Dell and HP spotted advertising Optane memory as RAM

[AlTech]

Basically False Advertising. 

 

inb4 Class Action Lawsuit Incoming.

[Franck]

13 hours ago, branfrd said:

I've been meaning to post about this earlier, and I didn't see where anyone else had posted about this. Having sold a ton of computers, I can tell you that customers were very confused when I told them that the computers didn't actually have 24 GB's of RAM.

https://www.extremetech.com/computing/271543-pc-oems-are-selling-laptops-with-optane-cache-drives-and-claiming-its-memory

 

Here is an example:

https://www.staples.com/hp-pavilion-desktop-590-p0086-intel-i7-1tb-hdd-24gb-ram-windows-10/product_24341094

next version will come with bluray drive with a disk in it of 50 gb ROM

 

74 gb Memory total... AMAZING

[WkdPaul]

Optane is used as cache to speed up HDD, or are straight up SSDs ... why are people here saying it's ok to add that to RAM???

 

This is like adding the 8GB of cache from the SSHD in your system to your RAM, how does that make any sense????? It's storage, don't people know the difference??

Edited November 20, 2018 by wkdpaul

[NumLock21]

I think dell and hp knows it's misleading, and their trying to find a word the average joe and jane would understand. But in the end they gave up, and just slapped the word "memory", hoping they won't find out. It's the consumers own fault for not understanding the difference between memory, storage, and cache drives.

 

 

[baconborn]

DRAM is not the only kind of memory there is, and it is totally correct to say Optan is memory. I definitely don't think they should be combining optane with system memory in marketing though and that is misleading to the average joe looking at these laptops.

 

The article seems like it keeps trying to say that Intel, Dell, and HP are saying directly that Optane is equivilant to DRAM, but the article itself reveals that this isn't the case. 

 

Quote

Intel’s FAQ has been altered in one other way. The messaging about how you can’t use a 16GB Optane cache and 4GB of DRAM to play a game that requires 8GB of RAM has been removed. Under the “Why do I need DRAM if I have Intel Optane memory?” the answer reads “Intel Optane memory system acceleration doesn’t replace the DRAM in your system. It works alongside the DRAM to provide the best possible performance.”

 

That answer isn’t wrong — but it’s lacking the explicit example in the earlier FAQ that made it clear that DRAM and Optane could not substitute for one another.

The author quotes Intel saying that Optane does not replace DRAM, and that is works alongside it which doesn't sound like "repalce" or "substitute" to me, but then follows that quote up by claiming that intel isn't making it clear that optane is not a subsititue for DRAM. Arguably, the author is being a little misleading himself imo. 

[Yoinkerman]

Is this not just HDD cache?  Did I miss something ?  Is the optane directly addressable as system memory?  Will windows report 24gb of system memory?

 

 

[MandoPanda]

Even if it's 'not technically false' it's still pretty misleading. Reminds me of the OEM laptop AMD core count scandal.

[MandoPanda]

12 minutes ago, OnyxArmos said:

I never heard about this? What happened?

Well, I'm having trouble finding an article but the boys talked about it on the WAN show some time ago. Essentially, AMD (and some OEMs I think or maybe it was a retailer) was in hot water for marketing their laptops with higher core counts than their Intel competitors.

 

It boiled down to a consumer walking into a Best Buy and purchasing an AMD based laptop because it advertised 4 or 6 cores whereas the Intel system only had 2. The consumer thought they were getting a better system. The thing is that at that time, AMD cores were not in parity with Intel in regards to per core performance. In the end, even though the Intel system might only have 2 cores, it would perform better than an AMD system with 4 cores.

 

Customers felt cheated because they thought they were buying the better laptop because it had more cores.

 

 

 

 

[jsonschema]

ah yes,went laptop shopping recently and not just dell and hp but even acer,lenovo and every other intel pushed brand did it.Intel has this huge boards up in retails stores all across asia. I was surprised when almost every large big box store had a rgb lighted Intel Gaming Laptop booth.They know how to market to gullible people.

[Arika]

either the people in the marketing department are idiots, or they are marketing to people who wouldn't know better.

 

However i do constantly see people and it's own marketing referring to it as "Optane Memory" so i can see where the confusion is

[ZacoAttaco]

So really it shouldn't be called 'Intel Optane Memory', it should be called 'Intel Optane Storage' or simply 'Optane'. It's not more DRAM or additional RAM but a compliment or a supplement for RAM. But they kind of mislead Optane with the term Memory.

 

Actually...on Intel's website they say this pretty explicitly. It just needs to be more known.

