W1zzard
01-19-2007, 01:11 PM
[page=Introduction & Packaging]
Introduction
Super Talent is one of the few memory manufacturing companies which actually has production facilities in the United States. This allows them to build and ship your product very fast. Turnaround times of 24 hours are well possible. For example SuperTalent made the USB sticks that were given out at a Microsoft Roadshow in the United States. If Microsoft ran out of giveaways, they could just call and have more available the next day.
Super Talent's RBST USB Stick has been designed and tested specifically to support the Microsoft Windows Vista ReadyBoost feature which increases your PC performance without opening the computer case.
From the manufacturer SuperTalent (http://www.supertalent.com):
Fast data transfer rate
Designed and Tested to support ReadyBoost
Made in USA
Lifetime Warranty
Packaging
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/SuperTalent/RBST_1GB/images/package1_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/SuperTalent/RBST_1GB/images/package1.jpg) http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/SuperTalent/RBST_1GB/images/package2_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/SuperTalent/RBST_1GB/images/package2.jpg)
The package is rather simple, there are also no additional accessories included. Since this stick is designed for being attached to the PC at all times running Vista ReadyBoost, additional accesories are not needed. Windows 2000, XP and Vista do not need any drivers to support USB storage devices, so a driver CD is not needed either.
[page=The Stick]
The Stick
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/SuperTalent/RBST_1GB/images/size_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/SuperTalent/RBST_1GB/images/size.jpg)
The Super Talent RBST has about the typical size of a normal USB stick.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/SuperTalent/RBST_1GB/images/stick1_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/SuperTalent/RBST_1GB/images/stick1.jpg) http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/SuperTalent/RBST_1GB/images/stick2_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/SuperTalent/RBST_1GB/images/stick2.jpg) http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/SuperTalent/RBST_1GB/images/stick3_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/SuperTalent/RBST_1GB/images/stick3.jpg)
The stick itself is made from aluminum for increased durability. Unfortunately the cap is made from plastic and does not match the color of the stick.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/SuperTalent/RBST_1GB/images/stick4_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/SuperTalent/RBST_1GB/images/stick4.jpg)
You can attach a carrying strap through a small hole at the back of the stick.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/SuperTalent/RBST_1GB/images/light_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/SuperTalent/RBST_1GB/images/light.jpg)
When the stick is accessed, an LED in the back of the stick lights up red.
[page=Performance]
Performance
We used the following devices for our comparison:
OCZ Rally 1GB
OCZ Mini Kart 1GB
Corsair Flash Voyager 1GB
Sandisk Cruzer Titanium 512 MB
Sandisk Cruzer Micro 2 GB
A-Data Football Disk 512 MB
Thermaltake MUSE external HDD enclosure
Generic Stick USB 1.1 256 MB
We used HDTach in the following two benchmarks.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/SuperTalent/RBST_1GB/images/graph1.gif
The transfer rate of about 17 MB/s can be considered fast, but not super fast. For ReadyBoost, transfer rate is only of secondary interest. It is much more important to have low access times and this is where the RBST can shine.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/SuperTalent/RBST_1GB/images/graph2.gif
An access time of only 0.9 ms on average is about as fast as it gets. Compared to some other drives, access time is almost 100 times faster and this is what matters for Vista ReadyBoost.
To get a feeling how the speed with different sized files is, we used the ATTO disk benchmark.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/SuperTalent/RBST_1GB/images/atto.gif
Like with all drives, performance gets better, the bigger the data chunks are. Also common to all USB sticks is that writes are slower than reads. Optimum file size is 64KB or bigger for maximum performance. In daily use you will almost never see files smaller than 64KB.
[page=Windows Vista ReadyBoost]
Windows Vista ReadyBoost
Enabling Vista ReadyBoost is really easy. Just attach the USB drive on any computer running Windows Vista (any edition). When the device has been installed by device manager, a window will pop up, asking you what to do with the new storage.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/SuperTalent/RBST_1GB/images/readyboost1.jpg
You click on "Speed up my system".
After clicking, the following properties window automatically opens. Here you have to click the radio button "Use this device".
