Intel stages Turbo memory demo

CELEBRATING ITS highly successful relationship with the BMW F1 Sauber team, Intel decided to demo its Turbo memory capability to a bunch of hacks at Silverstone.

To illustrate just how super-fast this memory could be, Intel kicked off exactly the same programming sequence on two Centrino Duo notebooks.

This was particularly interesting since two major suppliers - Sony and HP- have said they won't be supporting Turbo memory - formerly codenamed Robson.

Also very curious was the revelation that Turbo memory also only works with Vista. Especially since the 'hooks' for Turbo memory are allegedly missing from current versions of Vista.

Intel has obviously found a way around the problems. The notebooks were running graphically intensive but off-the-shelf software. The Turbo equipped notebook finished in 56.1 seconds and the regular notebook took a miserable 205.2 seconds.

The was a slight bit of cheating since the Turbo'ed machine had 3 GB of memory (2GB of regular plus 1GB of Turbo) against the 2GB in the regular notebook. Still the results looked impressive.

Hidden away in one corner of the Silverstone demo suit was another notebook which had been specifically 'optimised for gamers'.

Sadly Intel had leaned very heavily of the employee charged with displaying it and absolutely no information about what it contained was forthcoming. Other than we'll have to wait approximately three weeks for the announcement.

So this hack took a pic of the machine anyway. Can't spot anything unusual, though. µ