Today my friend Jeff hit me up with an interesting question. His quad-core HP DL585 is supposed to operate at 3.4 GHz, but Performance Monitor was showing it running at 82% of the maximum frequency–2.8 GHz.

My first thought was that the difference was the metric AMD uses to make it easier to compare their processors to Intels higher-frequency chips–and I was really wrong. When I investigated the Performance Monitor counters Jeff was looking at, I discovered a counter I hadn’t used before: Processor Performance\% of Maximum Frequency, as shown above.

This counter shows the current frequency of the processor. Modern processors can slow themselves down a bit to save power when they’re not doing anything high-priority. A few years back, it was just mobile processors that did this. Today, it’s pervasive–mobile computers, desktops, and servers scale back frequency when they’re not busy.

As shown here, you can configure the minimum and maximum processor states from the Power Options dialog box (Control Panel\Hardware And Sound\Power Options\Change Plan Settings):

You might also be able to configure settings from your computer’s BIOS/CMOS.

I’m running Vista 32-bit and would like to know which programs are the only ones absolutely required for startup. Thanks.

Turning off unnecessary startup programs is a great way to speed up your computer. If you do it wrong, though, some things might not work right.

The short answer is that no startup programs is required. Sure, Windows requires lots of things to start properly, but everything that’s absolutely mandatory starts as a service. Unless you’re familiar with which services you need, you shouldn’t disable any of them.

You might, however, want some of them to start. Generally, those little startup apps don’t slow your computer down a noticeable amount, and they occasionally make your computer work a bit better. Looking at my own computer, I have left the following programs to start automatically:

• Microsoft IntelliPoint and Microsoft IntelliType Pro. These give my keyboard and mouse extra functionality. If I did disable them, my keyboard and mouse would still work, though.
• RAID Event Monitor. This watches my computer’s hard disk for problems.
• NWiz. This is NVidia’s graphics card software. My computer would run fine without it, but I haven’t bothered to disable it because I’ve never seen it cause a problem.
• Google Update. This keeps my Google software (like Chrome) up-to-date. Wouldn’t it be nice if one piece of software could get all my updates?
• Adobe CS4 Service Manager. This just makes sure Photoshop keeps working.
• Virtual CloneDrive. This lets me mount ISO files like a physical CD or DVD.
• GrooveMonitor Utility. Helps me with Microsoft Groove (something I need for my work).
• Java(TM) Platform SE 6 U15. This running in the background just lets some website start up a bit faster.
• SMax4PNP Application. A tool used by my soundcard.
• Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader and Acrobat Manager. This isn’t required, but when I open a PDF, this lets it open a bit faster.
• Microsoft Office OneNote. I use OneNote, and having this startup automatically allows me to start it quicker.
• Ultramon. A tool for managing multiple monitors.

And I’ve disabled some apps:

• Dropbox. A tool for storing files on the Internet.
• AOL Service Libraries. Good ole AOL instant messenger, which I no longer use.
• InstallShield Update Services. This downloads updates to the update software itself. It’s incredibly annoying.
• QuickTime. This would allow QuickTime videos to play a bit faster, but I rarely watch QuickTime videos, so who cares?
• Steam. A service for downloading games online. I used it once, and I don’t need it always running in the background.

Over at the Official Google Webmaster Blog, Matt warns that Google might (someday) factor in page load times when returning search results. In other words, if your website is slow, it might fall off the search rankings.

He pointed me to a site I hadn’t seen before–webpagetest.org. It’s fantastic. I’ve used many different website optimization tools (including Web Page Analyzer, Google Webmaster Tools, and Page Speed), but WebPageTest provides several different sources throughout the world, and different bandwidths, with different browser versions, and a fantastic user interface.

I used it to examine the performance of two of my sites–www.vistaclues.com and www.northrup.org. Northrup.org was pretty good already because I’ve spent a lot of time analyzing it, but I did discover that simultaneous connections with older browsers was limiting the page load time a bit (despite the fact that I already use parallelization), so I juggled the locations of images around a bit.

VistaClues, however, was fairly awful. You can see the test results here. Specifically, compare my first test result with my last (with the same parameters).

Overall, I increased performance by about 250% and decreased bandwidth usage by about 30%:

• I eliminated a few unnecessary objects (including a reference to an object that didn’t exist because the theme developer had left it out).
• I enabled gZip compression. I had incorrectly setup the WP Super Cache plugin for WordPress and disabled gZip.
• I implemented parallelization by adding the sub-domains images1.vistaclues.com through images5.vistaclues.com and referencing different images and objects using these hostnames–even though they point back to www.vistaclues.com. I also activated the Parallelize WordPress plug-in.
• I removed the stupid Gravatar (Avatar) pictures in the comments. Almost nobody used them and they REALLY caused a lot of unnecessary requests.
• I enabled caching for images, CSS files, JavaScript files, and other static files by editing Apache’s .htaccess file. No, I’m not becoming a Linux guy. ;)
• I minified some scripts and plug-ins by activating the WP Minify plug-in.
• I disabled some WordPress plug-ins that I was no longer using to decrease the page generation time.