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/SuperTalent/RBST_1GB/images/readyboost3.jpg
Windows suggests an amount of memory to reserve, use this default.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/SuperTalent/RBST_1GB/images/readyboost4.jpg
After clicking OK, Windows will initialize the USB key for ReadyBoost in the background, running without any further user intervention.
What is ReadyBoost
ReadyBoost uses non-volatile flash memory to cache parts of the swapped out applications. This does not mean that the pagefile will be on flash. It is only a cached copy. It is safe to remove the USB key at any time, without any loss of data.
To be ReadyBoost certified (Windows Vista Logo “Storage-0009 WLP”) a flash memory device must support:
5 MB/sec throughput for random 4k reads across the entire device
3 MB/sec throughput for random 512k writes across the entire device
Since the cache could possibly contain sensitive data like passwords, all data written to the key is encrypted using 128-bit AES security.
Windows will create a file "ReadyBoost.sfcache" on the USB key. This file has the size of the storage you allocated, leaving a rest available for your own use.
The minimum size of a ReadyBoost device is 256 MB, the maximum 4 GB (maximum filesize on FAT32). Microsoft recommends an 1:1 ratio or better. So if you have 1 GB of RAM, you should use 1 GB of ReadyBoost. For 2 GB of RAM, use at least 2 GB of ReadyBoost.
From the Microsoft FAQ:
Q. What kind of performance gains will Windows ReadyBoost give me?
A. The amount and type of gains will differ based on the configuration of your PC and how you use your PC. For instance, if you have a lot of system memory and aren’t in the habit of keeping many Windows open at once, the gains will be more modest. But if you find yourself switching between applications frequently then ReadyBoost will have a more beneficial effect on your experience.
This is what Matt Ayers from Microsoft had to say in a blog post:
Although ReadyBoost offers several benefits, accelerating boot is not one of them. We rebuild the cache after every state transition [ed: this includes standby and hibernation]. [...] the benefits appear after the system has finished booting. At that point, the USB (or SD card or CF card or other flash source) caches small, frequently used pages to create a more consistently responsive OS. The configuration of 1GB RAM + 2GB ReadyBoost cache should show real benefits (it’s what I’m currently running).
[page=Value & Conclusion]
Value & Conclusion
<table width="100%" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" id="result">
<tr><th>http://www.techpowerup.com/images/dollar.gif</th>
<td>
The Super Talent RBST goes for about $18 (1 GB version) and $25 (2 GB version). Given the small price difference I'd recommend to get the 2 GB stick, even if you have only 1 GB of memory.</td>
</tr><tr>
<th>http://www.techpowerup.com/images/thumbup.gif</th>
<td>
Supports Vista ReadyBoost
Very competitive price
Lightweight
Metal casing
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>http://www.techpowerup.com/images/thumbdown.gif</th>
<td>
Plastic cap could get lost
</td></tr>
<tr><th>8.5</th>
<td>The Super Talent RBST is a bell and whistle free USB device that has been designed for use with Microsoft Windows Vista's ReadyBoost feature. ReadyBoost improves the performance of your PC without opening your case. The secret behind ReadyBoost is that it is a lot faster to access data on a USB drive than on the harddisk. Access time is what matters for this with transfer rate being secondary. Your whole memory is organized in so-called pages of 4 KB size each. As you can imagine actual transfer rate doesn't really matter for a 4 KB transfer. With a typical HDD a seek + transfer of 4 KB takes about 13 ms = 12 ms (seek time) + 1 ms (transfer time). With a ReadyBoost USB stick this time is reduced to only 5 ms = 1 ms (seek) + 4 ms (transfer). This has great potential in situations where main memory is scarce or the harddisk is busy doing other things.<br />
Super Talent's RBST comes at a very competitive price, which makes it a no-brainer if you are unhappy with your Windows Vista performance and want an easy way to upgrade your system without doing an actual hardware upgrade. Also this allows notebooks with limited memory to improve their Vista performance without going for expensive SO-DIMM memory upgrades.
