Beware OEM PCs with "24GB memory" (8GB RAM + 16GB Optane)

[VirtualLarry]

• Operating system: Windows 10 Home
• Processor: 8th Generation Intel® Core™ i7+8700 processor (Core i7 and Intel® Optane™ memory)
• Memory: 24GB: 8 GB DDR4-2666 SDRAM memory (1 x 8 GB); 16 GB Intel® Optane™ memory
• Internal Storage: 1 TB 7200RPM SATA hard drive
  
  
  
  

 

[Ketchup]

As impressive as an SSD is when compared to a hard drive, I wouldn't be surprised if it felt like a turtle compared to DDR4.

 

[killster1]

whats teh warning about.. teh 16gb optane being slow compared the the larger sized SSD? Why cant you just add 8gb ram to have 32gb!!!! Phew so glad you saved us! (oh wait i dont buy OEm pc's anyway ) just laptops.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Sadly, the only people who will see this warning wouldn't have been taken in by it anyway.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Oh, the OEM I saw this listed on, at Staples tonight, was HP. Yeah, that HP. The one that listed their AMD quad-core APU machines, as "10 Core" PCs. (4 CPU Cores + 6 Compute Cores)

 

[VirtualLarry]

Someone e-mail The Register. (.co.uk), or maybe they have an article up about it already. Do they sell HP at Tesco?

 

[killster1]

Oh i see why you clicked the PC it was listed as a 10 core and prob 500$ You get what you pay for.. or a little bit less usually heh

 

[mxnerd]

Oh, the OEM I saw this listed on, at Staples tonight, was HP. Yeah, that HP. The one that listed their AMD quad-core APU machines, as "10 Core" PCs. (4 CPU Cores + 6 Compute Cores)

What? HP? That's absolutely false advertisement.

Can consumer sue them if tricked into buying those machines?

This is ridiculous and insane.

 

[aigomorla]

What? HP? That's absolutely false advertisement.

Can consumer sue them if tricked into buying those machines?

This is ridiculous and insane.

I think its the second party vendor who is doing that and not HP.
Someone in Advertisement has no concept of what hardware is, and is trying to pimp the ad out.

 

[mxnerd]

I think its the second party vendor who is doing that and not HP.
Someone in Advertisement has no concept of what hardware is, and is trying to pimp the ad out.

Found the advertised PC.

https://www.staples.com/hp-pavilion...-1tb-hdd-24gb-ram-windows-10/product_24341094

 

[UsandThem]

I don't see how that is false advertising in any way. Optane is a memory, albeit just a different kind than what consumers have been used to. They state the total, and then break it down to exact specs.

No different than Intel selling mobile i7u CPUs....up until this generation they were dual core low performance CPUs compared to "real" desktop counterparts.

As long as the specs are spelled out, it's up to the consumer to do some research. Not just on computers, but just about any mechanical or electrical device.

 

[aigomorla]

I don't see how that is false advertising in any way. Optane is a memory, albeit just a different kind than what consumers have been used to. They state the total, and then break it down to exact specs.

No different than Intel selling mobile i7u CPUs....up until this generation they were dual core low performance CPUs compared to "real" desktop counterparts.

As long as the specs are spelled out, it's up to the consumer to do some research. Not just on computers, but just about any mechanical or electrical device.

They are combining the two which shouldn't.

Optane Memory is not the same as DDR4, yet they are combining it.
Why not just include the cache memory on the HDD while they are at it too then?
Then they could make it 24.256GB make the value longer, trick people to think its a much higher number visually!

Its a foul move, on the same level as what nvidia did with the 970 GTX and the 4GB of ram...

 

[UsandThem]

They are combining the two which shouldn't.

Optane Memory is not the same as DDR4, yet they are combining it.
Why not just include the cache memory on the HDD while they are at it too then?
Then they could make it 24.256GB make the value longer, trick people to think its a much higher number visually!

Its a foul move, on the same level as what nvidia did with the 970 GTX and the 4GB of ram...

I guess the way I look at it, since they add the "8 GB DDR4-2666 SDRAM memory (1 x 8 GB); 16 GB Intel® Optane™ memory" after the total, I don't take issue with it.

Now the real question is should Intel be calling it "memory"? I can see an argument there, and maybe they should have to call it something different.

 

[mxnerd]

I don't see how that is false advertising in any way. Optane is a memory, albeit just a different kind than what consumers have been used to. They state the total, and then break it down to exact specs.

No different than Intel selling mobile i7u CPUs....up until this generation they were dual core low performance CPUs compared to "real" desktop counterparts.

As long as the specs are spelled out, it's up to the consumer to do some research. Not just on computers, but just about any mechanical or electrical device.

The problem is that if you pull the web page down to the spec sheet - it says Installed RAM is 24GB

Optane is not RAM, it's a storage type of memory, just a lot faster than SSD.

 

[UsandThem]

The problem is that if you pull the web page down to the spec sheet - it says Installed RAM is 24GB

Optane is not RAM, it's a storage type of memory, just a lot faster than SSD.

That's on Staples then, not HP or Intel.

Even places like Newegg and Amazon sometimes have incorrect info.

 

[VirtualLarry]

They are combining the two which shouldn't.

Optane Memory is not the same as DDR4, yet they are combining it.
Why not just include the cache memory on the HDD while they are at it too then?
Then they could make it 24.256GB make the value longer, trick people to think its a much higher number visually!

Its a foul move, on the same level as what nvidia did with the 970 GTX and the 4GB of ram...

https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/hp-hexa-core-cpu.2406314/

NOT the first time that this has happened, with HP PCs.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

That's on Staples then, not HP or Intel.

Even places like Newegg and Amazon sometimes have incorrect info.

