Author Topic: Vista’s ReadyBoost benefits on your Windows XP machine with eBoostr (Read 45008 times)

Darwin · « **Reply #25 on:** December 27, 2007, 08:10 AM »

Curt - you outed me! I gave this another shot and have been running eBoostr for almost a week now. I am definitely seeing some improvement in my system when I put it under stress and have more or less sorted out the boot problem. As I note in Ron's thread, I'm just dithering about purchasing it. The resource "hit" is negligible...

Tinman57 · « **Reply #26 on:** December 27, 2007, 10:29 PM »

I'll put it this way, I'm on an XP SP2 machine with only 512 mb of RAM and a 80 gb hard drive. I'm running a large firewall, antivirus, several port sniffers, AvantBrowser, connection software, MemTurbo4, Slickrun, Magic Defrag, INCD, Creative 3D Audio, and I can't tell you how many other "little" associated apps in the background, and right now I have 292 mb of free RAM available, and that's actual chip memory. If I did a quick refresh, I'd probably get about 312 mb or more of free'd RAM. My Current File Cache is 32 mb and my Total Pagefile has 855 mb free. Before using MemTurbo, I couldn't run all this stuff in the background without bogging down...... I think I'll stick with MemTurbo for quite a while.....

f0dder · « **Reply #27 on:** December 28, 2007, 06:08 AM »

Free RAM is wasted RAM.

What applications like MemTurbo does is force all applications to swap out their stuff to the paging file. This involves disk I/O, and disk I/O is slow. Windows itself also swaps out to the paging file (duh!

) but on a as-needed basis, instead of just dumping everything.

I have yet to see a quantified benchmark that shows that "memory optimizers" actually work, all I've seen yet is people's subjective feelings, and they try to justify their claims with "task manager shows more memory is free!", without even really understanding the shown stats.

I used XPSP2 on a 512meg machine for quite a while too, btw, and for heavy things like software development, and it ran okay without any snake oil apps. Moving to a gig did do wonders though, and was cheap - and is even cheaper nowadays.

Tinman57 · « **Reply #28 on:** December 28, 2007, 09:42 PM »

Gee, too bad you had to waste all that money on more RAM. Sorry about your luck. Sure am glad I didn't have to.
MemTurbo cured my problems long ago. MemTurbo goes well beyond cache swapping, heck I don't need a program to change those, it's right in the sytem properties unless you have them hidden. It also contols system and application priorities, boosting some when needed. But if you already know so much about MemTurbo, I suppose I don't need to tell you anymore.....

f0dder · « **Reply #29 on:** December 29, 2007, 04:57 AM »

I didn't waste money on RAM, it was well spent. Even with the dirty flush-to-pagefile tricks of apps like MemTurbo, you only have so much physical memory in your box. More RAM means I can set up large ramdrives when I need _really_ fast file operations, that I can use a lot of memory for filesystem cache without worrying, and that I can process huge files in-memory without swapping to disk.

Granted, the memory cost me more than the $30 MemTurbo does, but the net effect is so much better.

If I needed process priority boosting/decaying I'd use mouser's (free!) tool, but since I have a dual-core processor, I don't.

If you subjectively feel that MemTurbo works, good for you, it would be sad if you wasted money on snake oil and it tasted bitter.

Lashiec · « **Reply #30 on:** December 29, 2007, 10:21 AM »

I'm confused, you prefer swapping to more memory? With the current price of memory??!!

The priority is only useful in certain scenarios, I'll tell you I played with priorities in my old machine, and didn't see any improvement at all. Maybe if you're a heavy multitasker, with lots of demanding applications running in the background (like desktop search) it makes some difference, but I'm a man of a single desktop

EDIT: w00t! 2¹° posts

Darwin · « **Reply #31 on:** December 29, 2007, 10:23 AM »

I gave up on memory optimizers as well (and I purchased at least two dedicated optimizers, along with CachemanXP). All things being equal, if you can expand your RAM, that's the best solution. I still have CachemanXP installed on my system but only to use it to tweak my cache - I have the memory recovery disabled because I don't want it going near my RAM. Having said this, there are times when it may be justifiable to use these software solutions and that's when you're dealing with bios limitations that won't allow you to install anymore RAM. However, even when I only ran 512MB of RAM on a Win2k notebook (RAM was maxed at this point), I discovered that it ran just fine when I didn't obsess about the amount of RAM that was free on it. I noticed that if I turned off the memory optimizer (and thus had no visual cue in my taskbar about the amount free) and disciplined myself NOT to keep invoking task manager to check my RAM, that my machine ran just fine. Every couple of weeks it would occur to me to check at a point when all was well but when I had a lot of processes running and I'd be surprised to find that I might have only 35MB free! Now that I have 2GB RAM on my current - though now elderly - notebook, I never even think about it. I've just checked and I've got 1.2GB free. The "old me" would be fretting about the fact that I only booted my computer an hour ago and have only Outlook and Maxthon open, so where'd my 800MB of memory go?! The "new me" couldn't care less.

