W7 64-bit Dell D630 laptop

[stvcmty]

I have a Dell D630 laptop with 4GB of RAM, and W7 64-bit. Yesterday I put Primo Cache on it to use a Cardbus SD card reader/SD card as L2 Cache.

I looked at my memory usage before installing Primo Cache. I did not have much unused memory so I set the L1 cache size to 120 MB.

I put an 8GB SDHD card in a Cardbus SD card reader. ( http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0027VL2F2/ If anyone is intrested in the exact model.) It has a 8GB SDHC Class 10/UHS-1 card in it.

I setup the entire 8GB card as L2 cache.

Then I did a few reboots and launched the games I mainly use the laptop for, Eve Online and Diablo II, as well as my web browser and then let the computer sit so Primo Cache could put stuff in the L2 cache.

My initial experience was my computer seemed to get to my desktop faster. I am not sure if windows is booting faster, but from when I put in my password to when I can do stuff on the desktop is faster. Eve Online's launcher loads faster. The Eve client loads faster. I think the loading screen is shorter on Diablo II. Chrome seems to open faster.

At the moment there is 3.18GB of free space on my 8GB L2 SDHC card.

Would I see any further improvement moving to a bigger SD card or getting a High Speed 10 UHS-3 card with 95 MB/s read, 60 MB/s write?

(soon I am going to get 8GB of RAM and set a larger L1 cache.)

Thanks.

[minhgi]

So rebooting your computer erase the L2 cache? Mine does on a different laptop.

[stvcmty]

The L2 cache is persistent between reboots and power downs. When I boot up the computer and I log in, I check the interface and my cache hit rate is around 80%.

[stvcmty]

I had a BSOD the other day and when the computer rebooted, the L2 cache was empty. The BSOD was not related to PrimoCache. So a non-clean shutdown kills the L2 cache.

[stvcmty]

I got a 64 GB High Speed 10 UHS-3 card with 95 MB/s read, 60 MB/s write. The L2 cache write is going up faster, so the faster writing is helping. With more stuff in the L2, the cache hit % is higher. I haven’t noticed any benefit from the higher read speed, but the SD card cardbus adapter I am using may be bottlenecking.

(My previously mentioned BSOD is an issue my laptop seems to have with spashtop streamer; it happened from time to time on the D630 before I even heard of primocache).

Since switching to the 64GB card I have not had any BSOD’s or improper shutdowns, so the SD L2 cache has been having stuff put on it as the computer is idle. It seems to have helped the responsiveness of the laptop.

One thing to note, the EVE online client does not launch well when the primo cache management/monitoring application is open and not minimized. The graphs try to update though the full screen game screen and it takes a few blind mouse clicks to shift focus to the full screen EVE online client. Until I get that done, there are graphical glitches.

[minhgi]

Thanks for letting me know that I can use a SD card to boost my laptop. Everything is so much faster. Even faster when you have it boot-up and running.