Turbo memory for dell xps 1530??

i heard turbo memory can extend your battery lifetime/ lower power usage and make your bootup way faster..

my question is... how does it work?

is it put onto one of the RAM dimm slots? making it possible to only have 2GB of max ram?!?

 

No, its not actual ram, basically its just a cache for your hard drive; so smaller things that are used frequently are put on the turbo memory to reduce the access to the hard drive.

 

which slot does it go into?
is it true that if you put turbo memory, u cannot have a second ram?

 

No it isn't and I have no idea where you got that idea from.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Turbo_Memory

It is a small card that sits in the mini pci-e slots on your laptop that acts as a ready-drive and ready-boost device. The 'gains' that it is supposed to bring however, do not seemed to be reflected in reality.

Many consider it a pointless expense, with 2gb of ram or more, the difference it makes is hardly anything.

 

I have it, I do NOT think it is a worthwhile upgrade as I notice nothing from it, and yes I'm using latest drivers etc. I have tried it with and without the module and notice nothing, no performance or battery gains that are noticeable.

 

Generally, if you have two gigs or more of ram you wont notice a difference, though if you have only 1 you will see some improvement.

 

Sorry for the generalization that ITM sucks, above poster is correct.

 

I had answered this question in the M1330 Owners Lounge but thjought it might assist to cut and paste it here as well:

"Briefly, intel turbo memory has been tested on a number of occasions here at NBR in order to assess the benefit of it to a system.

Pretty much all the results result in the same thing. If you have 1Gb of ram or less, it may show a visible improvement in system performance. With 2Gb or higher, you will not see anything. I know that some may come back and dispute this but the fact remains that nobody has been able to conclusively show by any testing that turbomemory offers anything at all on systems with 2Gb RAM or more.

Further, turbomemory is not feasible on a system with a SSD as the SSD is faster than the turbomemory, this being the same with flash drives."

 

Even with just 1gb of RAM or less, it "may" show improvement. That really doesn't sound good for the Intel Turbo Memory cause. HOWEVER I will say that until SP1 is released with the next drivers for ITM, there is a good chance we WILL see improvements. There were a lot of speculation going around that it wasn't until SP1 that Vista really full supported ITM.

 

Hopefully your right. I may find use for this paperweight.

 

I bought this card to essentially fill in the void. According to reviews there's no significant advantage. But if there was by chance a little boost then it's worth it. I got it from eBay brand new for $35.

It doesn't occupy the RAM slot. If you unscrew where the wireless card is you'll see 3 PCI-E slot.. wireless, wireless phone adapter (Verizon, AT&T, etc) & Turbo Memory. Only if T-Mobile had a PCI-e card it would complete the system for me.

 

But, ive also read that it causes hd thrashing.

 

Hasn't happened with me. The only thing I noticed is that it boots slightly slower but once running it's a bit faster. It must be doing what it's supposed to do.

 

I think the "thrashing" may be due to Windows caching data into the Intel Turbo memory. Trashing isn't always necessarily a bad thing, oftentimes (if you have enough memory that is), it means Superfetch is caching or there is some other caching involved.

 

But wait, what about that extra slot??? Can we install a new video card there? Is it a PCI express slot? If Turbo Memory isn't worth putting there I'm sure an 8800 mobile would be, perhaps a 9800 Nvidia card down the road??? But what of this idea, with two 8600 gt m's in the system, can they run in sli??? Just something to think about.

 

Woah slow down

Its just a mini PCI express slot, the kind used for a small SSD or wireless card... It doesn't support a graphics card

 

It's a mini slot, and there is no cooling.

 

Hmmm lively bunch in here today! While we're at it, anyone see a good 8 or 16 gb flash mini express card we could put there. That would blow the Intel's turbo memory out of the water if you installed the OS on that vs harddrive in the first place!