Guild Wars 2

I’ve been reading that readyboost won’t help with performance if you have enough RAM and a fast enough hard drive. I have plenty of RAM, 6GB, but only a 5400RPM hdd. Now, I know that the HDD is rarely used during gameplay and it wont increase FPS, but what about when it is accessed for loading new areas, loading into the game, and loading up textures when running around?

I’ve seen some benchmarks online, but they never test games, and usually test more for using it when the system has low RAM, but I never see a test for systems with high RAM but slow HDD. Can anyone point me to a benchmark, help me test this out, or have knowledge or first hand experience with this? I’ve got a 4GB SD card in there at the moment.

IMHO: Ready boost helps when booting, going to sleep and waking up. Nothing more.

I doubt readyboost will improve GW2 load times. The game file is compressed into a single ~15GB file so the CPU will spend time decrypting it anyways. Even on a SSD load time isn’t much faster than a normal HD.

I tried using Crystal Disk info to test speeds with and without the SD card in there doing readyboost, and my results showed about a 50% increase in 4kb random read times when readyboost enabled (from about .8 mb/s to ~1.5 mb/s). Whether or not this translates into anything in the game remains to be seen, but at least I know it’s doing something positive for the computer.

I’m not sure if its readyboost or the fact I disabled parking, but when I spin around in a new area and take in the scenery for the first time, say, just after loading in, that initial fps drop the first time i spin around seems to have been reduced a little bit.

Readyboost can’t improve load times. Only the harddrive the OS is on and the physical RAM. Since Readyboost is still limited by the main HDD speed.

No. It will improve systems with low ram. It does improve load times on browsers and smaller programs. Not designed for large files like graphics or texture files. I have not been able to show any improvement on games. I have 16gb of ram and it turns it off automatically telling me it is no longer needed. For those with 4gb or less, I’d say sure buy a flash drive (make sure it is readyboost certified, it will say so on the pack). They are cheap and even a little help is better than none, lol.

as usual, people who have no idea what readyboost does are posting.

Readyboost is a session built FILE CACHE, it hasn’t got much to do with ram at all, but rather reducing the delays that mechanical hdd’s have with reading tiny files sequentially.

It doesn’t help bootup’s much at all, because it is rebuilt every startup and only caches files up to 4k in size.

Software like eboostr is better because the cache can be made permanent and improves boot and login times , eboostr works well with super fetch as well, as files hit often by superfetch are most likely to exist in the eboostr cache, and eboostr (and stuff like Corsairs SSD filter) can be used to precache stuff with an SSD, unlike ReadyBoost.

Iyeru.5240:

Readyboost can’t improve load times. Only the harddrive the OS is on and the physical RAM. Since Readyboost is still limited by the main HDD speed.

^only person in the thread who knows whats what!.

And indeed, readyboost is useless for startups and boot improvements because as i said, it is invalidated at every start, unlike eboostr which is permanent (choosing instead to encrypt the cached data)

Fruban.4169:

I’ve been reading that readyboost won’t help with performance if you have enough RAM and a fast enough hard drive. I have plenty of RAM, 6GB, but only a 5400RPM hdd. Now, I know that the HDD is rarely used during gameplay and it wont increase FPS, but what about when it is accessed for loading new areas, loading into the game, and loading up textures when running around?

Your best bet is to probably just benchmark it yourself. For example, I play a game called osu! that on first start, scans through about 2000 songs I have.

With ReadyBoost enabled, it goes fast, but with ReadyBoost disabled, it goes significantly faster. That is how I found out ReadyBoost is… not needed for my system at all.

Squall Leonhart.2075:

as usual, people who have no idea what readyboost does are posting.

Readyboost is a session built FILE CACHE, it hasn’t got much to do with ram at all, but rather reducing the delays that mechanical hdd’s have with reading tiny files sequentially.

It doesn’t help bootup’s much at all, because it is rebuilt every startup and only caches files up to 4k in size.

Software like eboostr is better because the cache can be made permanent and improves boot and login times , eboostr works well with super fetch as well, as files hit often by superfetch are most likely to exist in the eboostr cache, and eboostr (and stuff like Corsairs SSD filter) can be used to precache stuff with an SSD, unlike ReadyBoost.

Iyeru.5240:

Readyboost can’t improve load times. Only the harddrive the OS is on and the physical RAM. Since Readyboost is still limited by the main HDD speed.

^only person in the thread who knows whats what!.

And indeed, readyboost is useless for startups and boot improvements because as i said, it is invalidated at every start, unlike eboostr which is permanent (choosing instead to encrypt the cached data)

This makes sense, since I did see an improvement in the 4k random read in CrystalDiskMark when I enabled readyboost. Even if it may or may not improve anything in the game (I don’t know if the game tells my computer to make any small random reads or not) it is still helping my computer in some way, so I’ll leave it enabled for me, til I get an SSD or a higher RPM HDD. =) (See specs in first post.)

Maybe I’ll check out that eboostr you mentioned.

QUOTE****
as usual, people who have no idea what readyboost does are posting.

Readyboost is a session built FILE CACHE, it hasn’t got much to do with ram at all, but rather reducing the delays that mechanical hdd’s have with reading tiny files sequentially.

It doesn’t help bootup’s much at all, because it is rebuilt every startup and only caches files up to 4k in size.

