ReadyBoost size question

[Dana Cline]

I have a laptop with 2Gb, Vista Ultimate, and an SD slot I use for
ReadyBoost. I currently have a fast 4Gb SD card, but noticed the price on
16Gb SD cards has gone way down. Would there be any benefit to replacing my
4Gb with a 16Gb, given that I only have 2Gb of RAM? Could ReadyBoost make
use of it all? Would I notice any difference?

Dana Cline

 

[Rick Rogers]

Hi Dana,

Don't bother replacing it as the maximum size of the readyboost cache is
4GB.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com

 

[Spirit]

The Max Size of ReadyBoost is 4gig however you might
gain by having the fastest Thumbdrive available.

 

[Dana Cline]

OK, thanks...I'll stick with my 4gb card. It's a "133x", whatever that is.
My previous 2Gb card was 150x.

Dana Cline

 

[Gary Mount]

You might be interested to know that with a Windows 7 upgrade (available
starting October 22, 2009) The limit of 4 GB will be lifted and more than
one device can be used at the same time for ReadyBoost.

 

[Dana Cline]

Thanks - that's interesting and possibly useful. But it begs my original
question...would a 16Gb SD ReadyBoost really make any difference over a 4Gb
one when I only have 2Gb of RAM?

Dana Cline

 

[Spirit]

No, max size is 4Gig,,,,, however a FAST drive helps.
Not to say yours is not fast.

 

[Dave Warren]

In message <#[email protected]> "Dana Cline"

Thanks - that's interesting and possibly useful. But it begs my original
question...would a 16Gb SD ReadyBoost really make any difference over a 4Gb
one when I only have 2Gb of RAM?

2Gb is only 256 megabytes of memory, which isn't really enough to run
Vista in the first place, so I'm going to assume you mean GB rather then
Gb here -- Let me know if I'm wrong about that?

Anyway, ReadyBoost uses a maximum of 4GB, so going from a 4GB SD card to
16GB SD card would make no difference if that were the only change.
However, SD card performance makes a huge difference to ReadyBoost's
overall performance.

The fact that you have 2GB of RAM doesn't really enter into the
equation, except that if you have enough otherwise unused RAM,
SuperFetch loads more data into RAM and ReadyBoost will have less of an
impact. In other words, the less RAM you have, the more performance
improvement you'll see from ReadyBoost.

 

[Dana Cline]

Yes, I did mean 4 gigabytes, not gigabits. Sorry...just sloppy typing on my
part.

Dana Cline

 

[Dave Warren]

In message <#[email protected]> "Dana Cline"

Yes, I did mean 4 gigabytes, not gigabits. Sorry...just sloppy typing on my
part.

No worries, just being overly pedantic (a trait that isn't always looked
upon favorably, although one that serves me well professionally)