Intel Turbo Memory - Will It Work?
- 5
- Add a Comment
Over the years I would venture to guess, that many of us have tried a multitude of software or hardware devices that promised improved speeds on our systems. As much as we hate to admit it, most of these products provided limited improvement to our system performance. So when I read about Intel’s Turbo Memory, I went to their site to take a look. What Intel promises is this:
Intel® Turbo Memory with User PinningEnhancing system performance through memory innovation
Intel® Turbo Memory with User Pinning brings mobile and desktop systems performance to new heights through the innovative extension of Flash Memory architectures into computing platforms. User Pinning offers more options to the user to improve system applications launch time and responsiveness.
For those who wish to view the entire specifications and Intel hype, you can download a .pdf copy here.
Included in the hardware is a dashboard in which the user can fine tune the applications and files that the user wishes to take advantage of the turbo memory hardware. The hardware can be used on systems that have a PCIe slot [desktop] available, while the mobile comes in half and full mini modules for [laptop] computer systems.
OK. I must admit on paper it sounds really good. But like any hardware the proof is in the pudding.
Oh, one other thing. Isn’t this something that should be built onto the motherboard and that Microsoft Windows can take advantage of, mainly Vista?
Let me know what you think.
Comments welcome.
5 Comments
woolf2k
August 14th, 2008
at 6:24am
It sounds like Vista’s Readyboost to me. And it doesn’t make any difference on system with more than 512MB of memory.
Bobzilla
August 14th, 2008
at 9:15am
OK folks, Intel’s Turbo Memory is nothing more than ReadyBoost connected to a PCIe slot instead of USB port. PCIe sends data at 250 MB/s where as USB sends data at 480 Mbit/s (60 MB/s). It is clear that PCIe is much faster than USB, However, will Turbo Memory’s faster data path fix Vista’s poor memory management any better than ReadyBoost? Only time can answer that question.
What ReadyBoot and Turbo Memory are trying to do is fix Vista’s poor memory management with hardware.
Jay
October 9th, 2008
at 10:39pm
I just got the 1GB version of it. but there is no dashboard program include on the driver disk. hmmm… do you know where i could find it? its not even on intel website
Ron Schenone
October 10th, 2008
at 6:30am
Hi Jay,
This is all I could find to determine if Turbo Memory is working correctly, which is on Intel’s site:
http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/itm/sb/CS-026012.htm
Hope this helps, Ron
Terje Marthinussen
November 24th, 2008
at 10:42pm
Wrong. Turbo memory is different from Readyboost.
Its using Vistas readydrive. It similar, but two big differences:
1. readydrive can cache writes.
2. readydrive data survives a restart so it will in theory speed up boot and recovery time after hibernation.
The original turbo memory modules only had 512MB-1Gb of memory. Compared to the 2-4GB of main memory that is common in computers now, it probably had little effect on benchmarks since most of the data will be in main memory cache anyway.
Where it might make a difference though is rather for light use. The scenarios where the disk should be able to spin down and sleep, but it cannot because you browser stores web pages in cache, even logger logs someting, your IM downloads an ad or word saves backup of the doc you are working on every few minutes.
I suspect that with the new 4GB turbo memory, you have a decent chance that the disk can actually get to spin down and sleep, and that should easily give you 30 minutes extra battery life.
Throw in a little bit extra performance and I think its worth it, I just don’t think any benchmarks of the turbo memory HW has ever tested this type of scenario.