Intel Rapid Start Technology seems less "rapid" than the default Windows start/wake

Question

I have a Dell 7000 series laptop running Windows 8 with an Intel core i7 processor.

I often have to hold the power button to force it to turn off and then turn it back on again in order to wake it from sleep/hibernation, but if I turn off the Intel Rapid start Technology it wakes up pretty smoothly.

I had "solved" the problem by turning the rapid start off, but occasionally the rapid start gets turned on again after system updates.

Am I missing some advantage to Intel's Rapid Start Technology, should I have just adjusted some setting or is it just fairly pointless if the default wake is "fast enough"?

Note, I have read:
http://download.intel.com/support/motherboards/desktop/sb/rapid_start_technology_user_guide.pdf
But, instructions there appear to be for Windows 7.

Answer 1

Sleep draws about 5 watts more then IRST hibernate. If you have IRST enabled, IRST will "hibernate" the system any where from 0-120 min after the computer sleeps (default is 0). The benefit of IRST is that you have the control of where the hibernate partition goes, best choice is on a SSD. And perhaps you are using that same SSD for caching (IRST) and swapfile; with your main boot/system on a regular hard drive. System will hibernate faster to SSD then to a hard drive.