Software like eboostr is better because the cache can be made permanent and improves boot and login times , eboostr works well with super fetch as well, as files hit often by superfetch are most likely to exist in the eboostr cache, and eboostr (and stuff like Corsairs SSD filter) can be used to precache stuff with an SSD, unlike ReadyBoost.

Iyeru.5240:

Readyboost can’t improve load times. Only the harddrive the OS is on and the physical RAM. Since Readyboost is still limited by the main HDD speed.

^only person in the thread who knows whats what!.

And indeed, readyboost is useless for startups and boot improvements because as i said, it is invalidated at every start, unlike eboostr which is permanent (choosing instead to encrypt the cached data)

(edited about 24 hours ago by Squall Leonhart.2075)

END QUOTE****

OK, hmm. Well I started in computers in 1971 with a IBM 300 series mainframe. I was comm tech cryptic code with computers in Nam for the Military. ( and on the original internet, called ARPANET) I have a degree in computer science. 3 in programming (COBOL, FORTRAN & BASIC). Owned a ISP for 8 yrs in 6 cities in central Indiana and did all the lead tech work and maintained servers, routers, dslam’s, etc (dialup & DSL). Been a Microsoft dev since 1995. I’ve built over 5000 sytems in my life (SUN servers and PC’s) Including 1 for NASA and 1 for the ATOMIC ENERGY COMMISSION. Now what have you done? Yes it does effect load times and yes it does effect 4k files. You should try google before you accuse ppl of not knowing what they are talking about. Here 2 of MANY articles about readyboost. http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleid=2160&page=5 and the other http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReadyBoost. You are more than welcome to your opinion about what it does or does not do. Is Readyboost a big deal? No. Does it make a huge difference? No. Does it help low ram system? Yes. Most gaming systems don’t really see a improvement, especially if you use a SSD drive like myself and many others do now. But please don’t even try to tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about. I have well over 40 yrs of experience, not just books.

And none of what you just said has anything to do with knowing what readyboost is or what it does :p

Don’t take it too personally though, Microsoft support doesn’t have much of an idea either and the clowns at neowin still claim its useless with large amounts of ram. (which is only a valid claim if the data in the ready boost cache is already cached by super fetch and exists in RAM).

Most benchmarks claiming boot improvements are can be completely disregarded, the readyboost cache is not hit at all prior to login, and only to recreate it from scratch – which it does every boot :|.

For a game like GW2, where all the files are loaded from a single binary, it won’t offer any improvement. (Actually, if i remember rightly, its not just that it only caches 4k files, it only caches 4k’s worth of pointers towards the file’s contents)

ReadyBoost provides the most significant performance improvement under the following circumstances:

The computer has a slow hard disk drive. Computers with a primary hard disk Windows Experience Index (WEI) subscore lower than 4.0 will see the most significant improvements.
The flash storage provides fast, random, non-sequential reads. Sequential read speed is less important.
The flash storage is connected by a fast bus. Typically, USB memory card readers are not sufficiently fast. However, connecting flash memory to an internal memory card reader might provide sufficient performance.

My hdd pulls 5.9, which is the max reported for Mechanical drives (but the winsat test itself indicates the score is closer to 6.5)
and even i see improvements when eboostr holds cached data for startup apps, dotnet apps (which are still the slowest to load).

I do know what it is and what it does. And yes will have SOME effect with most all systems. If you run a SSD like i do, you cannot run Readyboost. The system will not allow it and turns it off by default. I would agree MS support is pretty much useless. Script driven ppl who have little tech background. And I don’t turn off Superfetch or Prefetch as I personally do feel they have some improvement on my system. Things with SSD drives have changed a huge amount in the last 5 years of what with will or won’t do or what does or doesn’t work with them. In fact most SSD manufacturers tell you not to turn off these features or even cache. I leave cache on as well and even with extensive testing find no degradation of my drive. I use SATA II drives for less important files, pics, movies and games I don’t play much. I also tri boot Win 8 Enterprise, and Ubuntu linux.
My overall performance rating is 7.5 with my HDD at 7.9. And believe me I take a lot of reviews and opinions as just that, their opinion.

If you notice from my original post I suggested they make sure the flash drive is Readyboost Certified. As most of them will not run Readyboost or run it poorly. The system will not even allow most flash drives to be used as Readyboost. It will tell the clien the drive is not Readyboost capable. I would also like to comment in MY opinion it is not worth arguing over or buying unless you have a non gaming, underpowered system in which case it will help. But for $10, if you want to take a chance, why not? It’s $10.

10,000 RPM is still a bit slow, and is almost defying the limit a harddrive can go at. You’d be safer with an SSD, even if it’s more expensive, and takes far less power to run.

Windows Experience Index is a laugh and a half.

indeed, the individual scores for wei are useless

the actual winsat data on the other hand is pretty useful.

@Haelis, i wouldn’t use an actual SSD as a boot drive, what with having to change a bunch of stuff to protect the ssd’s life span (browser cache n stuff).

I’d definitely configure them as large permanent file caches though, or i’d just start saving for one of Western digital’s Caviar black based hybrids

I wouldn’t worry about protecting a properly configured SSD from browser caching wear. Its lifespan would far exceed that kind of usage and more likely you will be replacing it with a better bigger one in 2-5 years anyways.

SSD for OS/Applications and regular HD for media/documents is the way to go.