eboostr and Superfetch

eBoostr Beta Program Forum » General

(37 posts) (9 voices)

Started 2 years ago by chooky
Latest reply from PangOS

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chooky
Beta Veteran

Just finished a round of testing eBoostr with several applications and investigation into performance with MS Superfetch turned off.

For these tests I used eBoostr 4 beta build 535 with a 2GB RAM cache on Windows 7 x64 RTM with 2 x Vertex 30GB RAID 0.

I used Passmark Apptimer to time application loading.

The results show that if you have an SSD it is for the most part better to have Superfetch turned off although some programs will suffer.

Adding an eboostr RAM cache decreased first load times by a good margin. Subsequent loads did not improve much.

Turning off Superfetch gave a further decrease in first and subsequent load times.

My PC does feel snappier because eBoostr caches a lot of system files as well as programs.

Boot and shutdown times did not change by more than a second.

Other benchmarks like Passmark Performance Test or PCMark Vantage did not show any difference.

More setup tips:
It is important not to use a USB cache only memory.

It is also important to go to Edit -> Show cache content in the control panel and right click on entries for programs you don't use often, as well as C:\Windows\System32\catroot, and exclude them by path. This gives more cache space for programs you do want to speed up. Then rebuild the cache.

Check with the eBoostr Cache Statistics program in your start menu to make sure the programs you are testing are cached nearly 100%, right clicking the item and increasing priority if they are not, or they won't be faster.

To get these sorts of SSD performance increases from a US$40 software solution is pretty amazing.

Posted 2 years ago #
Andrey Zarudnev
eBoostr Team

Great results! Thank you, chooky.

We should perform the same tests with hard disks.

Posted 2 years ago #
chooky
Beta Veteran

Thanks Andrey! eBoostr is good for low end systems and great for high end systems as well. It is just a shame people seem so reluctant to try it and don't understand its success on their system relies heavily on how it is set up and tweaked and full effect will not be seen for a few days.

A few more details I forgot to add. Total RAM 4GB, indexing is off, 1GB fixed Pagefile.
---------------------------
eBoostr : Control Panel
---------------------------
Direct access speed: 228.011597 MB/s

Cache enabled access speed: 892.565735 MB/s

Ratio: 3.914563

Posted 2 years ago #
mradr
Member

"Direct access speed: 228.011597 MB/s"

LOL dude your at the high end of everything compared to me, x20 times more anyways. Even thought most people will argu its very small diffrents (as you saw only 10-30s (10-50%) diffrents at maxs) thats still a larg time that you couldve had done something, plus it just makes things feel way more snapy even if it doesn't help it out as much. I have to say too that from when I used version one to now it has gotten better and better (with a few hicups). I've always reinstalled it and never thought once about taken it off after learning how eboostr works. Actully I was waiting/writing on a program such as this. I'm glade my idea wasnt to far off from what I thought =).

Posted 2 years ago #
chooky
Beta Veteran

Its snappy alright! eBoostr makes it noticably snappier. Can't wait to see what it is like with another 4GB of ram and 4GB eBoostr RAM cache. Can you have a RAM cache bigger than 4GB?

For a long time RAM was the cheapest upgrade for a PC. Since SSD's have come down in price and got faster and bigger they became the new best upgrade. Now I think Eboostr is the new bang for buck upgrade.

Posted 2 years ago #
David Gardiner
Member

Chooky,

How did you manage to insert your performance table into this forum?

I was going to post a graph but nothing I do will insert it in this text.

David G

Posted 2 years ago #
chooky
Beta Veteran

Its just an image. Use BBcode put [IMG] your image address /IMG at the end in square brackets.

Posted 2 years ago #
PangOS
Beta Veteran

chooky:

Can you put together your tips and tweaks for us to experiment with?

Woo! I can't afford ssd right now, but it seems tempting to get one just for cache ;).

Posted 2 years ago #
chooky
Beta Veteran

I think I covered tips and tweaks pretty well in my original post above, for fast systems with SSD's. I have been meaning to do more tests using combinations of readyboost and eBoostr USB cache.

"Woo! I can't afford ssd right now, but it seems tempting to get one just for cache ;)."

It depends on what applications you are running on your PC. eBoostr and a 2GB - 4GB RAM cache with a normal HDD will give you a better experience than an SSD for day to day operations and a lot cheaper. I don't use the SSD for cache. You will appreciate the SSD when installing and booting your OS and other applications as well as copying files and web surfing.

I recently had another good experience with eBoostr on a friends laptop. This was an 8 yr old Dell Inspiron running XP with 1GB of RAM. The screen was broken so I plugged in an LCD and found that when the lid was closed the LCD ran as a single main display which was great. After removing years accumulation of old programs and junk it was running much better. I installed eBoostr and made a 250MB RAM cache and a 2GB USB cache. It was astounding how much improvement this made! To see MS Word and other applications load and open you would think you were looking at a brand new PC with an SSD installed, very impressive! This PC was only going to be used for Office apps, internet and email so giving up 250MB of 1GB RAM to a RAM cache was quite OK.

