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XPS 8930, Quicken slow
Just go my new 8930 with 32GB memory, 16GB of Optane Memory, 1TB spinning disk, and of course the i7-8700. It replaces a 6 year old XPS with 16GB memory, a 1.5TB hard drive and an i7-2600. (Yes, I checked Optane is enabled on the 8930.)
One of my big applications is Quicken 2017. My Quicken has a 157MB data file. On my old XPS, it to 15 seconds from the time I started Quicken till it was loaded and ready to go. Also as a reference, on my 3 year old HP Envy laptop with an i7-6500U running at 2.6GHz and a SSD (SATA III) drive, it takes about 10 seconds to startup Quicken. On the new XPS, it is taking about 18 seconds.
I am guessing in part, much of the startup time is CPU based as Quicken processes the file at startup, but one would assume the 8930 with the i7-8700 would do better in the CPU department than either of the other two machines, and certainly should do better than the old XPS in the disk performance. I've run this test about 4 times in succession just to ensure that any caching benefits of the Optane memory would accrue.
Any ideas?
Dave
Tesla1856
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October 4th, 2018 12:00
1. You are not doing anything that requires any real processor power, so "speed" is perceived as boot time and time to open apps. The disk-sub system is the bottleneck.
Now you see why Optane is lame (OpLame I call it). Real SSD (even a SATA based one) is better.
2. You should shop at Dell.com next time. That would have been a $200 upgrade at most. Machine would have been ready to go when you un-boxed it. Likely properly configged for it's useful life.
3. Yes, that's what you need. NVMe-SSD is 5 times faster than even a SATA-SSD. Running ANY computer without a bootable SSD (for Windows and all Apps) is very "5 years ago".
4. Yeah, I think that's just I-n-t-u-i-t being lame. Maybe it's just app-bloat ... but, it works and I don't really feel like switching accounting programs after all these years.
Tesla1856
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October 4th, 2018 11:00
I don't use it, but I don't think Optane caching is not as fast as a real SSD.
Too bad you didn't get your XPS-8930 with M.2-PCIe-NVMe-SSD (instead of Optane in that slot). NVMe-SSD is 5 times faster than even a SATA-SSD. Windows and all apps on one of those and that machine would boot and run much faster.
Finally, I would not base a reconfig on just one app. I have I-n-t-u-i-t Q-u-i-c-k_Books 2018 installed here. Compared to loading a QB-2008 company-file ... its initial loading is ridiculously slow now.
preskittman
14 Posts
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October 4th, 2018 11:00
I had no real expectations would be faster (or as fast as) an SSD. But did think a new 8930 with twice the real memory, an 8th gen CPU i7 rather than a 2nd gen i7 and Optane would be as fast as if not somewhat faster than my old XPS, not slower.
I got the 8930 with Optane rather than the SSD from Costco because it was $600 cheaper than the one with SSD. I figured I could always get for give or take $88 from Amazon. (https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-970-EVO-250GB-MZ-V7E250BW/dp/B07BN5FJZQ/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1538678898&sr=8-5&keywords=ssd+m2+nvme).
Still thinking about it. But overall, the machine is plenty fast and I typically only run Quicken once a day.
546insp
732 Posts
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October 4th, 2018 12:00
I think Optane should be tested longer before I would opt for it and yes that new unit should outperform the old one.
preskittman
14 Posts
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October 4th, 2018 12:00
Thanks.
preskittman
14 Posts
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October 4th, 2018 22:00
Well, except for admitting my mistake, there is good news from my perspective.
I have 2 old external hard drives - USB 2.0 - that are attached to my router. These are my backup drives. I was using them extensively as I was moving data from my old computer to the new Dell. Somehow (and I can't quite figure out the how of this), Quicken was pointing to the copy of its data file that was on one of my backup drives. So, instead of reading from the local disk with the Optane cache, it was reading from a network drive attached via USB 2.0. This is a 157MB file. Probably explains why Quicken was taking longer to setup on the new XPS than on the old one. Now that this configuration is correct, it is taking 5 seconds to startup rather than the 10 it took on the old XPS.
Thanks everyone for the advice. Jury is still out in my mind on the virtues of Optane, but at least I'm not swearing at it any more and will give it a chance,
Dave