[DeScruff]

I'll say, Ive been seeing this for a couple of months now. Looking at laptop ads in the newspaper when I'm at work...
Personally I am a little annoyed, cause I swear I have seen a fairly high end laptop that said "32 GB memory!" and thought "Oh WOW, Thats a lot of ram, are ram prices finally dropping!?" then later found out it was 16GB of Optane, and 16GB of DRAM.

I think it should be treated like SSD Cache was. There were a couple of machines that used to have 16GB SSD cache along with their 1TB boot drives, but they clearly listed it as Cache.
 

[Canada EH]

On 11/19/2018 at 4:54 PM, Curufinwe_wins said:

consumers to be mislead

Well that is the what every company tries to do in one way or another. Some are the worst for it, others will lie just a little. Its just advertising and when companies advertise to Joe Public, its easy to brain wash them as its the Dorito age, why bother investigating yourself, go on Youtube and they will find tear downs yet they refuse to lift a finger other then to bring out their credit card which is already in severe debt.

[Ryujin2003]

Is this an OEM fault or Intel marketing guidance?

[Ashleyyyy]

this is madness. 

 

8gb of ram isn't enough for anyhting anymore.. advertising optane as ram isn't gonna help that issue. just  put 16gb ram in new systems! 

[dalekphalm]

On 11/21/2018 at 9:29 PM, OnyxArmos said:

I never heard about this? What happened?

 

On 11/21/2018 at 9:49 PM, MandoPanda said:

Well, I'm having trouble finding an article but the boys talked about it on the WAN show some time ago. Essentially, AMD (and some OEMs I think or maybe it was a retailer) was in hot water for marketing their laptops with higher core counts than their Intel competitors.

 

It boiled down to a consumer walking into a Best Buy and purchasing an AMD based laptop because it advertised 4 or 6 cores whereas the Intel system only had 2. The consumer thought they were getting a better system. The thing is that at that time, AMD cores were not in parity with Intel in regards to per core performance. In the end, even though the Intel system might only have 2 cores, it would perform better than an AMD system with 4 cores.

 

Customers felt cheated because they thought they were buying the better laptop because it had more cores.

Actually it went further then that. They were combining CPU + GPU CU "cores" when listing specs.

 

Example: The A4-3400 has 2 CPU cores and 4 CU's, so some OEM's were advertising them as "6-core" processors.

[Tony Brady]

I'm really confused about it

[dalekphalm]

26 minutes ago, Tony Brady said:

I'm really confused about it

By Optane in general? Or this specific news article?

[Canada EH]

On 11/24/2018 at 4:01 PM, firelighter487 said:

8gb of ram isn't enough for anyhting anymore

What on earth are you talking about?

8gb is plenty for most.

https://www.census.gov/topics/population/computer-internet.html

Spoiler

Quote

By 2015, however, the percentage of households with a computer had increased almost tenfold to 79 percent in the CPS. In 2016, the American Community Survey (ACS) found that 89 percent of households had a computer, making it a common feature of everyday life. Nowadays, people use computers for an even wider range of uses including online banking, entertainment, socializing, and accessing health care.

 

Quote

Like computer use, the percentage of households using the Internet has also increased over time. The Internet has impacted multiple areas of our lives, from performing basic tasks like shopping or paying bills, to using social media to connect with family, friends, and the larger community. It has become an avenue to pursue both formal education as people take online courses to earn college degrees, and informal learning such as accessing “how-to” videos for everything from tying a necktie to remodeling your bathroom. The Internet has impacted our work life as well by facilitating greater ability to work from home and collaborate
¹ This estimate is from “Table 5. Purposes and Frequency of Computer Use at Home by Persons 18 Years and Over: October 1984,” located at <www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/demo
/tables/computer-internet/1984/p23-155/tab05.pdf>.
across physical and geographical boundaries by utilizing teleconferences. Access to broadband Internet,2 in particular, is credited with having effects on individual empowerment, economic

 

 

[NumLock21]

The misleading ad is clearly done by Intel

[Ashleyyyy]

Just now, Canada EH said:

What on earth are you talking about?

8gb is plenty for most.

https://www.census.gov/topics/population/computer-internet.html

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

if all you do is browse facebook yes. with 4 tabs, spotify and a bunch of background crap i was sitting at 5+gb used. open a game in that scenario and you're out of ram. 

[Tristerin]

Normal business practices, nothing to see here.  This is so typical of every industry Im surprised we care.  The consumer has to educate itself, or be had.  Its been like that since..."Fools Gold".

[LAwLz]

On 11/22/2018 at 3:29 AM, OnyxArmos said:

I never heard about this? What happened?

