Dell XPS M1330 Turbo Memory

I am reading through the Manual (I work in printing so I already printed a copy and bound it like a book ) and on Page 141 it shows you how to remove the "Flash Cache Module." It also says it's an option when ordering. I did not see that anywhere when ordering?

But from the diagram on how to remove it it looks like it goes in one of the Mini PC card slots like the Wireless, and WWAN cards. So "Fingers crossed" we might be able to buy these later and easily install them!

Anyone else know anything about this?

 

What exactly does it do...? Is it just ReadyBoost for Vista?

 

I believe so yeah, but it does not use the USB interface. It's like it's built in flash memory on the motherboard.

Intel: Turbo Memory

 

Hmmm. Just read a review of Turbo Memory on Anandtech:
Anandtech Review

Maybe Dell did not include it yet because it sucks right now. However it must be driver problems causing it to slow the system down a little so maybe that will improve in time.

 

Looks like we can get it after market easily enough. I assume it's a standard part?
Turbo memory on Amazon.com

 

I asked a dell rep if we could put in turbo mem modules down the road into the WWAN slot and the rep said absolutely!

 

the way i read the manual it said there was 3 slots but im not positive

 

Might be right since 1 for WWAN, 1 for Wifi, 1 for bluetooth.

 

the BT is a tiny one, its under the touch panal

 

Just got my turbo memory in today for my 1330. Cant wait to try it out, just need the laptop. Checked the model number with the one that Dell will sell for the XPS/Inspirons and this is it exactly.

Heres a link if you guys need it.
http://www.thenerds.net/INTEL_INTEL...E_AND_1_SOFTWARE.NVCPEMWR001G110.html?affid=8

 

There are two PCI-E module slots. 1 is for only WIFI, the other is for either WWAN OR the Intel Robson. Bluetooth uses the same two wire connector as the older Inspirons. Dell Bluetooth Wireless 350, 355, and the new 360 all work on the XPS and Inspirons.

 

So yeah, according to that article, Turbo Memory isn't so great... I guess I'll just get a 2GB SD card and leave it in the card reader for the boost...

 

But wait...

Anandtech posted a update, and they did not have the Turbo memory installed correctly.
Anandtech Update

Also it seems that Intel Turbo Memory uses Ready Boost and Ready Drive. You normally only get Ready Boost if you use a usb flash I believe.

 

ya but PCI-E is faster than USB

 

So is it pre-installed in the m1330 or do I have to do it myself?

 

didn't know yet but from these posts it sounds it's a separate card u buy from dell or any where else.

 

Dell will offer it eventually but for now you can purchase it on several websites and install it yourself. I posted a link on the previous page if you need.

 

Also, there are Dell XPS m1330 drivers out now:
http://support.dell.com/support/dow...&ServiceTag=&SystemID=XPS_M1330&os=WLH&osl=EN

And included in those drivers is the Intel Turbo Memory driver.
Looks like Dell might be putting the ITM into the m1330.

If not, we could always upgrade it ourselves.
But first, I'd like to see confirmation of performance boosts.

 

So if I didn't get the blue-tooth option I could just install it there right? I know nothing about the insides of a laptop. I'm a desktop user in the middle of a conversion...

 

The ITM CAN be used with bluetooth. The only thing that cannot be used with ITM is the internal WWAN cards.

 

Bluetooth is NOT a PCI-E card!! It uses an internal USB connection.

You CAN use the Turbo Memory with the BT, but if you have a WWAN (aka Sprint, Verizon, Cingular) card, you can't because they go in the same spot.

And every review I have seen so far says it BLOWS! The driver support just is NOT there yet. If you read the reviews you'll find you have to restart something like 9 times to actually enable it, and if you mess with the driver at all it basically will be permanently screwed up.

I wouldn't mess with it at this point.

 

I am not sure how related this is but I have the 1GB Turbo Memory module in my ThinkPad X61t. When I had it enabled I was having constant lock-ups and I couldn't even boot off battery. I disabled it and haven't had a problem since. I don't notice a difference without it.

You are right phobos - the driver support isn't there. It sounds good on paper but in real life it is not so. Apparently there is a fix for the issue I was having:
http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/imsm/sb/cs-025783.htm
However I have not tried it yet. I will do so either tonight or tomorrow . . .

At this point though I don't recommend Turbo Memory. Seems like a waste of money.

 

I'm still lose in the whole installation thing. So I don't have WWAN but I have a regular network card. I can install this right?

 

Yes... you can install it.

 

I am wondering if Dell actually installs the 2 extra antenna cables even when you don't purchase the WWAN card option.

 

Yes they are pre run for installation after sale.

 

they do this for all laptops that support WWAN ... and sell VZW/Sprint/AT&T modular data cards for future compatibility

 

for the m1210 you had to add the webcam to get the WWAN antennas prerun. no webcam = no internal WWAN

 

Any of you planning on getting this? I'd like to see some of your results with the new drivers Chaz supplied.

 

Just got mine in today, just need the laptop.

 

I'll get it once HardOCP or Anandtech or Ars says that they tested it and it actually works and doesn't require me to sacrifice a goat. Until then...

 

I am thinking of getting one just for the hell of it. Because I wanna know too.

@phobos: Well I do not like goats so I will kill a couple for a little extra system performance.

 

Please do let us know how much speed improvement you get from the Flash module. Since it is very interesting on paper. I hope it support both ReadyBoost and ReadyDrive.

If only I have lappy by now.