As tinman notes, YMMV. This is my experience: there's a significant placebo effect with RAM optimizers. I've found that once you stop worrying about the amount of RAM that is free it becomes a non-issue so that the RAM optimizer simply isn't necesary.

EDIT: add last sentence.

Lashiec · « **Reply #32 on:** December 29, 2007, 10:31 AM »

Exactly. Besides, Windows XP handles the swapping quite better than Win9x. You need more RAM? OK, Windows will swap some data to the pagefile, and you'll get that extra RAM you need. The only point you'll want to have as much free RAM as possible is after a cold start, because more free RAM -> less programs loaded at startup -> faster startup!

I'd say that there's no need to fiddle with anything, including the cache. I tested CachemanXP some months ago, just because I used Cacheman extensively in the past to tweak Windows 98 settings, and I didn't found anything that led me to fork money for it, it was much less useful than the normal Cacheman, yet it was payware. I think I'll pass, thank you

f0dder · « **Reply #33 on:** December 29, 2007, 10:40 AM »

Exactly, Darwin - those "memory optimizers" are written for people who obsess about free memory, without realizing how futile this is. And most of those "optimizers" use the horrid hack of allocating a huge chunk of memory to do the paging out to disk, instead of iterating over running processes and calling SetProcessWorkinSetSize() to trim the processes (which is imho still bad, but a little less crappy).

I dunno how effective it is to hand-tune the various cache settings, but the single LargeSystemCache=1 flag works great when you have enough RAM (why be so conservative about filesystem caching? Tsk!). Unless of course you have ATI drivers. Oh, and disabling NTFS last-access (not last-modify) is also very nice.

Darwin · « **Reply #34 on:** December 29, 2007, 10:52 AM »

Heh, heh, thanks guys

I'm using CachemanXP because I bought it back when I was running the Win2k machine with 512MB of RAM (it sits in a bag in my closet because I stepped on it a few months ago and cracked the lcd

). When I upgraded to 2GB RAM on my newer notebook I thought "What the heck, I'll use it to tweak the cache settings, which is what I've done. More than likely, it's simply applied one or more of the suggestions that you have made. I'll investigate...

Now... to eBoostr. I'm still running it and still feel that it improves that stability of my system (placebo?!). I picked up a 4GB Kingston DataTraveller (upper middle of the pack for speed AFAICT) for $25 in the boxing day sales and am using it, 4GB of a 40GB USB powered drive with nothing else on it, and 4GB of my 500GB external backup harddrive with eBoostr. I don't believe that eBoostr is speeding up my boot times - in fact I suspect that my boottimes are somewhat slower now - but I do feel that when running a number of heavy programs concurrently my system is more stable with eBoostr than without. I'd prefer to install more RAM, but I've already got double the supposedly maximum amount of RAM that my notebook will support AND 1.5GB SODIMMS are too expensive to take a chance with. I've not really noticed much difference when running one, two, or three caches (as outlined above) and have written to the developer asking for clarification on what the advantages of running multiple caches are, if any. I'm waiting for a response to that e-mail. I've already had a response to a number of recommendations that I've made, and they hope to incorporate one or more of them into the next version (1.2, I presume). They've also acknowledged that the documentation needs to be improved and have promised that it will be forthcoming.

Anyone else actually taken the plunge and tried this?

Placebo-boy

Darwin · « **Reply #35 on:** December 29, 2007, 10:58 AM »

Just to clarify a point I made in my post about RAM optimization (and to anticipate a question or two) - in addition to simply disabling the icon in the system tray that reported how much RAM I had available, I also disabled automatic RAM recovery. After I had "survived" like this for a couple of months I simply uninstalled the RAM optimizer and never looked back. At this point I had been running Tenebril's MemoryBoost (I recall having gotten fed up with CachemanXP's habit of failing to report the amount of RAM free correctly. Wish I'd run the above experiment BEFORE paying for another RAM boosting application

).

Josh · « **Reply #36 on:** December 29, 2007, 11:00 AM »

What type of solution do you all use for RamDisk's? I've seen this mentioned in this thread a couple of times and am interested in setting one up.

f0dder · « **Reply #37 on:** December 29, 2007, 11:08 AM »

Hm, as for eBoostr - I really wish they'd write a little about what the program is actually doing... it's too much marketing fluff and too little hard info right now for me to even consider installing the application. Is it any better than adding multiple paging files, does it use a filter driver, etc etc etc?

