Turbo Memory on new Thinkpads (like the T400/T500)

Realistically, is the Turbo Memory on these new models worth it? Can you pin certain applications to it (I see the drivers Lenovo provides are 1.6, from what I have read 2.0 may be available).

If there's no performance disadvantage (that's a big IF, I know there were complaints about performance and stability on the T61), for the $35 or so that it costs these days is there any harm in getting it?

 

I wouldn't get it, it only really helps with systems with 512MB of RAM or less. For $35, I would get more RAM instead. But if you can use it as persistent storage, it would be interesting.

 

Does anyone know if linux can hack ITM and use it as a swap partition?

 

I don't think any distro supports it officially, but if you can find it, and the controller supports it, I bet you can. Make a great swap location instead of having one on an SSD.

 

If you are planning on upgrading to an SSD, then don't getit is it may actually slow your machine down because the nand flash is much slower than the SSD's SRAM or DRAM. Many users have found turbo memory when used with slow Hard drives and a small amount of ram to help speed up the booting process and help load programs quicker. However if you have at least 2Gb of ram and a decently fast hard drive, most reviewers only found a slight increase in speed. Like I said above, it could potentially slow things down when used with SSD and make things unstable so my recommendation is not to get it..As the above poster said, if you could set it up as a swap location, it might slow things down, however it might allow your SSD to last longer as well..

 

I'm ordering a T400 with 4GB RAM and a 7200rpm 160GB drive for now. If 128GB SSDs become reasonable next year I may swap for one of those but right now the price is just unreasonable (and Lenovo doesn't offer a 128GB drive).

If there were even a small benefit to the turbo memory in this configuration I'd consider it but I don't want less performance and I definitely don't want to risk instability. It just seems that the info on this feature on the newer laptops is sparse at this point.

 

You would get a boost in performance with your configuration since it is only a 7200rpm drive, however possible instability and as been reported a very small improvement in loading application speed, I still wouldn't get it at this point..

 

I got it on my t400(which hasn't arrived yet) because I read that in some circumstances it can increase battery time by keeping the hdd spun down.

 

Turbo memory is only good for low RAM memory and slow HDD....I rather pay for extra RAM....and I'm not sure how the new version is better....since the old version seems to slow down and cause BSOD on the older models I have heard.

 

I've heard that as well. In cases whre it does nothing for performance it may still boost battery life. Seems there's a lot of opinion and subjective information but little objective data on what's going on.

 

This could possibly be the worst swap partition you ever used. Flash is slow for writes (swapping out of memory and onto disk) and fast for random reads (not sustained). ITM is a read cache, and for that it seems to be really good.

 

Most of the SSDs (if not all) discussed here on NBR (e.g. MTRON, Samsung etc.) all feature NAND flash memory. The only consumer oriented DRAM-solution I know of, is Gigabyte's iRAM.

Well, some SLC-based SSD:s (MTRON, Memoright, Samsung) have random write performance on par or above the random write performance of the fastest 7200 rpm notebook drives. However, I have no idea how fast the Turbomemory flash is for random writes.

 

I apologize, I was under the impression the Samsung 64GB SSD that has the brushed aluminum casing wasn't using nand because of its higher speeds however newly optimized SATA 300gbps controllers are the culprit of the higher speeds in comparison to what I've seen before. Nand flash is the cheapest to create and is why it is used the most. The current turbo memory 2GB Nand chips are not nearly as impressive or fast in the read and write category which actually performs slower inside the new X200 when paired with the Samsung 64GB SSD. Overall what is coming next is something even more impressive... A 256GB samsung SSD with twice the read write speed as their current 64GB and 128Gb models...

http://www.tuaw.com/2008/05/27/256gb-samsung-ssd-heading-for-macbook-air/