With all that said, 6.4 seconds still seems like a long time to wait for the first page to load. Other pages do load faster, and the page generally appears within a couple of seconds. So, don’t take the page load time literally, just use it as a point of reference.

Add a comment if you have other performance suggestions or different performance tools.

That’s a screenshot from my favorite free tool for testing hard disk performance–HD Tune (there’s a pro version you can buy, too). That’s from my Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM 1.5 TB SATA drive backup drive.

The Blue Line–Transfer Rate

First, the blue line is the transfer rate. That’s the speed which the hard disk sends data to the computer when a big file is lined up nicely–defragmented, in other words. Notice that the line starts high (at 126 MB/sec) and drops (to about 57 MB/sec). That’s because the test moves from the outside of the drive to the inside. Disk drives are round, like a record, and so the outside spins faster (in inches/sec) from the inside.

Windows starts storing data on the outside of your disk, and works its way towards the center. That way, your files will be as fast as possible. The fact that the performance drops by 65% from the outside to the inside of the disk helps illustrate that disk performance is WAY better for files stored on the outside of the disk. It also shows one big reason why, as your disk fills up, it also slows down.

The Yellow Dots–Access Time

The yellow dots show random access time. That’s the time it takes for the disk to jump from one part of the drive to the next. In other words, that’s how long it takes to jump from the end of one file to the beginning of the next, or to jump between two segments of a fragmented file. The average access time for this disk is 13.5 ms–but lower would be better.

USB Flash Drive Performance

The previous graph shows typical performance from a hard disk, but USB flash drives behave very differently. They don’t have spinning platters–data is read by sending electrical signals. If you think they’ll be faster, you’re right. If you think they’ll be slower, you’re right.

As you can see, the transfer rate is WAY slower. My Seagate had an average transfer rate of 100 MB/sec, but my USB flash drive was at 16 MB/sec–about 6X slower. The access time is 0.8 ms, though–about 17X faster. So, USB flash drives are faster at random access and slower at sequential reads.

ReadyBoost uses this to improve the performance of Windows by caching files from the hard disk to a flash drive. If it would be faster to read it from the flash drive (like, if it’s a small segment of data that would need to be randomly accessed), it reads it from the flash drive. Otherwise, it takes advantage of the hard disks high sequential read performance.

Many new mobile computers ship with flash drives instead of conventional disk drives. In some ways, performance is better, and in other ways, performance is worse. The transfer rates of flash drives will increase over time, however, and Windows 7 includes some major improvements that speed up flash drives.

How to Get the Best Performance

I do a great deal of photo and video editing with my Canon EOS 5D Mark II–that’s 21 megapixel pictures and 1080P video–and a really fast disk makes things much more efficient. When I bought a new computer, I set it up with a very fast disk subsystem. Not the fastest in the world, mind, you, but a good bang for the buck. I chose two EXPENSIVE 15,000 RPM disks and put them in a RAID 0 array, which reads and writes to both disks at the same time. Here’s the performance I got:

Overall, that’s about twice as fast as my 1.5 TB drive (though I might have expected better…)

On Laptop Performance

So far, I’ve been discussing the disk performance of my desktop computer (a Dell Precision T3400). The main reason I bought a desktop was to get better disk performance–laptops tend to be really bad, owing to the use of small disks. Remember my lecture about how disks perform best at the outside edge of the platter? Well, smaller disks have smaller outside edges, so performance drops. Laptop disks also tend to be optimized to reduce power usage, so they spin at a slower RPM. Here’s the disk that shipped with my Dell D820:

Abysmal, right? The average transfer rate is 3X slower than the cheap Seagate drive I began this discussion with. All hope is not lost, however. It’s not too hard to upgrade a laptop hard disk–just backup to an external disk, swap drives, and then do restore to the new disk. I upgraded to a newer, faster, 500GB drive and got this performance:

The new disk doubled the average transfer rate (though the access time actually dropped a bit). It sped up the computer noticeably. So, if our laptop seems slow, upgrading the disk might be the right choice.

Got a fast or slow disk? Need some advice about hard disk performance? Tell me about it in the comments.

Hi.. I’m just wondering if its possible to disable some services to make vista run like xp or make it like xp. Im having problems playing games. The game runs in slow motion. It runs way faster in XP.

Answer:

Yes, there are many services and features you can disable in Windows Vista that might improve performance. Unfortunately, it won’t help your game performance.

Background processes and services do a good job of getting out of the way when you’re running something like a game, and all the tweaking in the world might give you a performance benefit of 1-2%. Sounds like you’re seeing about a 50% performance drop in Vista, though. So, it’s something else.

Your problem is almost certainly driver-related. First, visit your computer manufacturer’s website and look for updated video and sound drivers (and anything else that might be available). Install them. Then, follow these instructions to see if your video adapter has new drivers available directly from the component manufacturer. Lastly, see if your game developer has any Vista-related updates available.

