Intel Optane Review

[Razor512]

That could be useful, a desktop PC with a decent SSD, as well as an optane drive that is set to only accelerate the HDDs, thus if you do things like have part of your steam library on the HDD, or have massive programs that you don't use frequently on the DDD (e.g., a large program like omnisphere), the optane drive can provide some acceleration there.

[kirashi]

3 hours ago, Himommies said:

The sad part is this is the only reason to get Kaby lake

If that's the only reason, then it's not a reason, unless you built your brand new system without a boot SSD.  

[Ezio Auditore]

How does an HDD cache GTA V to give improved results? (Genuine question)

[ARikozuM]

3 minutes ago, Ezio Auditore said:

How does an HDD cache GTA V to give improved results? (Genuine question)

Painfully.

Spoiler

There are too many parts to cache, but it could just take the most used components and textures for itself.

 

[Proesterchen]

4 hours ago, Razor512 said:

Why can't they just make the chipset support DDR3 RAM so that users building a DDR4 based system, can re-use their old DDR3 RAM to make a dedicated RAM disk. It can then be used as a read cache but not a write cache, or work as a massive read ahead where for example if you launch a game, spare resources are then spent loading more of the game data into the cache.

Because even a single channel DDR3 interface is massive compared to all the rest that currently makes up the "chipset", i.e. PCH, and would add significantly to its die size, package size, and number of balls. (and no, in this case, that's not a good thing)

Also, the number of people upgrading PCs and gutting their old stuff for re-use, rather than selling them off or just giving them away as a whole, is basically a rounding error when compared to the roughly 200 million Intel-based PCs that will ship this year. There is simply no market for the technology you envision,

[Proesterchen]

If there is anything I would have liked to see added to this video, it would be a straight-up test of the $80 module vs an $80 SSD. (And yes, I can guess Intel wouldn't particularly like that, but if the question is how to best invest $80 of your PC budget, this is what it comes down to.)

[Daniel644]

3 minutes ago, Proesterchen said:

If there is anything I would have liked to see added to this video, it would be a straight-up test of the $80 module vs an $80 SSD. (And yes, I can guess Intel wouldn't particularly like that, but if the question is how to best invest $80 of your PC budget, this is what it comes down to.)

the SSD, it's WAY more compatible as it doesn't require a Kaby Lake CPU to work and as seen by the SSD not getting any noticeable improvement (except in SYNTHETICS) when paired with the Optane Accelerator module, the only thing you lose with the SSD is the faster load times of files stored on the HDD, but you gain the actual capacity of an SSD to your over all storage with a normal SSD, something you don't get with this guy, this whole thing feels kinda snake oily to me to be honest, with the capacity being as low as it is if you change your habits you return to the slow speed and it has to learn your new habits, sorta like the Youtube algorithm where if for some reason you watch a handful of Star Wars Theory videos you get a TON of Star Wars crap on your youtube homepage or if you watch a bunch of Power Rangers on Netflix you suddenly get a bunch of kids shows recommended to you and you have to watch other stuff till the algorithm readjusts, basically what i'm saying is it isn't "GUARANTEED SPEED" like using an SSD is, if you keep doing the same things you'll see the boost, but if you do a bunch of things then you don't get the speed boosts because it doesn't have the room to cache it all.

[Mr_VNDL]

As one of the few people with a new pc that could actually run it thanks for saving me from buying one. I'm already running a ssd so will use the cash to replace one of the old HDDs I have reused.  

[BudgetBoy]

based on the video i watch . so the intel optane is like a accelerator ? accelerate your hdd ? cool ! i want this

[unijab]

I am more interested in the ssd variants... and which ever optane module that allows you to boot a special mode to use it as system RAM.

[NumLock21]

Intel Optane will give a great performance boost for those who are building a new PC for their parents, where they don't want them to go into the trouble of handling two drives, since most of them will not know how to handle it. And less phone call for tech support about why there is no more space, while there is 100% free space on the D:\ drive.

Some will argue that most of them don't need that much storage and a small SSD is good enough. Well in terms of price to capacity. A 1TB HDD+Optane will be more attractive compared to just a single 240GB SSD. Now you can get a 500GB HDD+Optane, but you're not saving much on the 500GB anyway so that's out.

SSHD? Not sure how reliable the internal SSD cache on in that. If that dies then you have to RMA the entire drive. With Optane, can just RMA the part that's broken, instead of everything.

Thinking about it, AIO printers should be modular, so we can just swap out or replace the part that's broken.

[Rmerc]

So would this be a good tool to use to increase speeds of a 20Tb small video business server running 5 HDDs in Raid 5? 

[SpaceGhostC2C]

3 hours ago, Rmerc said:

So would this be a good tool to use to increase speeds of a 20Tb small video business server running 5 HDDs in Raid 5? 

THAT's where this could fit. The "grandama" argument is moot (people "can't handle two drives"? Really? The very first 286 at my house had one HDD... and two partitions. 99% of the computers I've ever seen had at least two volumes, regardless of the number of disks).