Posted 2 years ago #
Robert Persons
Member

Hi Chooky,

Great data! Thank you for taking the time to run the benchmarks and let us know!!

You wrote that we should put the "C:\Windows\System32\catroott" directory on the exclude list. Would you please let us know what the "catroot" directory is used for, and why we should put it on the exclude list? I'm finding "catroot" and "catroot2" ... I'm assuming they should both be excluded?

Thanks! Your expertise is much appreciated!

Posted 2 years ago #
chooky
Beta Veteran

C:\Windows\System32\catroot is associated with Windows updates, anything to do with installing, uninstalling or updates will not be used more than ounce and certainly not daily so exclude it to allow eboostr to cache content you do use everyday.

Posted 2 years ago #
PangOS
Beta Veteran

What about the age old question about the pagefile?

Where is the best place for pagefile.sys to reside?

Does it affect speed performance pagefile or no?

I have 8GB RAM installed and I never use a pagefile. Gonna run some tests now.

Posted 2 years ago #
David Gardiner
Member

Testing Chooky's BB Code
[img]d:\graph.jpg/[img]

Posted 2 years ago #
David Gardiner
Member

Oops - Testing it again

Posted 2 years ago #
chooky
Beta Veteran

The last tag should be [/IMG]

PangOS I think it is important to use a pagefile. It should be on your fastest storage. On a PC with 4GB of RAM or more I use a fixed pagefile of 1 or 2 GB. On a low spec PC I just leave it as windows managed. You may be able to run without one and never see any problems but Windows was designed to use it.

Posted 2 years ago #
Zeioth
Member

A SSD Disc seems to be a good choice, chooky, can you tell me please what ratio have your SSD in eboost? i'd like to know the performance before to buy. Thank you.

Posted 2 years ago #
chooky
Beta Veteran

This is my speed test:

---------------------------
eBoostr : Control Panel
---------------------------
Direct access speed: 228.011597 MB/s

Cache enabled access speed: 892.565735 MB/s

Ratio: 3.914563

Please note that my system is heavily overclocked and running 2 30GB Vertex SSD's in RAID 0.

An SSD is a very nice upgrade to any PC.

Posted 2 years ago #
sst
Beta Veteran

Hi, ...

This is my speed test:

On a test Computer = XP SP3 x32, DDR-1 3 Gig Ram.

---------------------------
eBoostr : Control Panel
---------------------------

1024 Meg. Ram Cache
-------------------

Direct access speed: 28.049955 MB/s

Cache enabled access speed: 198.014755 MB/s

Ratio: 7.059361

----------------------
Sylvain St-Amand (sst)

Posted 2 years ago #
chooky
Beta Veteran

With a ratio of 7 you would be experiencing a wonderful improvement with eBoostr!

Posted 2 years ago #
Zeioth
Member

Ratio 7 with DDR1, how it's possible? i have DDR3 1600 dual channel & 3 GB for eboost, and:
my ratio is 4.31
direct access 18
Cache enabled access speed 80
tips?

Posted 2 years ago #
PangOS
Beta Veteran

Jumping into this thread, maybe I should have started a new one?

Still tweaking, testing, experimenting...

As I stated in another thread, assigning a flash device to readyboost increases eboostr's read rates and ratios on my system.

I *had* three flash devices being used by readyboost 2 USB sticks and an SD Memcard. I reassigned the fastest of the three devices (8GB Sandisk Cruzer USB Stick) to eboostr (4GB). I ended up being sorta surprised and shocked to find that the ratio/read times dropped and the system started to appear slower on launching programs (It was very hard for me to notice any difference before, with or without the accelerators).

Should I give it some time before trying another configuration? Or should I start over?

Posted 2 years ago #
chooky
Beta Veteran

Zeioth wrote:
Ratio 7 with DDR1, how it's possible? i have DDR3 1600 dual channel & 3 GB for eboost, and:
my ratio is 4.31
direct access 18
Cache enabled access speed 80
tips?

How much total memory do you have?
Are you only using a RAM cache?

Posted 2 years ago #
chooky
Beta Veteran

PangOS wrote:
Jumping into this thread, maybe I should have started a new one?

Still tweaking, testing, experimenting...

As I stated in another thread, assigning a flash device to readyboost increases eboostr's read rates and ratios on my system.

I *had* three flash devices being used by readyboost 2 USB sticks and an SD Memcard. I reassigned the fastest of the three devices (8GB Sandisk Cruzer USB Stick) to eboostr (4GB). I ended up being sorta surprised and shocked to find that the ratio/read times dropped and the system started to appear slower on launching programs (It was very hard for me to notice any difference before, with or without the accelerators).

Should I give it some time before trying another configuration? Or should I start over?