 

This is basically my substitute for an SSD drive so it better work well! =P

 

I don't think many people understand why oems didn't include turbo memory on most laptops. The reason is simple, cost versus reward.

The $50 your spending on turbo memory is better allocated to pay for a better cpu or more ram.

Both of those 2 upgrades will give you better performance than dropping $50 on 1gb turbo memory module.

 

The question I would have is, with the SS 32gb drive and 2gb memory...will there be any speed boost noticed at all???

 

That is unless the hard drive performance is what is holding you back in which case a new CPU won't help.

Although it would appear Turbo Memory doesn't help terribly much either... I'm still surprised that Intel would show demos and tout so much performance advantage and no one else is able to reproduce it.

 

... i have 4 gigs of ram and vista 64 is leaving xp in the dust... get more ram... you can NEVER have enough )

 

Maybe Turbo memory is a Trojan Horse... if HDD are going to be replaced by solid state memory in due course then perhaps the Turbo memory will grow in size in time and eventually replace the HDD and give Intel a bigger chunk of the HDD replacement market. Also the Turbo memory probably has a faster interface than the SATA interface for HDD/SSD and it might save money to drop SATA altogether in the future.

 

The SSD is flash memory, Turbo Memory (Robson) is also flash memory. Buffering flash memory with flash memory (Vista's ReadyDrive) is not likely to help, it's just adding an extra layer to slow things down. Unless the Turbo Memory flash is much faster than the flash used in SSDs, which I doubt.

Vista's ReadyBoost just stores the swap file in flash memory. But again, if your entire HDD is flash, then you don't gain anything from having a separate flash device to hold your swap file.

 

This only makes sense if the current interface will accept Turbo Memory cards of any size...will it? At present 1GB seems to be the only thing that is available, even though 4 or 8 GB could probably fit on a card that size today, and even more in future.

In principle, one should have a buffer larger than the RAM. If you have 2GB of RAM (as many people will on new machines) and 8GB of flash, your OS and a number of programs can all live in Turbo Memory almost all the time. (I'd heard there might be some way of telling Turbo Memory to reserve space for the OS and selected programs so they never load from disk after the first time, but I don't know any more about this.)

 

I did a search for "Intel Turbo" on this board and got scary results to attempt this until better drivers are out.

It seems there may be a valid reason Dell hasn't made it an "offical" option on their computers just yet. There doesn't seem to be a sure-shot driver at the moment, and not making the sale seems to be a better direction for the business than having to handle all those support calls with no apparent solution (yet).

I'll give it a try, but not until a few "Intel Turbo memory is great!" threads.

 

Well I was speculating and hoping someone here could confirm or deny the idea. I suspect the SATA interface may have a lot of hard drive related baggage that we might be better off without once we are using SSDs.

 

A new Turbo Memory driver was released last Thursday, 8/2/07:

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Det...4&OSFullName=Windows%20Vista* 32&lang=eng

I don't have my new laptop yet (thanks Dell) so I can't say, but maybe things have improved? It's too early for Anandtech or some such to have retested with the new driver.

 

Just a bump....

Anybody get Turbo Memory working on the XPS m1330? Benchmarks before and after?

Not looking to buy it unless it offers some real performance enhancement...

 

I have it working on my m1330. I haven't done any benchmarks since they can be found on the web (subject to the problem that unchecking the boxes in the control panel window doesn't actually disable Turbo Memory...apparently the drivers were written by children).

As various manufacturers have stated, there is no change in user experience. I can't tell that it is there. Maybe it makes a difference under certain circumstances, but if I can't tell, it doesn't exist.

I still like the idea of an HD cache. Maybe when 4GB or larger cards are available from Intel, we'll really sense an improvement. The current 1GB card uses half for ReadyDrive and half for ReadyBoost, and 512MB is much less than 2GB (RAM). So the cache presumably overflows when writing the pagefile and in some other reading/writing operations, which reduces its benefit...

PS The Turbo Memory driver disables the RAM cache option for the HD. One may do better by expanding RAM and enabling the RAM cache. That cache is not persistent across reboots, but in normal use, you should never have to reboot. My tests indicate that battery charge drops less than 1% per hour in sleep mode, so my laptop is set to sleep for two days before hibernating.

 

I hope they work out the drivers. Especially if they added the ability of multiple modes such as.

a DVD/movie watching mode where It could use the entire 1gig for readydrive and it just fills that 1gig with as much of the movie as it can fit and then the hard drive or DVD drive turns off until there is say only 50MB of data left in the "Turbo Memory" then the HDD or DVD drive kicks in and fills it back up. Doing this would increase the battery life heaps while watching movies. But it would have to be a dedicated mode as that useage pattern is not normal so currently it would not cache like that.

Also they should have the ability to use the entire 1 gig for readydrive anyway becasue for most people with 2gig of ram they will get no improvement from the readyboost feature. But having a 1gig buffer for the hard drive would allow a lot of stuff to be cached and again would result in the hard drive being used less.

I also agree that bigger cards would be good as having a 4gig or so cache would mean the hard drive would hardly ever be read. But buy fixing up the current drivers what is available now should work better or at least give people the ability to customize how it is used a bit so it suits their needs better.

 

Just a bump for the Turbo Memory thread. Has anyone else have anything new to offer on the subject?

 

Nope, the new drivers are more stable. Easy to install and cheap, not very much noticeable improvement in performance.

 

i'm going to wait for a larger card, which might prove to be more beneficial than a 1GB FCM