</td></tr>
<tr><th></th><td>http://www.techpowerup.com/images/recommended.gif</td></tr>
</table>
Introduction
Super Talent is one of the few memory manufacturing companies which actually has production facilities in the United States. This allows them to build and ship your product very fast. Turnaround times of 24 hours are well possible. For example SuperTalent made the USB sticks that were given out at a Microsoft Roadshow in the United States. If Microsoft ran out of giveaways, they could just call and have more available the next day.
Super Talent's RBST USB Stick has been designed and tested specifically to support the Microsoft Windows Vista ReadyBoost feature which increases your PC performance without opening the computer case.
From the manufacturer SuperTalent (http://www.supertalent.com):
Fast data transfer rate
Designed and Tested to support ReadyBoost
Made in USA
Lifetime Warranty
Packaging
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/SuperTalent/RBST_1GB/images/package1_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/SuperTalent/RBST_1GB/images/package1.jpg) http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/SuperTalent/RBST_1GB/images/package2_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/SuperTalent/RBST_1GB/images/package2.jpg)
The package is rather simple, there are also no additional accessories included. Since this stick is designed for being attached to the PC at all times running Vista ReadyBoost, additional accesories are not needed. Windows 2000, XP and Vista do not need any drivers to support USB storage devices, so a driver CD is not needed either.
[page=The Stick]
The Stick
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/SuperTalent/RBST_1GB/images/size_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/SuperTalent/RBST_1GB/images/size.jpg)
The Super Talent RBST has about the typical size of a normal USB stick.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/SuperTalent/RBST_1GB/images/stick1_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/SuperTalent/RBST_1GB/images/stick1.jpg) http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/SuperTalent/RBST_1GB/images/stick2_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/SuperTalent/RBST_1GB/images/stick2.jpg) http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/SuperTalent/RBST_1GB/images/stick3_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/SuperTalent/RBST_1GB/images/stick3.jpg)
The stick itself is made from aluminum for increased durability. Unfortunately the cap is made from plastic and does not match the color of the stick.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/SuperTalent/RBST_1GB/images/stick4_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/SuperTalent/RBST_1GB/images/stick4.jpg)
You can attach a carrying strap through a small hole at the back of the stick.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/SuperTalent/RBST_1GB/images/light_small.jpg (http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/SuperTalent/RBST_1GB/images/light.jpg)
When the stick is accessed, an LED in the back of the stick lights up red.
[page=Performance]
Performance
We used the following devices for our comparison:
OCZ Rally 1GB
OCZ Mini Kart 1GB
Corsair Flash Voyager 1GB
Sandisk Cruzer Titanium 512 MB
Sandisk Cruzer Micro 2 GB
A-Data Football Disk 512 MB
Thermaltake MUSE external HDD enclosure
Generic Stick USB 1.1 256 MB
We used HDTach in the following two benchmarks.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/SuperTalent/RBST_1GB/images/graph1.gif
The transfer rate of about 17 MB/s can be considered fast, but not super fast. For ReadyBoost, transfer rate is only of secondary interest. It is much more important to have low access times and this is where the RBST can shine.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/SuperTalent/RBST_1GB/images/graph2.gif
An access time of only 0.9 ms on average is about as fast as it gets. Compared to some other drives, access time is almost 100 times faster and this is what matters for Vista ReadyBoost.
To get a feeling how the speed with different sized files is, we used the ATTO disk benchmark.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/SuperTalent/RBST_1GB/images/atto.gif
Like with all drives, performance gets better, the bigger the data chunks are. Also common to all USB sticks is that writes are slower than reads. Optimum file size is 64KB or bigger for maximum performance. In daily use you will almost never see files smaller than 64KB.
[page=Windows Vista ReadyBoost]
Windows Vista ReadyBoost
Enabling Vista ReadyBoost is really easy. Just attach the USB drive on any computer running Windows Vista (any edition). When the device has been installed by device manager, a window will pop up, asking you what to do with the new storage.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/SuperTalent/RBST_1GB/images/readyboost1.jpg
You click on "Speed up my system".
After clicking, the following properties window automatically opens. Here you have to click the radio button "Use this device".