HP provides the specs to Staples.

 

[UsandThem]

HP provides the specs to Staples.

Which the companies always do, but sometimes mistakes are made by the retailers. For example Newegg not differentiating between LGA 1151 and the new LGA 1151 for Kaby Lake for a few weeks when it first launched.

 

[UsandThem]

Here's HP spec page, and they don't even list the Optane under memory: https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c06038766

I'd have to see what it said on the box. But I still don't find anything anywhere near "false advertising".

 

[nosirrahx]

I actually intentionally bought one of these to create a much better Optane based laptop.

I bought a VivoBook Pro with a 16GB Optane stick and replaced that with a 118GB 800P.

The leap in performance is very impressive.


On the topic of false advertising, of course it is. They are well aware that the average person does not understand the specific specs and will see "memory" and assume that this means the same "memory" that has existed forever.

Taking advantage of perception and a general lack of sophistication when it comes to current industry technology is borderline criminal. I am an Optane supporter (ask anyone here how much Optane stuff I own) but I do not support this new trend for an instant.

 

[UsandThem]

On the topic of false advertising, of course it is. They are well aware that the average person does not understand the specific specs and will see "memory" and assume that this means the same "memory" that has existed forever.

Since when do manufacturers have to ensure that people take the time to research and understand what they are buying?

For example, things like speakers and receivers. It says that it outputs X number of watts, but that is dependent on the resistance of the speakers. Or buying a new 4K TV without understanding all the newer features like HDR, Dolby Vision, refresh rate, etc. Buying anything without understanding what a person is buying (when the specifications are laid right out there) is on the person. A person wants to buy a new car. They go to a dealership without doing any research at all, and end up buying a car that won't work for them, and overpaying for it at the same time. Is that "false advertising"? It's 100% caveat emptor.

If this was in any way truly "false advertising", there would be ambulance-chasing attorneys filing class action lawsuits to get rich. We saw the lawyers get rich off of the GTX 970 issue.

 

[nosirrahx]

Since when do manufacturers have to ensure that people take the time to research and understand what they are buying?

Did the people have a choice when picking the words used in the advertising? Would other words make it clear that RAM and Optane are 2 different things?

This is very cut and dry. They knew what people would think and they used this against them.

If this was in any way truly "false advertising", there would be ambulance-chasing attorneys filing class action lawsuits to get rich.

Lets give this a bit of time to cook. I am sure that at some point one of the big youtube channels will pick this up and I really don't see them taking the side of the advertisers.

 

[nosirrahx]

Looks like this will be easy to watch unfold:

https://www.google.com/search?q=false+advertising+Optane+memory+is+not+RAM

 

[VirtualLarry]

Did the people have a choice when picking the words used in the advertising? Would other words make it clear that RAM and Optane are 2 different things?

This is very cut and dry. They knew what people would think and they used this against them.

Yes. Unless Optane Memory is byte-addressable like RAM is, and is directly re-writable, like RAM, and doesn't require the read-modify-write that NAND does, then IMHO it IS false advertising.

https://www.pcper.com/news/Memory/S...g-24GB-memory-8GB-DDR4-and-16GB-Optane-Memory

But will it allow you to run more applications or games that might need or want more than 8GB of system memory? No.

Emphasis mine. FALSE ADVERTISING.

Edit:
Guess I'm a bit late with this news, scooped by [H]ardOCP. Well, they're great chaps, anyways.

https://www.hardocp.com/news/2018/0..._optane_cache_drives_claiming_itrsquos_memory

Though, to my credit, all of the existing articles are about some Dell and HP laptops; my sighting was a new back-to-school 8th-Gen HP Desktop at Staples. So they're still at it, with the misleading specs.

Btw, back in the day, HP got (successfully) SUED, for their "HP Palm Pilot" (remember "PDAs", before Android took over?), because the display screen was advertised as 65535 colors, which is 16-bit, and it turned out, it only really had 4096, because it used 12-bit color with dithering?

Anyways, specs are important, and my gut feeling is, they would lose a class-action, based on AT LEAST these two factors:

1) Optane Memory NVMe, is NOT byte-addressable like RAM, and may require read-modify-write operations,
2) It does NOT allow one to run applications programs that require MORE than 8GB of working-set RAM, effectively, in the SAME manner that a REAL "24GB" of DRAM would allow.

IMHO, it's an open-and-shut case.

Edit: My opinion:

"I think, that at a time when PC sales are overall flat, and the industry is in a decline, that it was a MAJOR MISTAKE, of Intel, colluding with major PC OEMs HP and Dell, to effectively lie to their collective customers, and exaggerate the utility and performance of their Optane Memory cache device, when it is no-where near the performance and utility of actual DDR4 SDRAM. Customers that purchased these systems, expecting to be able to run and multi-task programs that ACTUALLY REQUIRE 24GB of RAM, are going to be SORELY DISAPPOINTED in the overall performance of their systems. Sure, Optane and 3DXpoint are great technologies, WHEN USED APPROPRIATELY, and with their functionality CLEARLY AND FULLY DISCLOSED."

Maybe I should buy one of these desktops advertised with "24GB memory", with an i7-8700 CPU, an 8th-Gen Core microprocessor with six cores and HyperThreading, and run BOINC, a distributed-computing controller program, with 12 "Tasks", one per CPU core/hyperthread, with the configuration with 8GB DDR4-2667 + 16GB Optane Memory cache, and another otherwise-identical system, with 24GB of REAL DDR4-2667, and a HDD, and set both systems running, and monitor their task throughput over 24 hours. (Running a project that requires nearly 2GB of RAM per task, thus 24GB.)

I think that those performance benchmarks would be rather.... elucidating.

 

[aigomorla]

This isnt going to end well for Intel....