The fact is, it’s still pretty early for gaming on Vista. Vista actually has a lot of big improvements to make new games better, but the games will need to be written specifically for Windows Vista to take advantage of it. With that said, games written for Windows XP SHOULD run fine on Vista, but the new video driver model in Vista requires video driver developers to essentially start from scratch. Optimizing the Vista video drivers could take years. Check for updated drivers regularly, and you should see performance improvements with each update.

Can you comment on if the new system of using CF cards as a memory boost really increases Windows Vista performance.  I think they call it ready boost.  I have tried it on a new Dell Quad Core system with an internal card reader and there does not seem to be any benifet at all.  The card I am using is an 8 gb 120x speed Transcend CF card.  Was this just a marketing scam on Microsoft’s part ?   I also have the 4 gb memory frustration that everybody else seems to have.  My system shows 3 gb installed.

Thanks,

Ed

Answer:

I did a pretty in-depth review of ReadyBoost performance here. It’s definitely not a “marketing scam”. Here’s the thing, though–the slower your hard disk is, the more benefit you’ll get from it. Conversely, the faster your hard disk, the less benefit you’ll get. You don’t mention what hard idsk you have, but if you’re rockin a quad-core, it’s gotta be pretty fast. Unless you have a really slow hard disk, you probably won’t notice the performance benefit. Nonetheless, it’ll still be helping in the background. It might help a lot, or might only help a little.

Unfortunately, there’s no good way to see how ReadyBoost is helping. I use a USB flash drive with an LED activity light on it so I can see when it’s working. That helps, but of course I don’t know if Vista is reading from the cache or writing to it. Additionally, the activity is often part of background processes, which wouldn’t really offer any noticable performance improvement anyway.

Also, for the record, the “120X” speed rating of your CF card is meaningless for ReadyBoost. That’s a measurement of the sequential read or write performance (ie., reading or writing an entire picture to/from the CF card). ReadyBoost only cares about random, non-sequential reads (like, retrieving the 140th byte of a database file). The reason for this is that the hard disk will ALWAYS be faster for sequential reads–however, flash memory is much faster than a hard disk for non-sequential reads.

Wish I could clear everything up for you, but there’s not currently any good way. If you have an extra CF card or flash drive, plug it in. It’ll help some, even if it’s not a lot. Don’t go out and buy a CF card or flash drive just for ReadyBoost, though.

Your computer is bogged down, so you open Task Manager and check the processes tab. There’s the culprit: Svchost.exe. Svchost.exe represents many different services, however, so it doesn’t really tell you what’s causing the problem.

In Windows Vista, you can easily determ determine which specific service is using resources. Just follow these steps:

1. Right-click the taskbar, and then click Task Manager.

2. Click the Processes tab.

3. Click Show processes from all users. Then, respond to the UAC prompt.

4. Click the CPU column heading to sort by the busiest process.

5. If the process is Svchost.exe, right-click it, and then click Go to Service(s). You can do this for any process, but it won’t work correctly if the process isn’t a service.
6. From the Services tab, check the Description column of the selected row to identify the service. You can right-click the service and then click Stop service to stop it.

You can also identify a process from the service by right-clicking the service on the Services tab and then clicking Go to Process.

Question:

Hi, I found your website today during a search on Vista. My question is will 32 bit Vista Ultimate support more RAM? IE 4 or 3?

Answer:

I thought this was a slam-dunk, but it turns out to be a damn good question! The short answer is, the practical upper limit is usually about 3GB of RAM.

The long answer takes some explanation… Here’s the official answer from Microsoft:

• 32-bit versions of Windows Vista Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate: 4GB
• 32-bit Windows Vista Starter: 1GB
• 64-bit versions of Windows Vista Home Basic: 8GB
• 64-bit versions of Windows Vista Home Premium: 16GB
• 64-bit versions of Windows Vista Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate: 128GB

So I search around a little to find some real-world experiences for people with 4GB installed:

• This guy had 3.2GB available.
• People here had 2GB, 3.58GB, and 3GB available.
• This guy had 2.5 GB.
• And this guy had 2.8GB available.

This paper from HP helps explain it–the platform can theoretically support the full 4GB, but your hardware is going to allocate some of the address space (not the physical RAM) to the PCI bus, the video adapter memory address space, and other resources. 32-bit OSs need to use part of the full 4GB address space to address these resources, subtracting from the maximum memory you have available to the OS and applications:

The PCI memory addresses starting down from 4 GB are used for things like the BIOS, IO cards, networking, PCI hubs, bus bridges, PCI-Express, and video/graphics cards. The BIOS takes up about 512 KB starting from the very top address. Then each of the other items mentioned are allocated address ranges below the BIOS range. The largest block of addresses is allocated for today’s high performance graphics cards which need addresses for at least the amount of memory on the graphics card. The net result is that a high performance x86-based computer may allocate 512 MB to more than 1 GB for the PCI memory address range before any RAM (physical user memory) addresses are allocated.

