I don't know of a similar guide for Windows, but I think that's just because Windows is less tunable overall, and what tuning can be done is in the driver. Linux is going to give the most performance, but using the Intel driver on Windows should get you close.
OK, that's good to know.
I'm not super familiar with Anvil, but I can't think of any reason it would falsely report higher numbers than it's seeing, so that's probably real. Most likely it just happens to be more optimized by default for Optane than the other tools.
That makes sense although I'll note that Anvil hasn't been updated since 2014ish, which if I recall correctly was a year before Optane was first released?
I'd be curious what numbers you're seeing from IOMeter on Windows with the Intel driver. That's one I've personally done many times, and in my experience the numbers should be fairly close to the published spec.
Sure. With Iometer, I typically run four tests (2M seq read, 2M seq write, 4K random read, 4K random write) and I run each one at QDs from 1 to 32. Before starting, I do a secure erase to be at a known "clean" state.
It occurs to me that the the order may be important. I run test #1 (2M seq read) at QD1 all the way to QD32, then test #2 at QD1 all the way to QD32, and so on.
Here are the results (with lowest/highest scores regardless of QD):
2M seq read: 1,016 - 1,102 IOPS / 2,132 - 2,312 MB/s
2M seq write: 530 - 551 IOPS / 1,113 - 1,155 MB/s
4K random read: 55,512 - 145,284 IOPS / 227 - 595 MB/s
4K random write: 46,527 - 134,018 IOPS / 190 - 549 MB/s
The sequential performance I'm seeing seems very much inline with the specs (2,200 read, 1,000 MB/s write). The random performance I'm seeing is pretty low compared to the specs (550,000 IOPS read, 250,000 IOPS write).
If it turns out your Optane drive actually is performing a lot below spec, the first thing I'd check is your cooling, especially if the drive is an M.2. The M.2 form factor doesn't dissipate heat nearly as well as the U.2 or AIC, so if you don't have a lot of airflow and/or a big heatsink on it, it's possible you're hitting thermal throttling.
The P4801X I have is the 100 GB U.2 model and it has a 80mm fan pointing directly at it. Intel MAS reports the idle temp at 33 C. I watched MAS during some earlier tests and don't recall it going over 39 C but haven't actually watched it during the Iometer random tests. I could try that if you think it would be helpful.
Also, if the drive is new and has likely been sitting on a warehouse shelf for a few months, performance may be a bit lower for the first 24-48 hours its powered on, since the ECC has to work a little harder at first, but that effect will go away soon.
I just received the drive a week or two ago and have been using it on and off but probably haven't had it powered up for more than 24 hours at a time. I've never heard of an ECC warm-up period so I'd definitely like to know a bit more about that.
In case it helps, I'm running all of this on a Supermicro X9 server board with an Intel E5-1650 v2 (Ivy Bridge) proc and 16 GB RAM. BIOS is set to Max Performance / Performance and the OS power plan is set to High Performance.
THANKS for your help!