Readyboost on Windows 7 x64...worth it or not?

Not worthwhile in my experience.

There are very few uses where 4GB is not a lot of RAM.

I have a spare USB port on my desktop, so what the heck, I put 4GB flash drive in there and enable Readyboost and never noticed a difference.

Recently I replaced my C: drive with a solid state drive, the Samsung software says turn OFF Readyboost to optimize performance.

USB isn’t fast enough to transfer enough data for Readyboost to use a USB drive to make any real difference.

@jerv If that’s the case, why even come up with Readyboost in the first place?

@lightsourcetrickster It made sense back when computers often shipped with too little RAM to even fully load the OS, let alone having enough RAM to do any caching. Try running XP or newer on 512MB or less and you’ll see what I mean.

However, now that most systems ship with enough RAM to hold the OS and most applications without needing a swap file (you generally only need to buy more if you are into multimedia editing or CAD/CAM), the need for ReadyBoost has diminished greatly. Also, modern hard drives have more cache of their own than drives from yesteryear; another reason ReadyBoost is increasingly irrelevant.