So, if your video adapter has 512MB of RAM (like mine does), your maximum memory is going to at most be 3.5GB, because Vista has to use 512MB of that address space to address your video memory. It’ll actually be lower than the 3.5GB because there are other hardware resources that need address space, too. So, it never hurts to fill your computer with 4GB of RAM–you’ll definitely get the max, but you won’t be able to address it all. You probably won’t be able to address much more than 3GB, and you might not be able to address more than 2GB.
The paper also mentions something interesting about 64-bit computers. Basically, depending on the hardware, you might be limited to 4GB of RAM even if you install 64-bit Windows Vista:

Windows XP Professional x64 Edition uses 64-bit addressing enabling virtually the entire amount of installed RAM to be made available on computers that have large address infrastructures (where the entire system has more than 4 GB addressing capabilities via the processor, chipset, physical memory capacity, etc). The HP xw4300, xw6200, xw8200 and xw9300 Workstations have the required infrastructures and even the PCI memory address range is recovered by re-mapping it above the top of physical memory.

Thanks for the great question. If you’re using 4GB of RAM with 32-bit Vista, add a comment and let us know about your experiences.

Update 4/9/07: To address the lively Linux-vs-Windows debate in the comments, it seems wildly irrelevant. First, it’s still true that any 32-bit OS needs to use part of the 4GB address space to address resources. However, you’re right that Physical Address Extension (PAE) can be used to address more than 4GB from 32-bit OSs–this is true of some Linux distributions and many 32-bit Windows OSs. Here’s the catch: applications have to be written specifically to take advantage of PAE, and the only applications that do that are very specialized tools or server applications like SQL Server, which don’t typically require that much RAM when running on a desktop OS. So, PAE won’t make your Photoshop or video editing app any faster, and it isn’t nearly as useful as it sounds. While 64-bit Windows Vista isn’t perfect, it will give you access to your full address space, and you’re bound to have far fewer application compatibility problems (and get more out of your memory) than you would with 32-bit Linux and PAE.

Oh, and take a break from stressing about OS limitations, and read something funny.

In summary, the article concludes:

• Overall, Vista is 5-25% slower. It’s especially bad with integrated graphics, so get yourself a separate graphics card.
• Having a dual-core processor helps Vista catch up or even pass Windows XP for multitasked programs, because Vista is optimized for multitasking.
• Aero doesn’t slow things down. Yey.
• You should have at least 1GB of RAM. True, though Vista does fine with less memory, in my experience. Upgrading to 2GB improved Photoshop performance 5-20% but didn’t help with most tasks. In my experience, for desktop use when running many applications (like I do), 2GB is a MUST.
• Everything is slower on 64-bit Vista than 32-bit Vista. Their tests showed 64-bit as 0-25% slower, probably averaging around 10% slower. Should I say I told you so?
• ReadyBoost slightly hurt performance. They admit that the test scenarios might not be well suited to it. My tests showed ReadyBoost can help A LOT, or not at all, depending on your hardware.

My summary:

• If you have a single-core processor with integrated graphics and less than 1GB of RAM, Vista will be a little more sluggish than Windows XP, at least with current drivers.
• If you have a dual-core processor and a separate graphics card, you probably won’t notice any performance difference.
• Wait six months and test Vista performance again. I bet Vista will win once driver developers optimize their code a little better.

PC World tested several computers, including:

• 1.8-GHz Sempron 3400+ desktop PC from Dell with integrated GeForce 6150 LE graphics
• 3-GHz Pentium 4 desktop from ABS using an ATI Radeon 9600 ProE card
• 2.2-GHz Athlon 64 X24200+ PC from Polywell equipped with a GeForce 7600GS card
• Micro Express system with a 2.4-GHz Core 2 Duo E6600 and Radeon X1600 graphics
• HP laptop with 2GHz Core 2 Duo T7200 Processor and GeForce Go 7600 graphics

Microsoft funded a study by Principled Technologies to compare the performance of the Windows XP user interface to the Windows Vista Aero interface. Here’s my summary:

• Comparisons were done with a variety of different computers, some more powerful than others. Naturally, the Aero tests required computers capable of running Aero. So, these results don’t necessarily apply to your old XP computer.
• With or without Aero, Vista performs about the same on business tasks (like opening Office documents). Some things are faster, some are slower, but it’s a wash overall.
• Vista with Aero performs about the same as Vista without Aero. So, don’t feel like you need to disable Aero for performance.
• Though all my computers are capable, I can’t run Aero because screenshots look awful. I’m fine with either interface. I’m just saying, even if Aero did cause a performance impact and you wanted to turn it off, the other Vista improvements more than make up for it.

Windows Vista constantly examines performance problems. If your curious about the busiest processes and the slowest drivers on your computer, check out the performance diagnostics log. First, open the Computer Management console by following these steps:

1. Click Start, right-click Computer, and then click Manage.

2.  The Computer Management console opens. Expand Event Viewer, Applications and Services Logs, Microsoft, Windows, and Diagnostics-Performance.

3. Click Operational.

The middle pane shows your performance diagnostics events.

