Robson 2/Intel Turbo Memory 2 + T61(p)

[Amigaman]

Hi all,

A couple months ago I self-installed a 1GB Intel Turbo Memory card into my T61p.

I see that the latest platforms and machines now have a 2GB version.

Although my T61p is not the latest platform, the Turbo Memory card is really just a PCI-E card.

-> Did anyone try to put a 2GB card into the T61(p)?

Or does anyone know if it should/would work?

Thanks,

Ross..

[richk]

I did some testing after I put in a 1GB card on my T61p. I could detect no performance difference, with vs. without. Based on that info, I expect the 2GB card will work "just as well"

[Temetka]

Does turbo memory make a difference in overall system performance, and also does it work in linux?

Finally, I highly doubt that my 1953-EAU T60 supports it right?

[Amigaman]

I really just wanted to know if the 2GB card will work in the T61 series, or if the chipset will somehow not support it.

(I already know that it delivers little performance gain if one has a lot of RAM, but one problem with ITM is that its just too small at 1GB).


Does anyone know if the second generation ITM works in the T61, or T60 even?

[eyeland]

Bump

I am thinking of getting an ITM module as they are dirt cheap on ebay atm and since I've gotten a habit of exploring maximin-tweaks/mods/upgrades.
Furthermore, is it possible to use a 2gb or a 4gb TB in a T61?

I am toying with the idea of installing ITM and/or a highspeed CF card (through PCMCIA CF reader) and thus trying to understand what options I have.

[DeDragonSlayer]

Just to revive an old thread - yes, its possible to put a 4GB Intel Turbo Memory module into a T61(p) that didn't originally have one. I've installed it last month, and had no problems with it whatsoever. I did have some initial doubts, after reading some reviews online, but it seems like the new generation of ITM is much faster and totally problem free. The 4gb version has User Pinning which means you can also select on your own the applications to cache, instead of (or in addition to) relying on the more general ReadyDrive functionality provided by the card.

I have a T61p running 64-bit Windows 7, with 4gb RAM. I'm using drivers from the lenovo site. Keep in mind that you need to physically install the module first, and then install the driver, otherwise the Turbo Memory specific files will not be installed. The card I bought off ebay, the cheapest I could find, however that meant only the bare card arrived, not even the required screws. Fortunately I had some lying around.

Now as to the effects of ITM - the Windows startup and shutdown times are pretty much the same, however the cached applications do start up faster. I did some measurements and on average they're about 30% faster, and in reality it seems even faster. Some things just fly. And I have a 7200RPM drive with unlocked SATA II in BIOS, so the Turbo Memory has to be even more efficient to top that. To put things in perspective, the throughput comes probably nowhere near an SSD drive, but for people like me who'd rather use one big mechanical drive until SSD prices drop way down, the 4GB Intel Turbo Memory is a somewhat recommended way to freshen up your T61(p).

I've also tested ReadyBoost by sticking a fast SD card in the slot in front of the laptop. Now that is useless technology. Even though I used a SanDisk Extreme HD Video card with a 20MB/s read/write, the effect was either unmeasurable, or in many cases negative! Some apps (generally java-based ones) took longer to start with ReadyBoost than without! As expected, ReadyBoost has no effect on Turbo Memory function, but you can run both if you feel like it.

[Amigaman]

Hey guys,

Thank you for providing an answer even if it took 3 years!!

Now I know that I can replace the 1GB ITM in my T61p with a newer high capacity one. I also wanted to perform this upgrade because of the user pinning.

Another way to freshen up the T61p might be to take a look at the hybrid drives, that are quite cheap now. Of course they are not going to be anything near an SSD, even if the advertising tries to claim this!

Regards,

Ross..

[eyeland]

its possible to put a 4GB Intel Turbo Memory module into a T61(p)... I've installed it last month, and had no problems with it whatsoever.

That was a nice surprise. I never got around to trying it myself as it seemed like a long shot judging from user-experience.
I seem to recall that many people had problems and crashes. Have you experienced any stability issues at all?
Could you post a link to the exact card you bought and the model number of your TP? And further, do you run win x86 or x64?

Even though I used a SanDisk Extreme HD Video card with a 20MB/s read/write, the effect was either unmeasurable, or in many cases negative!

