Intel® Turbo Memory?????

Can anyone tell me about this? Intel® Turbo Memory!!!!

Can it be added to a Mobile Intel® PM965 Express Chipset, or is it already a part of it?

Intel does show performance results with an Intel® GM965 Express Chipset.
http://www.intel.com/performance/mobile/intel_turbo_memory.htm

 

Performance increase is usually negligible if you have 2+ GB of RAM. Whether it can be added or not depends on the motherboard.

 

I have not heard of it as being an after market upgrade, and what Lithus said but think it might improve start up time. And if it takes memory addresses better to buy RAM unless maybe 64bit OS. This is just speculation I could be wrong on both.

 

Turbo Memory uses a mini-PCIe module and can be bought separately. However, for it to work you need a compatible BIOS, a suitable spare mini-PCIe slot, AHCI enabled in the BIOS and the corresponding storage driver loaded in Windows (otherwise you get a BSOD).

Half of the turbo memory's 1GB is allocated as a cache for files which may need to be read while half is for files to be written, theoretically allowing the HDD to sleep more and thereby extend battery life.

There is probably a slight improvement in the smoothness of operation but it is difficult to quantify. Increasing your RAM to 3GB is easier.

John

 

John to clarify since I don't know about. If you could inform me. Is module external? If not how do you fit in? Does it take from the 4GB's of addressable memory in 32bit OS? As in other than start up RAM would clearly be preferred? Did some research because of another post and answers not easy to find.

 

It's internal. Like John said, it fits into a mini PCI-E slot. It's like Readyboost, where it's closer to a very fast flash drive than RAM memory.

 

Yes, it's internal, so access depends on the notebook design (on my Zepto it is under the keyboard).

It does not affect the addressing of the RAM since it is part of the storage system. On my Zepto the TM show up in two places (a) 387MB of NV cache for the HDD and (b) a disk drive called IMD-0 which has 514MB of space.

One feature of TM is that it is non-volatile, so it does not lose the contents on power down. Visit Anandtech for more analysis.

I'm waiting to see how Intel progress this concept with the next Intel chipset. Will we see 4GB or more of TM2 which can boot Windows as fast as from an SSD?

John