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    Intel Turbo Memory aka Robson cache on Apples?

    Discussion in 'Apple and Mac OS X' started by smiley_lauf, Sep 17, 2007.

  1. smiley_lauf

    smiley_lauf Notebook Consultant

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    I came across this recently. Does anyone know what the chances are that the new models of Apple notebooks will have this preinstalled? and anyone use it yet on Vista? is there a definite performance lift? esp, when launching apps?
    thanks

    S
     
    smiley_lauf, Sep 17, 2007
    #1
  2. lowlymarine

    lowlymarine Notebook Deity

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    I have a ThinkPad T61 with the 1GB TurboMemory chip. I have noticed that it seems to boot a bit faster than even my desktop's 7200RPM drive, pushing Vista boot times close to XP boot times, which is impressive. As for application launch, not as much of a difference, and of course wince Vista inexplicably and wildly thrashes the hard drive constantly anyways (not only on my ThinkPad, but on all computers I've ever seen it used on), the effect on battery life is nil. It'll never be implemented on Macs though, most likely, since Intel won't release drivers for it for any other OS. Besides, OSX boots in about 20 seconds anyways, so what difference would it make? It's not like Apple wants to encourage you to run Vista on their machines, so including a Windows-centric piece of hardware doesn't make sense. Although maybe it could help that torturous FireFox load time on Macs...
     
    lowlymarine, Sep 17, 2007
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  3. Paul

    Paul Mom! Hot Pockets! NBR Reviewer

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    I doubt you'll see it on a Mac. It's really designed for Windows ReadyBoost (as ridiculous as that may be). The only thing Apple may do with it would be to use it as a swap file instead of using the hard drive for that.
     
    Paul, Sep 17, 2007
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  4. thekaz

    thekaz Notebook Consultant

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    From the last Channel semminar my understanding is that Turbo Cache is NOT considered ReadyBoost memory as it is directly connected to the CPU Cache and or the GPU Cache. It is only avaible on the SantaRosa Platform but is not being supported by all manufactures though. ASTeck who makes many of the Mac laptops does support it but unless the OS is designed to use it just sits there useing up space.....
    I have used idenical ASUS laptops one with and one without and all I noticed was faster boot up and 13 minutes more battery...
     
    thekaz, Sep 17, 2007
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  5. Wolfpup

    Wolfpup Notebook Prophet

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    All the benchmarks I've seen peg it as basically worthless on Windows Vista. It helps somewhat in situations where the system doesn't have enough RAM (like 1GB or espeically 512MB), but just bumping up to a decent amount of RAM does far more.

    When you have enough RAM, the performance is basically identical-slightly worse or slightly better in some cases.

    Apple could do something with the technology, but right now 10.4 wouldn't use it for anything (but as mentioned, Vista doesn't seem to actually do anything useful with it).
     
    Wolfpup, Sep 17, 2007
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