SuperFetch Rocks!
I’ve been using Vista as my main OS on my desktop PC for quite some time now – knowing what Vista can and can’t do is part of my job. One thing I’ve really been impressed by is the SuperFetch feature, which intelligent preloads application code into memory based on a machine learning algorithm.
Now Patrick Schmid of TG Daily has done some benchmarking on the performance effects of SuperFetch and ReadyBoost on application launch times, using Outlook, iTunes, and Acrobat as sample applications. Its an interesting article, well worth a read. His conclusions, though: he recommends buying a 1GB machine then buying a USB Flash memory stick. I’m not sure I’d agree: he didn’t actually test with 2GB of RAM.
Based on my experience with a 2GB machine, I recommend that as the way to go if you can afford it. PhotoShop CS3 launches a lot faster than CS2 did, but with SuperFetch it starts up super quickly – sweet! I’m told that an x64 machine with 4GB+ of memory is even more impressive when launching PhotoShop. 🙂
Kudos to the team(s) at Microsoft who pulled off this nice piece of applied research.
Shebanator 