Josh: there isn't much difference between the RAM disks I've seen for NT. Most of them are relatively lame, I haven't seen any that can do things like dynamic resizing

. I'm tempted to have a go at writing one myself, but I don't have the free time.

Darwin · « **Reply #38 on:** December 29, 2007, 11:15 AM »

Yes, the information on eBoostr that is available is pretty much nil. Once you install it and setup a cache, you can explore the cache, which would give you some clues as to what it does. Sort of reminds of prefetching on steroids. Unfortunately, I'm not in a position to interpret it (no idea, in other words)! I can post a screenshot, if anyone is interested...

Tyinsar · « **Reply #39 on:** January 02, 2008, 03:36 AM »

... Oh, and disabling NTFS last-access (not last-modify) is also very nice.
-f0dder (December 29, 2007, 10:40 AM)

Thanks muchly for the tip. (I also ended up setting "NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation" to 1)

f0dder · « **Reply #40 on:** January 02, 2008, 03:56 AM »

... Oh, and disabling NTFS last-access (not last-modify) is also very nice.
-f0dder (December 29, 2007, 10:40 AM)
Thanks muchly for the tip. (I also ended up setting "NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation" to 1)
-Tyinsar (January 02, 2008, 03:36 AM)

Disabling 8dot3 creation can be dangerous if you run any 16-bit applications... and chances are you might do, even if you think you don't; for some reason, 32bit versions of InstallShield kept using 16bit installers for a long, long time.

But thanks for reminding me of this setting, considering that I run 64bit XP now and can't even run 16bit apps anymore, I might as well disable 8dot3 myself

- dunno if does much difference performance wise, though.

Tyinsar · « **Reply #41 on:** January 02, 2008, 09:49 AM »

Yeah, I read the warnings but thought I'd give it a shot anyway. If there are any issues I think I can fix them. I'm installing XP 64 very soon anyway.

Curt · « **Reply #42 on:** April 19, 2008, 06:42 AM »

New eBoostr 2

eBoostr 2 Released
April 16th, 2008 |

What’s new in version 2 -
Here goes a quick list of the additional features with more details "below":

Memory caching (if you have plenty of RAM installed);

Exclude list (the most requested feature);

Power saving mode;

More than 4GB cache file size (on NTFS file system only);

One flash drive use on different computers;

Unlimited number of files in cache;

Build cache process improvement (including initial statistics used from XP prefetch information);

Load balancing mechanism improvements;

And many small fixes and enhancements;

And finally 16 new languages added: Portuguese, Ukrainian, Finnish, Czech, Danish, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Polish, Korean, Swedish, Sinhalese, Lithuanian, Arabic, Belarusian, Japanese and Thai.
-eBoostr

I have been using it for 3 days, and have a small improvement in performance
- I did not try the first version.

http://www.eboostr.c.../eboostr-2-released/

Select your license type Price (USD) Price (EUR) Price (GBP)

PRO Version:
Includes all available functionality: RAM cache, exclude list, cache viewer, power saving mode, up to 4 devices.
$39 €26 £20

Laptop Edition:
Includes: battery saving mode, exclude list, cache viewer, up to 4 devices. No RAM caching functionality.
$29 €19 £15 -

Desktop Edition:
Includes: exclude list, cache viewer, up to 4 devices. No RAM caching and power save mode.
$24 €16 £12

Lite Version:
Limited to single USB thumb drive. Does not contain cache viewer and exclude list functionality.
$19 €13 £10

- I now know from experience that the prices are plus VAT

icekin · « **Reply #43 on:** June 14, 2008, 12:46 AM »

I recently came across a tool called SweepRAM, which is free that aims to do something different : - It tries to allocate as much memory as it can to running applications and then then releases it.

It goes through all running processes and ask for them to be put out of RAM (into VM). When that happens, of course they’ll get right back there, but only as little as they actually need to as that time; meaning, after that they will only use as much RAM as they actually need to for the time being.

I've placed a shortcut to it in my start menu and the results are okay, but there is an annoying window that pops up saying that the task is done each time I run the program. There's apparently a way to run it with a /s parameter that suppresses this, but I'm not sure how.

f0dder · « **Reply #44 on:** June 14, 2008, 06:57 AM »

icekin: actually, that application does not try to "allocate as much memory as it can to running applications and then then releases it." - instead (afaik), it goes through all running processes, and does SetWorkingProcessSetSize(process, -1, -1), which tells windows to "trim that process".

Much less non-lame than "allocate as much memory as possible", but still a pretty silly thing to do - it doesn't really help you... if windows needs more memory, it will do this trimming automatically. Remember: unused memory is wasted memory. And flushing things to the pagefile (and reading back from disk) is slow.