On 11/22/2018 at 3:49 AM, MandoPanda said:

-snip-

It boiled down to a consumer walking into a Best Buy and purchasing an AMD based laptop because it advertised 4 or 6 cores whereas the Intel system only had 2. The consumer thought they were getting a better system. The thing is that at that time, AMD cores were not in parity with Intel in regards to per core performance. In the end, even though the Intel system might only have 2 cores, it would perform better than an AMD system with 4 cores.

-snip-

No, that's not really what happened. As @dalekphalm said, what happened was that AMD were combining CPU and GPU cores when marketing their chips, calling it "compute cores".

 

So AMD wrote that for example their A6-7400K had 6 compute cores.

It was a dual core processor with 4 GPU cores. 2 CPU cores + 4 GPU cores = 6 "compute cores".

I can't find much info about it anymore since the product pages has been changed (they got a bit of backlash from it) but here is one of the old promotional campaigns that ran on Newegg.

 

That, and this "optane + RAM = X GB of memory" are both shitty moves trying to confuse people who don't know better.

[79wjd]

On 11/26/2018 at 5:35 PM, firelighter487 said:

if all you do is browse facebook yes. with 4 tabs, spotify and a bunch of background crap i was sitting at 5+gb used. open a game in that scenario and you're out of ram. 

Because everyone games.

 

Not to mention that 5gb of memory being "used" doesn't mean that 5gb of memory was needed. Operating systems will use more memory than is needed since idle memory is wasted memory -- you may as well load something into it and hope that on some off chance it gets used.

 

8gb of ram is more than enough for most people.

[dalekphalm]

7 hours ago, LAwLz said:

No, that's not really what happened. As @dalekphalm said, what happened was that AMD were combining CPU and GPU cores when marketing their chips, calling it "compute cores".

 

So AMD wrote that for example their A6-7400K had 6 compute cores.

It was a dual core processor with 4 GPU cores. 2 CPU cores + 4 GPU cores = 6 "compute cores".

I can't find much info about it anymore since the product pages has been changed (they got a bit of backlash from it) but here is one of the old promotional campaigns that ran on Newegg.

 

That, and this "optane + RAM = X GB of memory" are both shitty moves trying to confuse people who don't know better.

Agreed - I will fully admit that I used to be an unabashed AMD fanboy, and I'm still very fond of the company... Call it underdog syndrome perhaps - but they've definitely been guilty of some really underhanded practices before, and that "Compute Cores" one was one of the worst.

 

Why was it so bad, one might ask? We, as computer enthusiasts can pretty easily figure out that a "Compute Core" includes the GPU CU's. Well sure. But we're just a tiny tiny fraction of the market. The average user has for years been seeing "Number of cores = number of CPU cores" in advertising. To suddenly add in GPU cores is totally underhanded.

 

Now to give AMD slight ever so little benefit of the doubt, they were pushing heterogeneous computing like mad at the time, where, in theory you could offload regular CPU compute loads to the integrated GPU when and where it made sense, seamlessly, on the fly. So the idea was that the GPU was simply "part of" the CPU now, so you could call their cores part of the CPU's cores.

 

It's a beautiful idea. The problem is it never took off. It required third party software and OS support that never materialized. Furthermore, I don't know if AMD ever got it working even under ideal circumstances.

 

We're likely still heading in that direction mind you, but even then, what AMD did was massively wrong, since it made it seem like the APU's were significantly more powerful compared to their Intel counterparts at the time, when in fact it was mostly the exact opposite.

 

The Optane thing is quite similar. Optane can act like System RAM, but it's basically a faster than SSD cache, if I understand correctly. It has a better latency than regular SSD's, but is still quite a bit slower than proper system RAM. Somewhere in the middle if you will.

 

I'd totally be okay with Intel advertising it as a "cache", but I'm not okay with them combining Optane + System RAM and calling that "Total system memory" or whatever.

 

Even if they are technically correct (Since "memory" has a somewhat broad definition in computing), they're still wrong to do so because it intentionally and underhandedly confuses regular non-tech consumers into thinking they're getting one thing, when they're getting something else instead.

 

2 hours ago, 79wjd said:

Because everyone games.

 

Not to mention that 5gb of memory being "used" doesn't mean that 5gb of memory was needed. Operating systems will use more memory than is needed since idle memory is wasted memory -- you may as well load something into it and hope that on some off chance it gets used.

 

8gb of ram is more than enough for most people.

Agreed - for non-Gamers, 8GB is still 100% totally sufficient. Even gamers can definitely get by with just 8GB of RAM, assuming they don't leave a bunch of unnecessary shit running in the background.

 

Power users are really the only ones who need 16GB of RAM - and I include a subset of gamers who use a lot of background tools (or leave programs running unnecessarily out of convenience, etc) among this categorization.