Thinkpads Forum

I will be placing my order for x61t in the next couple of days and I've been doing some searches on Turbo Memory benchmarks. However, I wasn't able to find any and would like to ask for your opinion on whether Turbo Memory is worth the $50 something.

Thanks!

Nobody has really good benchmarks out yet. Anandtech did some basic tests, but I personally don't think their tests match how Vista uses turbo memory.

If you are going with a 1 GB config, I think $50 for the turbo memory is a very good bet. The more memory you have, though, the less noticeable the benefit is. But $50 isn't a huge cost relative to a new X61 cost anyway ...

I thought you couldn't get the turbo memory in the X60's only on the X61's?

Only X61(s). I missed that, too ...

I meant x61t, my bad.

i went ahead and ordered it on my x61T. i figured it can't hurt and at only $50 i might as well. i did find one early review on the x61T where the person said it booted up into vista so fast that they couldnt believe it and restarted to make sure, even though this person doesnt say if their machine came with turbo memory or not i would assume that is what made the boot faster. anyways, the article is located here:
http://www.tabletpc2.com/First%20Look-L ... 002531.htm

For those going with the turbo memory are you also thinking about upgrading (aftermarket) with Hybrid HDD. The stingy 256MB on the latter concerns me. As does the lack of benchmarks on all this. WTH are these HW folks doing?

ryan18 wrote:i i did find one early review on the x61T where the person said it booted up into vista so fast that they couldnt believe it and restarted to make sure

If you look at this X61 tablet at tabletpc2(*), you will see the WWAN cellular antenna bump. That means it has the built-in WWAN card which takes the slot where the turbo memory goes. That means her X61 tablet fast boots without the turbo memory, which I think is even more impressive. Hope it's true for mine!

(*) http://www.tabletpc2.com/First%20Look-L ... 002531.htm

ymarker wrote:For those going with the turbo memory are you also thinking about upgrading (aftermarket) with Hybrid HDD. The stingy 256MB on the latter concerns me. As does the lack of benchmarks on all this. WTH are these HW folks doing?

If you have turbo memory, you really won't gain anything from getting a hybrid hard disk. I suspect that Vista won't even use a second ReadyDrive cache, but even if it does, an incremental 256 MB on top of the 1 GB turbo memory will do very little.

Now, turbo memory with a 7K200 hard disk would be awfully nice ...

Also, if I don't get Turbo memory now, could I order it later? I'm under the impression that it plugs into the expresscard slot.

I posted this in another thread, but it is probably more relevant here -

According to HP engineers, at least, Turbo Memory is not worth it -

As reported by CNet:

http://news.com.com/HP+says+no+to+Intel ... g=nefd.top

"Steve Doddridge, senior notebook technology consultant for HP Personal Systems Group for Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), added: "We looked at the baseline system performance of a standard system (with 1GB of RAM) without any Robson or ReadyBoost type of technology added, and we then compared that to the same system with Robson, and the same system but just with an (equivalently sized) SD card or USB stick."

Using Intel's benchmark test for evaluating the performance of Turbo Memory, HP's team did see the improvements in performance that Intel had predicted. However, because 1GB of Turbo Memory is effectively split into two--with one half serving ReadyBoost and the other ReadyDrive--adding a 512MB SD card or a 512MB USB stick to the baseline system resulted in the same improvements.

The greatest improvement came as a result of adding more actual RAM to the system. "We added 1GB of RAM and saw a much higher improvement in performance compared to using any of the ReadyBoost or Robson technology," Doddridge said. He added that: "If you have enough system RAM in the system already, ReadyBoost doesn't give you a lot."

Might be better off going with the integrated EV-DO and an inexpensive 2GB SD card.

Lee

But will the access time on the SD card be as fast as the mini-pci-e card? Is the SD reader on the usb bus, and if so, wouldn't that slow it a bit?

I also hate the idea of using an external USB stick as they mentioned. I don't like those connected except when transferring files to them for fear something will fall on them and break the USB port. I'd be worried to have it on the whole time I had the PC on...especially with my habit of not stopping devices before I yank 'em out.

Well I think the X61T comes with an SD card slot. I was thinking of getting a SanDisk 4GB Extreme III card to use for ReadyBoost. I would hate having a USB thumb drive hanging out of my laptop all the time.

I use the SD card slot to move data (movies/songs/pictures) to and from my phone (Treo 700wx) which has a 4GB card in it.

Also the 1GB turbo memory isn't all allocated to readydrive.

512mb = readyboost
512mb = readydrive

Finally, while the SD card interface may be fast, but I doubt it's as fast as PCI-E onboard.

I was thinking that with 4GB of RAM, the Turbo Memory isn't going to make much of a difference anyway. So the SD is just additional. I wanted to get the WWAN card so Turbo Memory isn't an option.

The benefits of readydrive/readyboost don't necessarily overlap with having a large amount of ram. With 4GB, you'll ofcourse limit paging to disk.

Other benefits such as readyboot, and caching writes to HDD, require the NAND and can't utilize volatile memory regardless of how much of it you put in there.

xaveon wrote:Well I think the X61T comes with an SD card slot. I was thinking of getting a SanDisk 4GB Extreme III card to use for ReadyBoost. I would hate having a USB thumb drive hanging out of my laptop all the time.

Can you direct me to some information on how to do this?

bigwormie wrote:

xaveon wrote:Well I think the X61T comes with an SD card slot. I was thinking of getting a SanDisk 4GB Extreme III card to use for ReadyBoost. I would hate having a USB thumb drive hanging out of my laptop all the time.

Can you direct me to some information on how to do this?

sorry never mind...seek and I shall find:)

Question though, will this improve boot speed or only with some applications?

A user-installable flash drive (whether USB, SD or CF) will only kick in after you log in -- the boot performance will be unaffected.

ok thanks.