Grav3Mind Posted September 10, 2006 Share Posted September 10, 2006 i really see ABSOLUTELY NO increase in performance yet with this feature, i have my one gig plugged in and all its going is making my system lag. anyone else getting this? (it does it with games to but i suppose that is to be implied with the transfer rate between the thumbstick and the computer) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rollcage Posted September 10, 2006 Share Posted September 10, 2006 same happens here, doesn't boost performance, it destroys it for me. i guess they just haven't worked out all the bugs yet. or maybe it's for people without a lot of ram. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
br0adband Posted September 10, 2006 Share Posted September 10, 2006 Well, consider the fact that flash RAM - the stuff in all USB thumb drives - is several hundred times slower than most system RAM and you'll begin to see why it'll never help speed up Vista in operation. It's more along the lines of using the USB thumbdrive memory as a cache of sorts for repeatedly used data, similar to the L2 cache in the processor (but nowhere as fast), hard drives (but nowhere as fast), etc. bb Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Universe_JDJ Posted September 11, 2006 Share Posted September 11, 2006 It's simply an overhyped feature. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eggie Posted September 11, 2006 Share Posted September 11, 2006 it needs a lot more development im not sure about most people but it claims that my toshiba usb drive doesnt have the performance characteristics to benifit and by the sounds of things it doesnt help much anyway Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mifki Posted September 11, 2006 Share Posted September 11, 2006 it needs a lot more development i agree, good concept, bad practice Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lord_muad_dib Posted September 11, 2006 Share Posted September 11, 2006 lol. the usb bandwidth is just too slow.. and slow sticks add even more latency Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mifki Posted September 11, 2006 Share Posted September 11, 2006 Heh, CORSAIR make USB sticks with the ram they use on real RAM, waste of money Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bluedragon1971 Posted September 11, 2006 Share Posted September 11, 2006 Heh, CORSAIR make USB sticks with the ram they use on real RAM, waste of money Show me some proof of this, because short of using some battery backup for them, I don't see how that would be possible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mifki Posted September 11, 2006 Share Posted September 11, 2006 Do we need proof for everything, its in one of my mags. Im sure its CORSAIR or some other Memory Maker Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PolishOX Posted September 11, 2006 Share Posted September 11, 2006 IT doesn't matter what they use to make the flash drives because... AT the end you are subjected to USB pipeline in terms of data transmission. Therefore, regardless how fast your medium for storage is...you are limited by the USB 2.0 technology which is WAY slower than a motherboard/ram. Also, those who need proof for everything are those who have little faith in the experiences of their fellow, brethren. It's not a short-coming...just a difference in personality. No harm no foul. As for Vista, almost everything they have done thus far is great in concept and yet so poorly executed. Including the OS itself. If M$ used their financial resources correctly, they could bury anyone and everyone. However, the company's historical ego impedes its own true evolution and progress. That is why Linux and Apple continue to grow, prosper, and remain flexible. P.S. I'm a windows user attempting to learn about linux and osx. I am biased...on the side of truth...I call it like I see it. Admit when I am wrong...learn and move on. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rogabean Posted September 11, 2006 Share Posted September 11, 2006 I will chime in and say the type of memory used in Flash drives and RAM are quite different. Corsair could not use the same. RAM is wiped when there is no power. Period. And kiko, if you are going to make a statement like that then yes, proof is required. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
REVENGE Posted September 12, 2006 Share Posted September 12, 2006 You know, I've always thought this feature would only be useful for people with low RAM and humongous paging files, assuming that a USB flash disk would take some stress off their harddisks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bluedragon1971 Posted September 12, 2006 Share Posted September 12, 2006 I will chime in and say the type of memory used in Flash drives and RAM are quite different. Corsair could not use the same. RAM is wiped when there is no power. Period. And kiko, if you are going to make a statement like that then yes, proof is required. Thanks for backing me up there. Some people just make the wildest claims without anything at all to back them up, and expect everyone to believe them. The problem is that less experienced users WILL believe them, which leads to nothing but confusion among users. Do we need proof for everything, its in one of my mags. Im sure its CORSAIR or some other Memory Maker Well, first you make the claim that it's Corsair, then you aren't sure which memory maker it is, so are you surprised that people have trouble believing you, especially with no link to these supposed products? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
knightinarms Posted September 13, 2006 Share Posted September 13, 2006 Yup, it's BS. Also it have screw up your USB Stick. I permanently lost 4 MB when I have my USB stick formated to FAT32 and NTFS. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PolishOX Posted September 13, 2006 Share Posted September 13, 2006 I think some lowlevel formatting tool can get back virtually all your "permanently lost" space... Of course during a format you will lose some space always but don't think it's gone forever! If it's not a U3 enabled drive or whatever I think you could easily use a few tools that are out there to make your drive into virtually any format out there and regain space you thought once to have been lost... Try it! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KJY9 Posted September 14, 2006 Share Posted September 14, 2006 I'm not certain why anyone, let alone MS would think it would work. If you really want to speed up your system (aside from a faster processor or more ram), get an extra HDD (preferably a small SATA drive), install it as a secondary or third if you already have another and put your entire swapfile on it instead of your OS drive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SenVa Posted September 14, 2006 Share Posted September 14, 2006 I'm not certain why anyone, let alone MS would think it would work.If you really want to speed up your system (aside from a faster processor or more ram), get an extra HDD (preferably a small SATA drive), install it as a secondary or third if you already have another and put your entire swapfile on it instead of your OS drive. This might sound stupid of me... but I never thought of doing that... How much proformance is gained in that? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KJY9 Posted September 14, 2006 Share Posted September 14, 2006 This might sound stupid of me... but I never thought of doing that... How much proformance is gained in that? A bunch if you're constantly accessing your swapfile. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
