Vista Readyboost, How well does it really work?

[Martell1977]

First of all, this is on an older desktop I have decided to breathe a little life into so my niece and nephew wont tie up my primary desktop watching Youtube (I'm a pushover when it comes to them, I know it, they know it, it's all good, lol).

Specs:
ASUS P5V800-MX
Pentium D 945 3.4ghz
Thermaltake CL-P0370 TMG i1 CPU Cooler
2GB (2x1gb) DDR3200 400mhz
8GB USB 2.0 Thumbdrive for Readyboost
Sapphire Radeon 3850 AGP8x 512mb
250GB Western Digital Black 7200rpm HDD SATA 3 gb/s
600w PSU (I forget the brand, but I've always bought well known brands)

This system had a Pentium 4 640 HT 3.2ghz in it, but I found the Pentium D on ebay, guaranteed working, for $7.25 and free shipping. So it was a no brainer.

Here is my question, Since I have used all my XP and Windows 7 licenses and do not pirate software, I am going to use my 1 and only Vista Home Premium license. I am looking at installing the 64-bit version, but the motherboard is maxed out at 2gb of RAM.

Having never used the Readyboost feature in Vista, I am hoping someone could tell me if I can use it as a way to supplement the RAM. As I understand it, Readyboost basically uses a USB thumbdrive for the page file to free up HDD bandwidth. but how well does this actually work and will I be able to get decent performance in games and such without the RAM being a total bottleneck. Note: the most taxing game this system will see is probably League of Legends.

I'm not planning on spending any more money on this system beyond what I spent on the CPU and cooler. I do plan to OC the Pentium D, hopefully to 4ghz.

TLDR: How well does Readyboost really work.

 

[aldan]

ive found on most machines with 2gb or better of ram readyboost does little or nothing.now this is in my experience and since a 4gb usb stick isnt expensive i would say try it and see what you think.the worst it will do is nothing.

 

[Martell1977]

ive found on most machines with 2gb or better of ram readyboost does little or nothing.now this is in my experience and since a 4gb usb stick isnt expensive i would say try it and see what you think.the worst it will do is nothing.

Do you think it's at least on par or even a little better than the standard page file? Would hate to lose performance to this. With such an old system, I'm trying to squeeze every little bit i can out of it.

 

[aldan]

vista is a resource hungry operating system so naturally the more ram the better.unfortunately in you case that isnt possible.ive never used it with vista but have talked to a friend who did and he swears he saw a noticeable difference.try a stick and see.takes just a minute.cheers

 

[Martell1977]

vista is a resource hungry operating system so naturally the more ram the better.unfortunately in you case that isnt possible.ive never used it with vista but have talked to a friend who did and he swears he saw a noticeable difference.try a stick and see.takes just a minute.cheers

Thanks, I can't test it just yet, parts are still in the mail (cpu, cooler) but wanted to know if this actually had a chance to work. Here's hoping.

Vista is definitely not my first choice. But it's whats available.

 

[aldan]

good luck with it.