I wonder if this could be caused by the reader not operating at full bus speed?
You can get SD and CF readers for PCMCIA and Expresscard that operate at 32-bit. Would be interesting to see if this changes anything. Personally I have an old pcimcia> CF card and it is so slow (<1mb/s with a Sandisk extreeme 4gb 30mb/s rated card) that I cannot even try to use it for readyboost.
While browsing a photography-forum I gathered that the build in readers often face similar problems.
It seems however, that the drivers for the 32-bit cards are incompatible with x64 so I never gave it a shot

[craigmontHunter]

I remember the readyboost having a huge effect when I first got vista and had 1gb of ram. After I upgraded from there, it had less of an effect - right now it has no noticeable effect on my t61. IMHO it was more of a bridge technology, but now the systems are powerfull enough to run at their potential without the readyboost.

[Colonel O'Neill]

IIRC, ReadyBoost is a bit dumb in that it only caches files whose total filesize doesn't exceed 4kb/s. I have a 4GB SD card cache for eBoostr, which caches a whole lot of stuff on it, and I see it fulfilling requests from it occasionally (most of the time, the 1.5GB RAM cache is enough), more so when the system is under heavy demand.

For a while, I had a 2GB Turbo Memory chip in my T400 (took it out because of a random boot delay), but managed 30 second boot to desktop with a 5400RPM drive because of it (I think). 1.4GB of it can be made to appear as an actual drive, which I gave to eBoostr because I felt it handled it better.

[DeDragonSlayer]

Have you experienced any stability issues at all?
Could you post a link to the exact card you bought and the model number of your TP? And further, do you run win x86 or x64?

No stability issues, except for the infrequent freezes related to the Intel Ultimate-N 6300 WiFi card under load, which I'm still fighting with. The link to the auction >here<. The card I got didn't have the "B4" sticker on the controller chip, otherwise it looked the same. The model of my TP is 6457-5KU, if that's any help. It had its motherboard replaced last year due to failed NVIDIA chip. I'm running Win7 x64.

Regarding ReadyBoost, i just tested the speed of the in-built card reader with the supposed 20MB/s Emtec Card on a 1GB file. I got 15MB/s on read, and 11MB/s on write, which exceeds by many times the minimum requirements for ReadyBoost. Like you guys say, if the whole swap file fits in RAM, there's not much use for ReadyBoost nowadays.

[eyeland]

Just took a look at eBoostr and realized that it can use actual ram? I wonder if I should go to 8GB ram before considering ITM... if only all TP's had 4 ram slots like the top models
The 4 GB ITM just seems a little pricey as it costs almost as much as 4GB DDR2..
Anyone seen any relevant ITM 2/4 GB comparisons?

[Colonel O'Neill]

Just took a look at eBoostr and realized that it can use actual ram? I wonder if I should go to 8GB ram before considering ITM... if only all TP's had 4 ram slots like the top models
The 4 GB ITM just seems a little pricey as it costs almost as much as 4GB DDR2..
Anyone seen any relevant ITM 2/4 GB comparisons?

Heh, yeah it does. 3GB/s reads are awesome. Great for 32-bit systems because it uses the extra unmanaged RAM.

[tegelad]

What I can suggest (which I have done on my T61p and W500), is to get a USB3 expresscard and get one of the new USB3 flash drives ... wow talk about helpful. I got one of the 64GB variants and dropped a 32GB image on it ...

In one case I forgot to plug it in one day and was wondering about some sluggishness (and saw high latency with pagefile and other items in the resource monitor (for disk)) and then I plugged it in .... bam .. everything went to 1ms ....

System specifics = 8GB ram, Seagate Momentus XT hybrid drives, Robson device + 64GB kingston Flash USB3 ...

+-ADT

[Kamika007z]

I used to have boot delay when I had my 1/2GB ITM plugged in (tried both 1GB and 2GB modules).

Once I removed it, all was well.

If it helps, here are my system specs:
T61p 8891-CTO
14.1" Symmetrically modded LCD bezel
Core 2 Extreme X9000
8GB RAM
Intel 6300AGN
OCZ Vertex 2 128GB
SATA II Unlocked via middleton's patch
Quadro FX 570M 128MB

[hokeymcf]

hello.

it seems i'm a little late to the party here, but i'll try anyway. i noticed you guys are only talking about the t61p, what about the regular t61? will the regular t61 handle a 4GB ITM module?
i used cpu-z to find out the chipset that mine had, and come to find out that it's on the santa rosa platform, which according to wikipedia, only supports the 1GB card. so i'm a little confused how you got that 4GB card working, unless the t61p's motherboard uses an upgraded chipset?