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/SuperTalent/RBST_1GB/images/readyboost3.jpg
Windows suggests an amount of memory to reserve, use this default.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/SuperTalent/RBST_1GB/images/readyboost4.jpg
After clicking OK, Windows will initialize the USB key for ReadyBoost in the background, running without any further user intervention.
What is ReadyBoost
ReadyBoost uses non-volatile flash memory to cache parts of the swapped out applications. This does not mean that the pagefile will be on flash. It is only a cached copy. It is safe to remove the USB key at any time, without any loss of data.
To be ReadyBoost certified (Windows Vista Logo “Storage-0009 WLP”) a flash memory device must support:
5 MB/sec throughput for random 4k reads across the entire device
3 MB/sec throughput for random 512k writes across the entire device
Since the cache could possibly contain sensitive data like passwords, all data written to the key is encrypted using 128-bit AES security.
Windows will create a file "ReadyBoost.sfcache" on the USB key. This file has the size of the storage you allocated, leaving a rest available for your own use.
The minimum size of a ReadyBoost device is 256 MB, the maximum 4 GB (maximum filesize on FAT32). Microsoft recommends an 1:1 ratio or better. So if you have 1 GB of RAM, you should use 1 GB of ReadyBoost. For 2 GB of RAM, use at least 2 GB of ReadyBoost.
From the Microsoft FAQ:
Q. What kind of performance gains will Windows ReadyBoost give me?
A. The amount and type of gains will differ based on the configuration of your PC and how you use your PC. For instance, if you have a lot of system memory and aren’t in the habit of keeping many Windows open at once, the gains will be more modest. But if you find yourself switching between applications frequently then ReadyBoost will have a more beneficial effect on your experience.
This is what Matt Ayers from Microsoft had to say in a blog post:
Although ReadyBoost offers several benefits, accelerating boot is not one of them. We rebuild the cache after every state transition [ed: this includes standby and hibernation]. [...] the benefits appear after the system has finished booting. At that point, the USB (or SD card or CF card or other flash source) caches small, frequently used pages to create a more consistently responsive OS. The configuration of 1GB RAM + 2GB ReadyBoost cache should show real benefits (it’s what I’m currently running).
[page=Value & Conclusion]
Value & Conclusion
<table width="100%" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" id="result">
<tr><th>http://www.techpowerup.com/images/dollar.gif</th>
<td>
The Super Talent RBST goes for about $18 (1 GB version) and $25 (2 GB version). Given the small price difference I'd recommend to get the 2 GB stick, even if you have only 1 GB of memory.</td>
</tr><tr>
<th>http://www.techpowerup.com/images/thumbup.gif</th>
<td>
Supports Vista ReadyBoost
Very competitive price
Lightweight
Metal casing
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th>http://www.techpowerup.com/images/thumbdown.gif</th>
<td>
Plastic cap could get lost
</td></tr>
<tr><th>8.5</th>
<td>The Super Talent RBST is a bell and whistle free USB device that has been designed for use with Microsoft Windows Vista's ReadyBoost feature. ReadyBoost improves the performance of your PC without opening your case. The secret behind ReadyBoost is that it is a lot faster to access data on a USB drive than on the harddisk. Access time is what matters for this with transfer rate being secondary. Your whole memory is organized in so-called pages of 4 KB size each. As you can imagine actual transfer rate doesn't really matter for a 4 KB transfer. With a typical HDD a seek + transfer of 4 KB takes about 13 ms = 12 ms (seek time) + 1 ms (transfer time). With a ReadyBoost USB stick this time is reduced to only 5 ms = 1 ms (seek) + 4 ms (transfer). This has great potential in situations where main memory is scarce or the harddisk is busy doing other things.<br />
Super Talent's RBST comes at a very competitive price, which makes it a no-brainer if you are unhappy with your Windows Vista performance and want an easy way to upgrade your system without doing an actual hardware upgrade. Also this allows notebooks with limited memory to improve their Vista performance without going for expensive SO-DIMM memory upgrades.
</td></tr>
<tr><th></th><td>http://www.techpowerup.com/images/recommended.gif</td></tr>
</table>