Good to hear there are others out there like me who still keep these old laptops alive.
That is pretty quick for a cache. Do you have UEFI and fast boot set up in the BIOS or are you still running on Legacy? The only thing that runs the cache should be the Intel RST which is a system driver and there is also a user interface program as well.
Hey Matt - it was on legacy boot, but switching to UEFI didn't seem to make any difference. It does seem as if the Intel RST driver via BIOS is doing all the legwork on the M14x. I never could find a compatible version of Intel RST GUI that would run under Win10, but it seems I don't need it - Win7 had it of course, though I don't know if it was required for caching to work in Win7.
I have a newer Lenovo Legion which uses Optane Memory which is handled entirely by the Intel Optane Memory app under Win10; so no old-school BIOS apps there.
It is super cool to have an old laptop still kicking butt after 7+ years of long days of service. I've had to replace the keyboard on it after a few keys wore out (not WASD as it was being used for CAD and business work, not gaming). I was impressed that Win10 works so flawlessly with legacy hardware in the thing. In a world that seems happy to create e-waste, it's nice to not contribute to the problem, and still have gear that cooks along with impressive speed even by today's standards! UserBenchmark reported 74th percentile for CPU, 64th percentile for 650M graphics (which are still underpowered) and similar for the RAM. I wonder how many more years this thing could run?
Hi @_wesmac the HDD used the external caching to increase performance. If you have put a SSD in the 2.5" bay, it does not use the external caching, but you could get Windows 10 to use it as virtual RAM.
mattyb3
5 Practitioner
•
1.7K Posts
1
February 18th, 2021 20:00
Good to hear there are others out there like me who still keep these old laptops alive.
That is pretty quick for a cache. Do you have UEFI and fast boot set up in the BIOS or are you still running on Legacy? The only thing that runs the cache should be the Intel RST which is a system driver and there is also a user interface program as well.
_wesmac
3 Posts
0
February 18th, 2021 22:00
Hey Matt - it was on legacy boot, but switching to UEFI didn't seem to make any difference. It does seem as if the Intel RST driver via BIOS is doing all the legwork on the M14x. I never could find a compatible version of Intel RST GUI that would run under Win10, but it seems I don't need it - Win7 had it of course, though I don't know if it was required for caching to work in Win7.
I have a newer Lenovo Legion which uses Optane Memory which is handled entirely by the Intel Optane Memory app under Win10; so no old-school BIOS apps there.
It is super cool to have an old laptop still kicking butt after 7+ years of long days of service. I've had to replace the keyboard on it after a few keys wore out (not WASD as it was being used for CAD and business work, not gaming). I was impressed that Win10 works so flawlessly with legacy hardware in the thing. In a world that seems happy to create e-waste, it's nice to not contribute to the problem, and still have gear that cooks along with impressive speed even by today's standards! UserBenchmark reported 74th percentile for CPU, 64th percentile for 650M graphics (which are still underpowered) and similar for the RAM. I wonder how many more years this thing could run?
You've got a lot of horses in your stable
crimsom
7 Technologist
•
6.1K Posts
0
February 18th, 2021 23:00
Hi @_wesmac the HDD used the external caching to increase performance. If you have put a SSD in the 2.5" bay, it does not use the external caching, but you could get Windows 10 to use it as virtual RAM.