Axis of Eeevil

In some locales this week, Staples has a PNY 2-pack of 2GB jumpdrives for 28 bucks--cool feature is that you can plug into a USB port on a Vista system and it can use it as additional RAM for your computer! That's 7 dollars per GB... Don't know if you can use two sticks simultaneously, and of course that memory's speed is only that of USB 2.0, but durn, I wish my computers had Vista all the same!

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LoveSkylark

Any USB memmory stick will do and yes you can have more than on USB stick but this basicly store the swap file to speed up memmory

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ScratchMonkey

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReadyBoost

See the section on performance. If you're desperate for memory, this helps, but real memory is still better. If you're the kind to blow several hundred on a video card for marginal improvement, Ready Boost is not for you.

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draeh

This makes no sense. Can anyone say bottleneck! Even USB 2.0 high speed is only 480 mega-bits-per-sec. Or plainly put, a single bit clock at 480MHz. This is significantly slower than several generations of computer memory. PNY's product page even reveals the bandwidth limit.

Take for a moment an example of PC100 memory. This was memory that was accessed at least 32bits at a time at a rate of 100MHz. Making the throughput 32bits * 100MHz or 3200 mega-bits-per-second. So even older memory technology out paces this device from the get go.

I just don't see how this is so superior to a memory upgrade. Okay... maybe on a laptop that cannot be upgraded you would at least be able to do something you couldn't do before, but I have a feeling the bottleneck will kill the experience.

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Ikariam (Alpha)
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Nyyos[44:85]>Obesus Porcus-Wine

ScratchMonkey

draeh, the device is being used for swap, not "real" memory. It's advantage is speed over a regular disk drive, not RAM. Particularly seek speed, which is zero for solid state.

The problem (as noted in the Wikipedia article) is that most Flash devices use a slow serial link between the memory and the USB interface, much slower than many hard drive interfaces.

For gamers, a better solution is to design the content files to be mmap'd so that they act as their own swap files, and to make sure that your disk is defragged. Suitable solid state storage can then piggyback on that advantage, given a fast chip interface.

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draeh

Ooops. Should have read the wiki link you provided. That being said, I still don't like it. It's more of a niche band-aid solution for performance rather than the real solution (more RAM, better kernel utilization of available RAM).

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Ikariam (Alpha)
Toruos[44:84]>Non Sequitur(c)-Sulfur :: Nyyos[44:85]>Obesa Cantavit-Wine
Tiaayos[43:84]>Stercus Accidit-Marble :: Emytia[45:85]>Vacca Foeda-Crystal
Nyyos[44:85]>Obesus Porcus-Wine

Axis of Eeevil

Wow. You guys are all technical and stuff.

Good info, thanks from all us people who know just enough about computers to be dangerous to ourselves and those we love!

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ScratchMonkey

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Rincewind

RAM is super duper cheap now too...


Just saying

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Required Reading for all TG sandboxers

TOOmuchMcLovin

FOR a REAL boost, over the normal adding of ram, particularly in alt tab, you can aslo do what i've done.

You install a total of 2 gigs of memory. Then segment off 512 of that into a RAM DRIVE. This is a virtual HD that uses a portion of your memory as a hard drive. Now this may seem odd, but the fact is WINDOWS is stupid and requires a swap to be used. If you disable it even with 4 gigs of memory it will give you hell. However if you make a ram drive, then your swap file access is near instant. You make that ramdrive the only swap file drive and wa la! I did so and increased my system performace benchmark using Passmarks performace test to 1000+ base score.

Now for those of you with 4 gigs of ram You can take 2+ gigs of that and use it to run your games from *assuming they fit* BF2142 has near instant load times, and for once the cpu and video card are too slow for the "Hard drive".

I think I'll start a thread for posting benchmarks.
Another swap file trick, other than RAID, is to get a 2nd small old HD you have around the house. Put it on a different IDE channel than your main HD (where windows and game run from) Format this drive and leave it completely empty. Place Nothing on it at first. Edit your pagefile drive, set no page file for c and set a page file for the new drive(prolly d). Oppinions vary on whether to let windows manage its size. Anyway, set that pagefile and place nothing else on the drive, storing of long term seldom accessd files is not so much an issue, but the less adding and deleting you do on the drive the better. THis allows windows to have access to the pagefile at the max speed of the HD, because 1) the channel is not in use by other HD's (cd-rom not an issue) or fighting for seek read time with other processes


-----EDIT----
The first concept assumes you dont have more than a 100meg or so footprint with windows when you first boot up. No messengers ect loading up at windows boot. No spyware, adware ect. If you want a tutorial on limiting windows services to bare minnum let me know. My system boots up with only 14 processes. and with a commit charge of 122 megs on boot.

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Bf2142-TOOmuchMcLovin
America's Army- -=No.Ob=-McLovin
Bf2-TOOmuchSEX

Tonk

ya, ram is cheap.. on my recent newegg non-purchase (yet.. another story...) i went from 2 gb to 8gb in my cart for another 140.. cheap imho.. very cheap.. ill try running 8gb with no page file for a while to see how it works.. i hear with 8gb, there is no need for a page file, so everything is in the ram already, makes for very fast windows UI and overall loading of things... no waiting for start menu, folders.. that sort of thing

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Ferris Bueller

I've tried that Tonk, and I noticed absolutely no perceptible difference between having a page file and not having one. Yes, this was done with 8GB on the machine.

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|TG-6th|Ferris Bueller