The true usage could be for large storage arrays (i.e., in mechanical drives), where part of the data is archive (so no need to cache), while part is more frequently accessed (then it makes sense to cache). Because, as said above, if what you use and what you don't changes frequently, the cache becomes outdated and you are back to HDD speeds.

I'd go even further and say that software is as important as the 3D-whatever technology itself, since all the speed of the platform could be rendered useless by seldom having cached what you actually use next.

[Sacredsock]

Ohh, I have that case, use it for the parents machine, although the yellow bits are lime green. Got it from pcspecialist a long time ago.

 

For the optane thing, since it needs KabyLake how many compatible systems do not have a boot SSD in either SATA or M.2 format?

[Angus Wu]

22 hours ago, ARikozuM said:

Yes, it will, though you can always use RST.

So is it a Bios setup?

[ARikozuM]

Just now, Angus Wu said:

So is it a Bios setup?

Rapid Storage Technology gets installed like any other driver.

 

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/architecture-and-technology/rapid-storage-technology.html

[NTDaws]

23 hours ago, gonvres said:

 

Maybe in that instance I agree.

 

However there is another example. I built a system for my brother a year ago, a 256gb/2tb storage setup because he said he absolutely had to have a lot of storage space. He put everything on the 256gb drive, filled it up, then complained it was out of storage. 

 

He has no idea how to manage what data goes on what drive. 

 

There are no doubt more like him.

cringe.

[skywake]

On 25/04/2017 at 7:40 AM, gonvres said:

Everyone seems to hate this octane upgrade, but to me it makes a lot of sense. Its not for those of us with a SSD and a HDD, its for building a box for your 70 year old mother. She doesn't want to think about multiple hard drives, yet this will give her SSD like performance when you can still have a mechanical 1tb drive to store all of the stuff.

I still think it's a pretty niche use-case. I mean if I was building a PC for my Mum I'd probably just drop a 256GB SSD in there and call it a day. Because for the price of a fairly entry level HDD these days that's about the size SSD you can get. Same price, more consistent performance. The only way Optane would make sense in this scenario would be if I was salvaging an HDD from an older build. 

On 25/04/2017 at 7:32 AM, Himommies said:

The sad part is this is the only reason to get Kaby lake

I'd say the main reason would be 4K Netflix/BluRay DRM....

[gonvres]

2 hours ago, Being Delirious said:

cringe.

 

Its not really 'cringe', its just most people don't have the faintest idea how to use a computer and never venture past the desktop.

[Proesterchen]

19 hours ago, Rmerc said:

So would this be a good tool to use to increase speeds of a 20Tb small video business server running 5 HDDs in Raid 5? 

I'm not even sure RST supports caching a RAID-array, but even if it does, the usefulness of this module would highly depend on your use case. Do the video files in use at any one time fit mostly or entirely on the Optane module? (16GB / 32GB) How is your server connected to your workstations? (if it's just GbE, forget about it)

 

Also, a 20TB, 5 disk RAID 5 sounds like a terrible idea, I hope you have a proper backup strategy. (and adhere to it!)

[Freeman]

Darn man, why couldn´t you name it something like:

Quote

Turbocharge your SSD for $40?? - Intel Optane Review

This was a really good video, but it took me until now to watch it, cos I´ve just thought it was some janky unpractical mod, rather than the proprietary technology intel has been hyping up.

[happyguy82]

On 4/25/2017 at 0:32 AM, Himommies said:

The sad part is this is the only reason to get Kaby lake

well not if you want to play 4K UHD Blu-Ray discs on your PC as Kaby-Lake CPUs are the only ones that are guaranteed to work with the required SGX system to support the security requirements. Some Skylake CPUs do but from what I gather these are very rare. And since you can't use a dedicated/discrete GPU to play 4K Blu-Rays at the moment, you'll need the Intel HD 630 (Kaby-Lake) integrated GPU to do it and that support H.265 decoding. But let's come back to this thread's main topic.

[happyguy82]

Hi all,

 

I'm a little confused with Optane and am hoping someone here can enlighten me. Whenever I search for Optane, I get this Intel Optane 600P NVMe SSD. Is this the same as the one in the video? If it is, then their capacities (512GB) is certainly too large for an accelerator drive. What am I missing?

 

Secondly, the performance of these Optane 600P drives are inferior to that of a Samsung 960 Pro so what are the benefits of this? Is it because normal NVMe SSDs can't be used as accelerators? Then again, back to my first question why are their capacities so large?

 

Thanks in advance.

[harryoui]

On 25/04/2017 at 11:00 AM, phych said:

Can you use the optane disk as a regular drive? I am considering getting one for the sake of running a Minecraft server from it.

Yes! You can run this as a regular drive!

It's not supported by Intel, but without Kaby/Proper drivers it will act as just a normal m.2 ssd

 

I am actually planning to use it for the same case (a minecraft server) which is how I found myself here.

[unijab]

The optane memory modules have to be used with the 200 series Intel chipsets.. once the optane SSDs are released, you can use it as a normal drive.