Are you using a RAM cache? If so how big?
How much total memory do you have?
I think you would have to do some methodical testing to see what is going to give you the best performance on your system.

As a general rule I have found the more you cache on slower media USB,SD,HDD the slower your performance.

Your system will have an optimum RAM cache size depending on the amount of memory you have and the size and number of programs you run. Making a larger ram cache will just cause you to start using the pagefile more when your programs are using more memory.

Posted 2 years ago #
PangOS
Beta Veteran

Sorry I forgot to mention.

I have 1024 RAM assigned to eBoostr.

Win7 x64
8GB RAM.

It all seems alot quicker if I use eBoostr to manage a RAM cache and Readyboost for flash devices.

Posted 2 years ago #
sst
Beta Veteran

Hi, ...

This is my speed test:

On a test Computer = XP SP3 x32, DDR-1, 3 Gig Ram.

---------------------------
eBoostr : Control Panel
---------------------------

1024 Meg. Ram Cache
-------------------

Inside Windows XP,

1) I have deactivated the option, to show in color compressed files and directory.
2) It have a NTFS compressed HardDrive.
3) PageFile completly deactivated.
4) 3 * 400 mhz ddr-1, clocked to 333 mhz.
5) The HardDrive is defragmented.
6) It use 1 gig of Ram to Ram EBoostr Cache, if i select 2 Gig, inside EBoostr it's slower.
---
It seem faster inside Windows XP to use EBoostr. It can be, because Windows XP dont have superfetch.
---
An other test = I will try on my main computer Windows 7, to disable superfetch and readyboot and readyboost. And only use EBoostr, and check if it's faster to disable or not.
---
I will test with an other HardDisk, on the test computer that have Windows XP, this HardDisk will contain Vista and Windows 7.
---
----------------------
Sylvain St-Amand (sst)

Posted 2 years ago #
Zeioth
Member

Thanks guys, specially sst for your complete description. It's completely true, with 2 gb ram i have ratio 4, with ram 1 gb i have ratio 7.4. seems to be a perfect amount. Now i'll do some tests using apptimer.

Posted 2 years ago #
Zeioth
Member

Update: Also with 512mb ram i have ratio 1,5 (extremely low). Sorry about double post.

Posted 2 years ago #
chooky
Beta Veteran

PangOS wrote:
Sorry I forgot to mention.

I have 1024 RAM assigned to eBoostr.

Win7 x64
8GB RAM.

It all seems alot quicker if I use eBoostr to manage a RAM cache and Readyboost for flash devices.

With 8GB of RAM I think your best option would be to use a 4GB RAM cache and nothing else. You may even benefit from turning off superfetch and readyboost. Even Microsoft admit that Readyboost does not do much if you have ample memory.

Can you post up some other specs? HDD make and model, CPU, mobo?

Posted 2 years ago #
chooky
Beta Veteran

Zeioth, How much total memory do you have?
Are you only using a RAM cache?

Posted 2 years ago #
PangOS
Beta Veteran

chooky wrote:
With 8GB of RAM I think your best option would be to use a 4GB RAM cache and nothing else. You may even benefit from turning off superfetch and readyboost. Even Microsoft admit that Readyboost does not do much if you have ample memory.

Can you post up some other specs? HDD make and model, CPU, mobo?

OK, Full Specs
System is O/C'ed

ASUS M3A78 M/B
AMD Phenom 8450 Triple Core @ 2.3MHz
8GB DDR2 800 RAM @ 876MHz

HDDs
Samsung SpinPoint F1 1TB SATA II 300MB/s 32MB Cache,
Western Digital Caviar Green 1TB SATA II 300MB/s 32MB Cache ,
Hitachi 500GB PATA 133MB/s 8MB Cache,
Western Digital Caviar Blue 16MB Cache 250GB SATA
Hitachi IDE on USB Enclosure 133MB/s 16MB Cache,

Flash
***********************************
Sandisk Cruzer 8GB
Kingston Data Traveler 2.0 4GB
Sandisk SD 16GB

Current config and access times.
***********************************
1GB RAM (eBoostr)
4GB Sandisk USB (eBoostr)
8GB Sandisk SD (ReadyBoost)
2GB Kingston (ReadyBoost)

No pagefile

Direct access 25.92 MB/sec
Cached access 325.07 MB/sec

Ratio 12.54

***********************************
I have had the pagefile totally disabled.
Using a 4GB RAM cache for eBoostr sounds scary due to my usual comfort of having "free" RAM. But I will try it out.

I see it was mentioned by someone, but it was on my mind to ask:

As we are constantly looking for more acceleration and performance gains, does fragmentation play a part?
Personally I have never noticed any differences in speed after defragmentation and honestly believe that the benefit only applies to persons doing recordings and so on. Would like to know what the dev team has to say about this.

Well, back to testing...

Posted 2 years ago #

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