It’s interesting just to browse these. Events in the 400-449 range cover system performance monitoring. Event ID 401 shows processes that Windows Vista felt were using up all your processor time. For example, I was using WinRAR to compress a backup:

This process is using up processor time and is impacting the performance of Windows:
File Name        :    DeviceHarddiskVolume2Program FilesWinRARWinRAR.exe
Friendly Name        :
Version        :
Thread time        :    146ms
Blocked Time        :    35ms
Incident Time (UTC)    :    1/3/2007 10:07:05 PM

Event ID 407 shows a process that is using too much memory:

This process is using up too much system memory:
File Name        :    firefox.exe
Friendly Name        :    Firefox
Version        :    1.8.1.1: 2006120418
Workingset size    :    132012Kb
Percent memory    :    6.30250415831979
Incident Time (UTC)    :    12/24/2006 8:00:23 PM

This example of Event ID 402 is funny… Should I stop using that file? :)

This process is doing excessive disk activities and is impacting the performance of Windows:
File Name        :    ntoskrnl.exe
Friendly Name        :
Version        :
Thread time        :    12057ms
Blocked Time        :    2422ms
Incident Time (UTC)    :    12/18/2006 6:07:23 PM

Event ID 400 also covers system performance monitoring, but it’s not especially useful. Here are two examples:

Information about the system performance monitoring event:
Scenario        :    Start Menu
Analysis result        :    Analysis was successful and rootcauses were found
Incident Time (UTC)    :    1/3/2007 10:07:05 PM

Information about the system performance monitoring event:
Scenario        :    System Responsiveness
Analysis result        :    Analysis could not be performed in time. There is a possible serious performance issue
Incident Time (UTC)    :    1/3/2007 4:03:29 PM

I’ll let you know when I figure out where the root cause is actually documented. Events 100 and 101 (and everything in the 1xx range) document boot performance monitoring:

Windows has started up:
Boot Duration        :    438900ms
IsDegradation        :    false
Incident Time (UTC)    :    1/3/2007 2:30:06 PM

This application took longer than usual to start up, resulting in a performance degradation in the system startup process:
File Name        :    SearchIndexer.exe
Friendly Name        :    Microsoft Windows Search Indexer
Version        :    6.0.6000.16386 (vista_rtm.061101-2205)
Total Time        :    2717ms
Degradation Time    :    217ms
Incident Time (UTC)    :    1/3/2007 2:30:06 PM

This startup service took longer than expected to startup, resulting in a performance degradation in the system start up process:
File Name        :    audiosrv
Friendly Name        :    Windows Audio Service
Version        :    6.0.6000.16386 (vista_rtm.061101-2205)
Total Time        :    453ms
Degradation Time    :    290ms
Incident Time (UTC)    :    12/23/2006 1:40:53 PM

Session manager initialization caused a slow down in the startup process:
Name        :    SMSSInit
Total Time        :    12559ms
Degradation Time    :    6403ms
Incident Time (UTC)    :    12/23/2006 1:40:53 PM

Note that my boot times are all over the map, at least according to boot performance monitoring.

Check out events 200, 201, and 203 if you’re having problems with shutdown performance. Here are examples of each (I have frequent shutdown problems):

Windows has shutdown:
Shutdown Duration    :    55639ms
IsDegradation        :    true
Incident Time (UTC)    :    1/1/2007 7:28:37 PM

This application caused a delay in the system shutdown process:
File Name        :    mobsync.exe
Friendly Name        :    Microsoft Sync Center
Version        :    6.0.6000.16386 (vista_rtm.061101-2205)
Total Time        :    5008ms
Degradation Time    :    3508ms
Incident Time (UTC)    :    1/1/2007 7:28:37 PM

This service caused a delay in the system shutdown process:
File Name        :    WSearch
Friendly Name        :
Version        :
Total Time        :    19830ms
Degradation Time    :    15852ms
Incident Time (UTC)    :    1/1/2007 7:28:37 PM

Now, that’s actually useful, because it shows the process that is causing the performance problem. Note that 201 and 203 are basically the same event; 201 is a warning, and 203 is an error. Of course, the processes that are causing my shutdown problems are both parts of the OS, so I’m not sure what I can do to fix it.

Event ID 351 (and probably 352 or 353) show drivers that might be causing performance problems. For me, all the problems are with core OS drivers, so it doesn’t leave me with a clear path to fixing the problem. Here are some examples of event 351:

This driver responded slower than expected to the resume request while servicing this device:
Driver File Name        :    DriverACPI
Driver Friendly Name        :    ACPI Driver for NT
Driver Version            :    6.0.6000.16386 (vista_rtm.061101-2205)
Driver Total Time        :    69ms
Driver Degradation Time    :    32ms
Incident Time (UTC)        :    12/28/2006 1:09:08 AM
Device Name            :    ACPI_HALPNP0C08
Device Friendly Name        :    Microsoft ACPI-Compliant System
Device Total Time        :    69ms
Device Degradation Time    :    0ms

This driver responded slower than expected to the resume request while servicing this device:
Driver File Name        :    Driverpci
Driver Friendly Name        :    NT Plug and Play PCI Enumerator
Driver Version            :    6.0.6000.16386 (vista_rtm.061101-2205)
Driver Total Time        :    54ms
Driver Degradation Time    :    28ms
Incident Time (UTC)        :    12/29/2006 12:31:42 AM
Device Name            :    PCIVEN_1217&DEV_00F7&SUBSYS_01CC1028&REV_024&2e5a3e7b&0&0CF0
Device Friendly Name        :    OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller
Device Total Time        :    121ms
Device Degradation Time    :    0ms

Events in the 500-549 range cover the Desktop Window Manager. For example:

The Desktop Window Manager is experiencing heavy resource contention.
Scenario    :    The Desktop Window Manager responsiveness has degraded.