[Kamika007z]

Hi hockeymcf,

Never late! It's always a party 'round these forums!

The difference between the T61 and the T61p is strictly the video card. Everything else is exactly the same.

Regarding the 4GB ITM cards, my guess is that people are able to get them through some eBay sellers from China that may be "modified" to have more memory and not genuine Intel cards.

I personally don't really recommend upgrading to them since upgrading your RAM to 8GB (which the chipset actually does support) provides far greater performance than ITM (such as running VMs).

Hope this helps!

[hokeymcf]

Well, what i mainly wanted the ITM for was the user pinning, because I don't think you can do that with ram, right?

And in an earlier post, you said you tried a 2gb card. Were the boot delays the only problem you had?

[Kamika007z]

User pinning? As in allocate more resources? Please elaborate.

Regarding the issues that I had experienced, yes, boot delays were it - though I didn't leave it in long enough to notice anything else.

[hokeymcf]

Its a feature that I'm pretty sure only came on the 4gb cards. It lets you choose which programs to cache for faster loading, rather than letting windows do it automatically.

You got it working though? There weren't any complications with the drivers?

[DeDragonSlayer]

Boot delays appear when the system isn't properly shut down. Then on next boot the ITM has to refill its cache and generally synchronize with the hard drive, which takes a while.

4gb cards are genuine intel products. Intel supposedly supports them for 4 Series Express chipsets only, and not our 965 Express chipsets, but then again it says the same for 2GB modules in the link below, and we all know 2GB work fine in T41(p).

http://www.intel.com/cd/channel/reselle ... 396715.htm

[Kamika007z]

1GB cards were the only genuine ITM cards released for the 965 chipset. All other cards that had more memory were half-height cards and therefore NOT compatible or made for our systens.

What you can do is get the 4GB half-height card and also get a bracket or adapter that acts as an extension to full mini pci card length.

Regarding my slow boot up, it would happen right after the BIOS splash screen. I would see a blinking cursor blink there for about 10-15 seconds THEN proceed to Windows bootup.

[hokeymcf]

that's not entirely true, i'm looking at a 4gb card that's full size, not half.

[DeDragonSlayer]

From the Intel® Turbo Memory with User Pinning Product Brief:
"Designed for easy integration into systems, the PCIe* full-minicard and
half-mini interface card are available in 2 GB and 4 GB capacities."

I have a full size 4GB ITM in my system now.

[Kamika007z]

Ah ha! Good to know! Could you please provide a link to that info?

Thanks!

EDIT: I see the product brief PDF listed from the link above. Thanks again.

[Temetka]

I am resurrecting this thread.

I just slapped a 1GB ITM module in my T61 and I have 4GB of RAM. According to the Intel Turbo Memory software I have 2 choices on how to use the module:

1. Enable Windows Ready Boost

2. Enable Windows Ready Drive

I think I might get a 4GB module because my inner geek demands I max everything I can. That being said I am a little confused on which option offers a better performance increase. Ready Boost or Ready Drive?

[dillonuk1]

I am resurrecting this thread.

I just slapped a 1GB ITM module in my T61 and I have 4GB of RAM. According to the Intel Turbo Memory software I have 2 choices on how to use the module:

1. Enable Windows Ready Boost

2. Enable Windows Ready Drive

I think I might get a 4GB module because my inner geek demands I max everything I can. That being said I am a little confused on which option offers a better performance increase. Ready Boost or Ready Drive?

Id be interested to see if you notice any difference in performance, ive been contemplating putting one in my t61p, but thought it would be pointless seeing as i have 4gb ram and am about to install a Seagate momentus XT hybrid drive.....
any thoughts?

[DeDragonSlayer]

That being said I am a little confused on which option offers a better performance increase. Ready Boost or Ready Drive?

My guess would be Ready Drive, but since you already have the card, do measure Windows and application startup times, and let us know.

Id be interested to see if you notice any difference in performance, ive been contemplating putting one in my t61p, but thought it would be pointless seeing as i have 4gb ram and am about to install a Seagate momentus XT hybrid drive.....
any thoughts?

A hybrid drive is essentially a standard drive with turbo memory slapped on it. If you used your laptop turbo memory with a hybrid drive, you would either have compatibility issues, or a system slowdown caused by latency issues from essentially two levels of redundant cache, or Windows Ready Drive wouldn't use both anyway. So if you're set on that Seagate, then yes, it would be pointless.