SD card for readyboost

[snail]

alright, i just got a new laptop, and it has a built in card reader. now i dont really want to have a usb stick sticking out 24/7, therefore i want to get an SD card that supports readyboost.

which would be the best SD card to get (looking at getting a 2GB card)?

 

[nihilist]

Rather upgrade the RAM, Readyboost is a bit of a joke IMO.

 

[rurapente]

Readyboost is good, and it doesnt extend RAM, thats not its job. its job is to speed-up the "cachable" items in program that would normally have been read to/from disk.

But I dont know if you will find an SD card fast enough. Readboost relies not on linear speeds but on the random seek/write times of media. which is why only specific USB sticks can cater for it. I dont think any SD media is built for random speed, its built for linear reading and writing.

 

[sn3rd]

Readyboost is good, and it doesnt extend RAM, thats not its job. its job is to speed-up the "cachable" items in program that would normally have been read to/from disk.

But I dont know if you will find an SD card fast enough. Readboost relies not on linear speeds but on the random seek/write times of media. which is why only specific USB sticks can cater for it. I dont think any SD media is built for random speed, its built for linear reading and writing.

This is both right and wrong. Solid state storage inherently has better seek times, which is what is taken advantage of. The issue is that certain read and write speeds are required to support Readyboost. A class 6 SD card should meet those requirements. But an increase in RAM still yields better results in many situations.

The power of Readyboost lies with portables. Solid state storage uses less power, so handing off some work to such a storage device does up improving battery life.

 

[mk1]

In my opinion, only use Readyboost if you have less than 512MB RAM. And like mentioned, use a Class 6 card.

 

[snail]

i use readyboost on my pc (have 4GB ddr2) and i have a 2GB readyboost stick and i find it makes an improvement.

 

[AnomalyNexus]

which would be the best SD card to get (looking at getting a 2GB card)?

Complete waste of time. I wouldn't bother even if I had a suitable usb stick/SD card lying around (Come to think of it I do).

It has zero advantages over a RAM upgrade and is, for Desktop PCs likely to be more expensive since a suitable usb stick/SD card means it has to be fairly high-end.

In the case of usb sticks, watch out for shady marketing. Some brands combine slc (Expensive & fast) mlc (Cheap & slow) and then claim some crazy read/write speed. i.e. First 1/4 of the storage space is much faster than the remaining 3/4. Readyboost detects this and refuses to use them.

A sure-fire way to determine whether Readyboost would be helpful is to check whether stuff is being moved to the pagefile because of low ram. In such a case it would move it to the readyboost drive instead of the hdd yielding a small performance gain. And even in that case more RAM would be better.

And finally remember that these things have limited write-cycles.

i use readyboost on my pc (have 4GB ddr2) and i have a 2GB readyboost stick and i find it makes an improvement.

<Cynical comment>
*cough* Those special readyboost sticks marketed at ludicrous prices are nothing more than slc usb sticks. On a 4gb machine I doubt that *any* improvement could be verified in a blind test w/ statistical analysis.

By that the time that the 4gb of RAM is fully utilized by superfetch, one is already dealing with significant amounts of data (4gb). usb sticks/SD disks excel at small bursts of data. Most of the stuff that can be pre-loaded by superfetch has already been pre-loaded into RAM and the remaining things are either not small or unlikely to ever be used.
</Cynical comment>