br0adband Posted September 16, 2006 Share Posted September 16, 2006 It doesn't matter who makes the Flash RAM, the simple facts are that Flash RAM is thousands of times slower than real physical chip RAM these days, and because of it it would only be useful for things like maybe your browser cache (and it'll have a speedhit), or some other way of using it as temp storage. Regardless, the time to write and the time to read and transfer data from Flash-based RAM is ridiculously slow compared to real RAM these days, especially the high end DDR/DDR2/DDR3 stuff on the market nowadays. It's a nice idea in concept, crappy in practical usage. bb Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
planetbeing Posted September 19, 2006 Share Posted September 19, 2006 RAM >> Flash >> Hard drive. A flash disk should be much faster than that SATA disk ever will be. We're talking solid state storage vs a spinng platter of magnetic material. Essentially, it would cache frequently used files from the hard drive, or even put part of the swap file on it. So, theoretically it should definitely be faster. I can't believe no one has said this yet. I imagine it'd only be useful on machines with low memory that actually, heh, benefits from that hard drive swap file. I have two gigs and no flash drive handy, so I haven't tested this feature at all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
br0adband Posted September 19, 2006 Share Posted September 19, 2006 RAM >> Flash >> Hard drive. A flash disk should be much faster than that SATA disk ever will be. We're talking solid state storage vs a spinng platter of magnetic material. Essentially, it would cache frequently used files from the hard drive, or even put part of the swap file on it. So, theoretically it should definitely be faster. I can't believe no one has said this yet. I imagine it'd only be useful on machines with low memory that actually, heh, benefits from that hard drive swap file. I have two gigs and no flash drive handy, so I haven't tested this feature at all. You're still not getting it. Flash based RAM chips are slower than hard drives, so your little procedural line there means nothing. Flash based RAM requires power to do the job, time to do a read, time to do a write, and it borders on several hundred times longer than a physical hard drive these days. I know saying "several hundred times longer" might not seem like the truth, but it is: When you consider that hard drives have access times in the 5-10ms range, and they can read and write at about 40MB/s sustained, it comes into play considering that flash based RAM usually has much higher access times because of their limitations: The cost per byte of flash memory remains significantly higher than the corresponding cost of a hard disk drive, and that (on top of finite number of erase-write cycles previously mentioned) has prevented flash from becoming a solid state replacement for the hard disk drive on normal desktop and laptop computers. Also, consider that a hard drive has no real issues with writing or rewriting the same bit of data a few billion times over its lifespan; flash RAM has a limited lifespan and will only allow for so many read/write cycles before it's useless. Now, when something like THIS becomes a definite reality, and the price (which hasn't been speculated on or announced yet) becomes a reality, sign me up. It might be limited to 33MB/s, but really, I could care less. The fact that it uses considerably less energy to operate - translates into looooooonggggeeeerrrr runtimes on laptops - is the biggest bonus. Like many other people, I want a laptop that'll run for 24 hours on a charge, period. Gimme that, I'll be a customer for life. bb Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aberracus Posted September 19, 2006 Share Posted September 19, 2006 Hard disk are slower, thats why the palm Lofedisk isnt working really, its too slow in comparision with flash ram memory (dont forget nowdays we have 150x ultra fast flash ram). And yes here the probelm is the usb pipeline lag. Now imagine installing vista on a Flash disk, the most important thing is.. no need to turn it off, you just start the computer and everything is up in the memory. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
schale01 Posted September 19, 2006 Share Posted September 19, 2006 Flash based RAM chips are slower than hard drives... it borders on several hundred times longer than a physical hard drive these days. This is true for sequential read/writes but with random read/writes a NAND Flash ram can improve prefromance. Quote from Readyboost Q&A Q: Aren't Hard Disks faster than flash? My HDD has 80MB/sec throughput.A: Hard drives are great for large sequential I/O. For those situations, ReadyBoost gets out of the way. We concentrate on improving the performance of small, random I/Os, like paging to and from disk. And here are the speed requirements for Flash drive: Q: What perf do you need on your device?A: 2.5MB/sec throughput for 4K random reads and 1.75MB/sec throughput for 512K random writes Readyboost acts more like a cache than as additional RAM or paging file. In this regard I think it can improve preformance. Although machines with Large amounts of RAM may not notice as much speed up since less data is swaped out of RAM and hence less need for cache. Read up on it before making claims: http://blogs.msdn.com/tomarcher/archive/20.../02/615199.aspx Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cyrax78 Posted September 21, 2006 Share Posted September 21, 2006 Actually, flash ram can be quite fast. No where near as fast as ram, but from what I read, the Vista speed up feature is meant to replace the hard drive and flash can be faster: http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/09/20/con...ive_obsoletism/ However, at $25/gig versus $0.25/gig for conventional hard drives, its still got a long way to go. Maybe in two years those hybrid drives might become practical (where frequently access system files are placed on a small flash portion of the drive). Edit: Hm.. already posted above, that's what I get for missing the second page. At least this article adds some info and benchmarks though Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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