Windows 7 flash drive as extra RAM (readyboost)

[aekblade]

has anyone tested out using the flash drive as RAM with windows 7 using revit?? If so, how big was the USB drive and did you notice any improvement?

[gwnelson]

I tried using 16Gb as Readyboost on Vista64 on my Dell M90 laptop. I've just upgraded to 7 this weekend and haven't gotten to try thumb drive yet.

Things about Vista & Readyboost:

1. If you leave the drive in a USB port you get error msg that there is no operating system. This might be able to be fixed in Bios but I didn't bother trying.

2. I noticed Zero performance increase over my installed 4Gb.

3. This would be really cool if it worked. Sound familiar?

[iru69]

ReadyBoost is another one of those hardware things that is often misunderstood. ReadyBoost does NOT give you more RAM.

ReadyBoost caches often used system files and apps on your flashdrive. This can be beneficial because seeks for data on a flashdrive are faster than from your hard drive. This can lead to slightly better system performance.

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

I tried using 16Gb as Readyboost on Vista64 on my Dell M90 laptop. I've just upgraded to 7 this weekend and haven't gotten to try thumb drive yet.

Things about Vista & Readyboost:

1. If you leave the drive in a USB port you get error msg that there is no operating system. This might be able to be fixed in Bios but I didn't bother trying.

2. I noticed Zero performance increase over my installed 4Gb.

3. This would be really cool if it worked. Sound familiar?

1. This most likely your BIOS setting and doesn't have anything to do with Windows.

2. You likely wouldn't because that's not how it works.

3. It does work, but any system performance gains are rather subtle... a few seconds here a few seconds there... it's not going to make Revit run faster.

[gwnelson]

What a buzz kill! Seems to me there was some more than just subtle suggestions that it's the new Turbo. Uh, did Turbo ever really work?

[ron.sanpedro]

It would be interesting to see if ReadyBoost offers any benifits when a really large model is open? If there is ever a time when Revit would benifit, it is then. The rest of the time a Revit machine has so much spare RAM capacity that paging isn't happening, so fast paging is moot.

In general, I think ReadyBoost is, like most Microsoft stuff, about improving life at the shallow end of the pool. Windows 7 on an old machine with 1GB of RAM probably goes from intolerable to passable with ReadyBoost becuase at 1GB it is paging all the time, just with OS processes. 64 bit and 8GB of RAM probably reduces the opportunity for ReadyBoost to make much difference the vast majority of the time.

I also suspect that SSDs as boot drive will be much more common a year from now, and that will put the page file on a high speed resource with very low latency, basically the same as ReadyBoost. Having local files on the SSD may also be pretty dramatic, certainly when opening, and perhaps when saving as well. Then we'll have to deal with new SwC complaints, as it will seem so SLOOOW compared to a local save.

Gordon

[iru69]

It would be interesting to see if ReadyBoost offers any benifits when a really large model is open? If there is ever a time when Revit would benifit, it is then. The rest of the time a Revit machine has so much spare RAM capacity that paging isn't happening, so fast paging is moot.

No. ReadyBoost is not a replacement for the page file (virtual memory). The page file involves a lot of writing as well as reading... moving large chunks of data in and out of memory. Flash drives are not designed for this and will quickly wear out... and they have poor performance for reading and writing large amounts of data. Flash drives are very fast for seeks - seeking out and reading small bits of data.

The page file is a separate issue. If you're running low on memory, it makes far more sense from a performance standpoint to add more RAM than to find a faster page file storage medium... and the cost is generally trivial for a professional Revit workstation.

[ron.sanpedro]

No. ReadyBoost is not a replacement for the page file (virtual memory). The page file involves a lot of writing as well as reading... moving large chunks of data in and out of memory. Flash drives are not designed for this and will quickly wear out... and they have poor performance for reading and writing large amounts of data. Flash drives are very fast for seeks - seeking out and reading small bits of data.

The page file is a separate issue. If you're running low on memory, it makes far more sense from a performance standpoint to add more RAM than to find a faster page file storage medium... and the cost is generally trivial for a professional Revit workstation.

I know RB is really fundamentally a huge drive cache to augment the little 16MB one found on the drive, but my understanding was that the swap file would be one of the things that got handled there, as it is something that is accessed often and would thus benifit from a speed bump over the platters. If not swap file, then what would Windows store there? Temp files perhaps? Entire copies of Revit local files? An 8 or 16GB thumbdrive would provide tons of room for that, but then you would expect to see a performance boost. It sure would be nice to have some tool that actually allows you to see what files are being ReadyBoosted, and what aren't.

That said, I agree completely. The difference between a $500 system that runs AutoCAD fine but barely runs Revit and a $2500 machine that blazes with Revit is paid back pretty quickly, so just make the plunge and buy the ram, and the cpu, and the os.
We have just gotten so used to cheap Dell junk being fine for AutoCAD that we freak out at paying for a real machine. Remember the days when a good AutoCAD machine was 2-3 grand, while the more entry level machines where still one grand? It wasn't that long ago.

Gordon

[gwnelson]

I took the plunge with RB because my M90 is maxed out at 4Gb Ram. So now I have a shiny new 16Gb thumb drive. Can I hack that as an appendage to my MP3 player?

[clog boy]

You mean use different partitions, see if it reads as two drives? I'd be interested to know this too. Though MP3 playback would probably hog the port long enough to counter any effect.