The Desktop Window Manager is experiencing heavy resource contention.
Reason    :    Graphics subsystem resources are over-utilized.
Diagnosis    :    A consistent degradation in frame rate for the Desktop Window Manager was observed over a period of time.

So, what do you do with these? I don’t know, because there seems to be a very low signal-to-noise ratio. In other words, most of the events aren’t useful. It’s a place to start, though. Please add a comment if you figure out a useful way to analyze this.

But if you’re obsessive like me, you can find detailed information about ReadyBoost performance in Event Viewer (which you can find in the Computer Management console), at the following location:

Event Viewer \ Applications and Services Logs \ Microsoft \ Windows \ ReadyBoost \ Operational

In particular, look for Event ID 1015, which provides detailed performance information. For example:

Summary of ReadyBoot Performance:
Io Read Count: 18190
Io Read KB: 384754
Cache Hit Count: 11388
Cache Hit KB: 201324
Cache Hit Percentage: 62.60582737768
Cache Fragmentation: 9.39796981101432
Compressed Data Size KB: 305942
Raw Data Size KB: 494500
Compression Ratio: 1.61631679155397
Cache Size KB: 386515
Boot Prefetch Time us: 44573374
Boot Prefetch Bytes Read: 365203456
Boot Timestamp (UTC): 1/1/2007 7:56:05 PM
Last Boot Plan Timestamp (UTC): 1/1/2007 7:21:15 PM
Last Boot Plan Timestamp (Local): Mon, Jan 01 07, 02:26:07 PM

Interesting stuff, even though it doesn’t tell you exactly how much performance gain you get. Note the Cache Size KB line, which indicates how much of your total cache is actually being used. I have about 800 MB allocated, but less than 400 MB is actually in use. I guess this helps to answer the question of how much you need–500 MB is probably fine.

Event IDs 1011 and 1014 will tell you whether ReadyBoost caching is enabled for each of your hard disks, as the following demonstrates:

Caching was enabled for device (\Device\HarddiskVolume3).

Caching was disabled for device (\Device\HarddiskVolume3).

If you know of another way to get more detailed information about ReadyBoost performance, please add a comment.

If you have a slow hard disk, ReadyBoost (see instructions for setting up ReadyBoost) offers a significant performance boost. In my tests, adding a standard USB flash drive to a computer with a WEI disk rating of 3.7 reduced startup time about 30%. Adding ReadyBoost to computers with a WEI disk rating of 5.0 or higher did not improve startup time, but might slightly improve performance after startup. Future “Enhanded for ReadyBoost” flash drives will probably make more of a difference.

Conclusion:  If you have an unused flash drive, plug it in and set it up for ReadyBoost. It won’t hurt. If you have a computer with a WEI disk rating of less than 4.0, adding a ReadyBoost flash drive offers good bang-for-the-buck. If you have a computer with a WEI disk rating of more than 5.0, ReadyBoost still won’t hurt, but it probably won’t give you a noticable improvement.

Read on for the technical details.

ReadyBoost creates a disk cache file (ReadyBoost.sfcache) of the size you specify on flash memory, which offers better performance for random reads than hard disks. The contents of this file are encrypted so there’s no easy way for me to see exactly what’s cached, but Vista uses the “SmartFetch” algorithm to figure out what should be stored there. It reads from the cache whenever it thinks it’ll be faster than the hard disk. The cache is only a copy, so you can remove it from the computer at any time without losing data.

I tested ReadyBoost with three computers and two flash drives. The computers:

• Dell Latitude D600. WEI disk rating of 3.7. This is a four-year-old laptop with a 4200 RPM hard disk.
• Dell Latitude D820. WEI disk rating of 5.1. This is a nine-month-old laptop with a 7200 RPM hard disk.
• Systemax generic desktop. WEI disk rating of 5.5. This is a three-month-old fast desktop with a 7200 RPM hard disk.

The flash drives:

• Lexar JumpDrive 1GB. This drive reduced startup time by 30% in the older Dell D600 laptop, from 59.3 seconds to 39.8 seconds. This laptop has a slow (4500 RPM) hard disk. On my faster laptop (with a 7200 RPM hard disk) it didn’t improve performance, and the activity light hardly lit during startup. It was accessed after startup on all computers, so no doubt it increased performance by a small amount in general usage.
• 2GB Kingston 50x CF card. This card only passed ReadyBoost performance tests on the desktop computer when connected to the internal memory card reader. When connected via a USB 2.0 memory card reader, it was too slow. Unfortunately, it didn’t improve startup times on the desktop–probably because the desktop has a fast hard disk (7200 RPM) and because startup is mostly sequential reads, rather than the random reads that ReadyBoost is optimized for.

