novell.com/products/desktop/features/xg...">See here for a look at what XGL and compiz can do.mlambert890 - Friday, February 2, 2007 - link
I think that xgl crap is an overenginered waste that adds 0 productivity. Flip 3d gives you the one thing you need - a live shot of running apps. Who the hell needs some spinning cube? And look how bad video playback perf is in that Novell demo...bleh... I dont feel myself drawn back to 1992 when I lived and breathed Novell; sorry...
Locutus465 - Friday, February 2, 2007 - link
I dont' know, personally I like flip 3d better..archcommus - Thursday, February 1, 2007 - link
The article makes me a bit sad about Vista. It made me realize - wow, yeah, it really IS a shame that Vista doesn't totally smash OS X Tiger given how long it's been in development and how long Tiger has been out for. I guess they just got in such a rut of catch-up that not many new revolutionary features could be developed.In particular, I'm disappointed with how similar (and ugly) certain aspects of Vista look compared to XP, for example the quick launch area, system tray, clock, and the overall taskbar. With the exception of the Start buttion being replaced by an "orb," it looks EXACTLY the same as XP, and this could have been and should have been revamped to improve productivity. Quick launch is just...stupid, and ugly. All it is is additional shortcuts, and they waste taskbar space. I think a small menu that appears and disappears on the fly would be nicer. I'm not sure what improvements to suggest for the taskbar, all I know is, with how pretty the rest of the OS looks, the application blocks down there just look out of place. Same with the system tray icons.
Explorer is better though and the transparency is great. It's too bad x64 performance and drivers aren't up to snuff yet.
thebrown13 - Thursday, February 1, 2007 - link
Microsoft has to cater to about 349852395472039 more software programs.That's why. Updates, bug fixes, feature designing, it all takes A LOT longer than with an OS with 5 people that use it, like Apple.
We're lucky the mainstream OS isn't MUCH farther behind.