Anybody using a RAM Disk ?

[EarthDog]

Performance wise, I agree. However a lot of people are still hung up on managing SSD writes where possible which is another practice that should have stopped a couple years ago at least (where I was coming from with that comment).

 

[Zakarro]

Be careful when disabling indexing, do it by drive as your HDD will need it.

Considering that Superfetch is handled in the ram and ram is faster than an SSD, it really is best to leave it on. No harm either way, but disabling doesn't bring any benefits.

Yeah I only disable indexing on the SSD not on the HDD

Yeah superfetch is RAM but I see it only affect low amount of RAM systems, with 16 gigz I dont see the need for it.

 

[Mpegger]

I think you are confusing Readyboost with Superfetch. Readyboost can give a performance boost on low mem (<4GiB) system. Superfetch maintains a system cache that uses free ram to not only preload portions of applications to improve startup speeds, but also a general cache which can cache any recent data that was in ram during a programs use, to make subsequent usage of said program faster. Disabling Superfetch disables the system cache, and any free ram you have is basically sitting there idle not being used.

E.g.; With Superfetch, when you open a program for the first time after a fresh reboot (say Firefox), it has to read everything from the drive and load it into ram. The main bottle neck here would be the multiple read threads and speed of the drive that would limit how fast the program will load till it's ready to use. With Superfetch, if the program is closed, its data is removed from ram, but Superfetch maintains a copy in free ram. If you run the program again, it will (for the static data) load from ram, which means much faster load times.

There really is no point to disabling Superfetch even if you have nothing but SSDs in your systems. Disabling Superfetch was recommended by various sites long ago because of Vista, but that no longer applies to Windows 7 or higher. The memory management is much better and disabling Superfetch can actually reduce performance.

 

[EarthDog]

With 16GB it would actually 'cache' MORE data than with less ram so that is a bit counterintuitive. If you enabled it, your system would be faster on the things you use most. You may want to look up how SF works...

EDIT: That's what I get from walking away from my PC.. Spot on MPegger.

I think you are confusing Readyboost with Superfetch. Readyboost can give a performance boost on low mem (<4GiB) system. Superfetch maintains a system cache that uses free ram to not only preload portions of applications to improve startup speeds, but also a general cache which can cache any recent data that was in ram during a programs use, to make subsequent usage of said program faster. Disabling Superfetch disables the system cache, and any free ram you have is basically sitting there idle not being used.

E.g.; With Superfetch, when you open a program for the first time after a fresh reboot (say Firefox), it has to read everything from the drive and load it into ram. The main bottle neck here would be the multiple read threads and speed of the drive that would limit how fast the program will load till it's ready to use. With Superfetch, if the program is closed, its data is removed from ram, but Superfetch maintains a copy in free ram. If you run the program again, it will (for the static data) load from ram, which means much faster load times.

There really is no point to disabling Superfetch even if you have nothing but SSDs in your systems. Disabling Superfetch was recommended by various sites long ago because of Vista, but that no longer applies to Windows 7 or higher. The memory management is much better and disabling Superfetch can actually reduce performance.

+1

 

[Mpegger]

I forgot who said it here on the forums once about the same topic of Superfetch, but basically "Free ram, is wasted ram".

 

[EarthDog]

Exactly... and the change out is so quick when needed, there isn't a performance hit. There is no legitimate reason to disable Superfetch with an SSD. None. Indexing either as that was a worry about writes... but... I digress.

 

[Zakarro]

I think you are confusing Readyboost with Superfetch. Readyboost can give a performance boost on low mem (<4GiB) system. Superfetch maintains a system cache that uses free ram to not only preload portions of applications to improve startup speeds, but also a general cache which can cache any recent data that was in ram during a programs use, to make subsequent usage of said program faster. Disabling Superfetch disables the system cache, and any free ram you have is basically sitting there idle not being used.

E.g.; With Superfetch, when you open a program for the first time after a fresh reboot (say Firefox), it has to read everything from the drive and load it into ram. The main bottle neck here would be the multiple read threads and speed of the drive that would limit how fast the program will load till it's ready to use. With Superfetch, if the program is closed, its data is removed from ram, but Superfetch maintains a copy in free ram. If you run the program again, it will (for the static data) load from ram, which means much faster load times.

There really is no point to disabling Superfetch even if you have nothing but SSDs in your systems. Disabling Superfetch was recommended by various sites long ago because of Vista, but that no longer applies to Windows 7 or higher. The memory management is much better and disabling Superfetch can actually reduce performance.

Nah I know what readyboost is

With 16GB it would actually 'cache' MORE data than with less ram so that is a bit counterintuitive. If you enabled it, your system would be faster on the things you use most. You may want to look up how SF works...

EDIT: That's what I get from walking away from my PC.. Spot on MPegger.

+1

Hmm then maybe I will renable it, lets see if boot times and game load times improve, I dunno when I first got an SSD I have a guide printed out on tweaking them and it said disable prefetch and superfetch, I still use the guide till today everytime I do a freash install.

 

[EarthDog]

That guide is years old... as he said. Most are. Its outdated.