I tested each scenario three or more times (until results were consistent). When first attaching the ReadyBoost drive, I waited for Vista to pre-load the cache by watching the activity light and waiting more than ten minutes. Then, I rebooted a couple of times to make sure the SuperFetch algorithm knew which files needed to be loaded, and waited for the drive to be updated (the activity light flashed regularly).

Here are the startup times for the D600, the only computer that showed performance improvements:

• D600 without cache (seconds): 60.0, 59.3, 59.3
• D600 startup times with cache (seconds): 39.7, 39.8, 39.8

If you can get your hands on an “Enhanced for Windows ReadyBoost” flash drive, you’ll get better results. Flash drives are always slower than hard disk for sequential reads, so ReadyBoost only uses flash drives for random reads, where hard disks are slow because of the time required to move the read head around. No doubt, flash drives that are designed specifically for ReadyBoost will be optimized for random reads. This is in distinct contrast to my Kingston 50x CF card, which is optimized for sequential writes–the most important factor for digital photography.

Please leave comments describing your experiences with ReadyBoost.

“i found the article very interesting.
what i can’t figure out how many gb the usb hard drive needs to be in order to utilize this feature.
the largest usb drive that i have right now is a 512 mb. is that sufficient or do i need a larger one.

you also mention using an sd card, what size should it be and what speed.
would i have to keep the sd card in the build it sd slot on my laptop
i have a 2gb 150x sd card. if i use this will it make a difference or do i need an sd card with more space.

i understand that this will only improve i/o performance, but that would help me because i open a lot of 3-10 gb word processing documents and sometimes they take longer then i would like waiting for them to open and/or save.

any help would be greatly appreciated.
i also think it would be helpful if this info was added to your web site, as i suspect, that i’m not the only one that wants to know what the minimum drive size is needed to use this feature.

thank you
indera”

The most important factor is the speed of your flash or SD card, not the size. Unfortunately, their speed depends on many different factors (including both the speed of the card and the speed of the bus on your computer). So, I can’t tell you for sure which will be faster.

Any size over 256MB will work with ReadyBoost, but more is better. Above 512MB won’t make much of a difference.

You write, “i open a lot of 3-10 gb word processing documents and sometimes they take longer then i would like waiting for them to open and/or save.” I assume you mean 3-10 MB :). Unfortunately, ReadyBoost probably won’t help you with this. Caching can only help when a file is opened repeatedly, and ReadyBoost works by storing frequently accessed files–but you wouldn’t recognize most of these files. Most of them will be Windows system files and application files. So, ReadyBoost will help when Windows loads your word processor application files, but it probably won’t help when you open the document itself unless you work with the same document over long periods of time. This type of caching never helps when saving files. For more information, read my ReadyBoost performance test.

Here’s my final advice: give both your SD card and your flash drive a shot, and see if it helps. Shutdown your computer, and time how long it takes your computer to start and open one of your Word docs. Then, unplug your ReadyBoost drive, shut down your computer, and time it again. Let me know whether ReadyBoost helps.

ReadyBoost (a feature new to Windows Vista) uses a USB flash drive or a secure digital (SD) memory card to cache data that would otherwise need to be read from the much slower hard disk. Windows Vista uses SuperFetch technology to automatically determine which data to cache. Instructions after the jump, or read my ReadyBoost performance test results.

Some day, hard disks will have a ReadyBoost cache built into them. The disks have already been announced, but not many of us have them in our hands yet. Until then, you can use ReadyBoost by connecting a fast USB flash drive or SD card. Some will show the phrase “Enhanced for Windows ReadyBoost” on the packaging, but this isn’t required.

After connecting your flash storage, AutoPlay will automatically ask whether to enable ReadyBoost. Just click Speed up my system. If this isn’t an option, Vista decided your flash drive or the bus you connected it to wasn’t fast enough to make it worthwhile. Get something faster, and be sure to connect it to a USB 2.0 port. To use ReadyBoost, the device must support USB 2.0, be at least 256MB (with 64KB free) and less than 4GB, and have at least a 2.5MB/sec throughput for 4k random reads, and a 1.75MB/sec throughput for 512k random writes. Unfortunately, there’s no way to tell ahead of time whether a device will be fast enough, but most new thumbdrives will be fine. Here are some flash drive performance tests that can help you choose. Ignore what the device says about its performance–that’s measured sequentially. Hard disks are much faster than flash memory for sequential reads, so ReadyBoost won’t use your flash drive unless it needs to read non-sequentially.

Windows Vista will display the storage properties dialog box. Click Use this device, and select the amount of space you want to dedicate–more is better. Then, click OK.

You probably won’t notice a huge performace difference. ReadyBoost can only help improve disk I/O performance, so it won’t make your games any faster.

If you take out the flash drive, ReadyBoost will be disabled. Your computer will be fine, though, because the files stored on the flash memory are only temporary copies. Data on the flash memory is encrypted to protect privacy using AES-128 encryption.

In the future, hard disks with flash memory built-in will help improve disk performance, but more importantly, they’ll reduce power usage on portable computers. It takes less power to access flash memory than a hard disk, and Vista should be able to power down the hard disk and use flash memory exclusively some of the time. In response to this article, a reader asked a detailed question about ReadyBoost performance.

User Account Control (UAC) prompts you before an application makes an important change to your computer that requires administrative privileges. By default, the UAC prompt appears on the “secure desktop”, which freezes and darkens your screen. By freezing your screen, secure desktop makes it more difficult for another application to impersonate Windows and trick you into typing your administrator password into a fake UAC prompt.

The flashing screen is distracting, and slows things down a bit. To turn off the flashing without completely disabling UAC, follow these steps (after the jump):

1. Click Start, type Secpol.msc, and then press Enter. The secure desktop appears (for the last time!). Then, the Local Security Policy console appears.

2. Expand Local Policies and then click Security Options.

3. In the right pane, scroll to the bottom. Then, double-click User Account Control: Switch To The Secure Desktop When Prompting For Elevation.

4. Click Disabled, and then click OK.

The change takes effect immediately. There is no need to restart. Now, the UAC prompt appears like any other window. This slightly reduces the security of your computer, but it might be worth it to make UAC more convenient.

Update: For Windows 7, read this article instead.

It seems like every program I install wants to start automatically with Windows. For example, Apple Quicktime puts an icon in the system tray. Adobe Acrobat starts automatically, just so it can more quickly open a PDF file. Each of these startup applications wastes memory and slows down how long it takes Windows Vista to start (though Windows Vista is smart about this, and lets you access the desktop before it starts all these applications).

To configure or disable startup applications in Windows Vista, follow these steps (after the jump):

1. Click Start, and then click Control Panel.

2. Under Programs, click Change startup programs.

3. Windows Defender appears and displays the Software Explorer. You can resize this window if you need to. If you have an administrative account or an administrator username and password, click Show for all users button to display all startup programs. That shield icon on the button means you need an admin account.

4. Browse the list of startup programs (there are probably more than you expect). For anything you want to disable, click the program, and then click Disable or Remove.

Be sure NOT to disable these startup programs–you need them:

• Microsoft Windows Explorer
• Windows Defender
• Microsoft IntelliPoint

When you buy software, there’s always a list of computer requirements on the side. It looks something like this (taken from World of Warcraft):

• 800 MHz or higher CPU.
• 256 MB or more of RAM.
• 32 MB 3D graphics card with hardware Transform and Lighting, such as GeForce 2 or better.
• 4 GB or more of available hard drive space.
• DirectX® 9.0c or above.
• A 56k or higher modem with an Internet connection.

That’s pretty hard to understand if you’re not a computer guy. Windows Experience Index (WEI) gives you a single number, and a set of numbers, that summarize your computer’s capabilities. So, if I want to buy a game for my Dell Latitude D820 with a WEI of 3.1, I just have to make sure that the game’s minimum WEI is 3.1 or lower. Software can also be more specific, and list a Graphics or Gaming Graphics requirement. As you can see from my score, my graphics are the weak link in my computer. (info on interpreting and improving WEI after the jump)

When you install Windows Vista, it calculates a WEI for you. The WEI base score (3.1 in my case) is the LOWEST of your five WEI subscores. That makes sense, because it’s your slowest component that bottlenecks your computer’s performance. To view your WEI, follow these steps:

1. Click Start, right-click Computer, and then click Properties.

2. In the System window, click Windows Experience Index.

If you have a score of 2 or higher, you’re fine for browsing the Web, reading e-mail, and using Office apps. If you have a WEI lower than 3, you can’t run the translucent, 3d Aero interface. A base score of 4 or higher means you can run all the new Windows Vista features without slowing down, including recording and playing back HDTV. A base score of 5 is the fastest computer available at the time Windows Vista was released, but we’ll certainly see faster computers soon.
To improve your WEI, start by updating as many of your drivers as possible. The easiest way to do this is to run Windows Update by clicking Start, typing Update, and then clicking Windows Update. Then, click Check for updates, and install any available hardware updates.

If that doesn’t solve your problems, check your computer manufacturer’s website for updated drivers. Last, check your video adapter manufacturer’s website for new drivers. New drivers can only improve your performance a little, though. If your hardware isn’t fast enough, it might be time to upgrade the component with the lowest WEI score. Check this page (which I wrote for Windows XP) for general information on how to upgrade hardware. If your computer is more than a couple of years old, it might be time to buy a whole new computer.

After you update a driver or upgrade your hardware, open the WEI score window again, and then click Update my score near the bottom-right corner of the window. Windows Vista will re-test your computer and give you a new score.