So Optane was basically pointless?

[Thinkfreely]

So I was just thinking about this. I am doing a build for the wife with Ryzen 3 which is a value build (Because budget builds are basically f*cked right now). It got me thinking about Intel Optane, which I know is not compatible with Ryzen and I wouldn't buy it regardless, but It was marketed as a budget solution to improve Hard drive speed and pc performance. I was curious did anyone actually buy it, or use it?

[Vacras]

As far as I know you need a Kaby Lake or "newer" CPU in order to use optane, so a ryzen won't work with optane.

It's pretty pointless imo yeah as you can get a ssd for as cheap as 50 Bucks these days to at least store your os and frequently accessed data.

[Enderman]

Just get a 120 or 240GB SSD instead.

[Thinkfreely]

Just now, Vacras said:

As far as I know you need a Kaby Lake or "newer" CPU in order to use optane, so a ryzen won't work with optane.

It's pretty pointless imo yeah as you can get a ssd for as cheap as 50 Bucks these days to at least store your os and frequently accessed data.

Oh I know, I wasn't even considering it. I was just curious in general if anyone actually bought it? Cause I never did and can't see any possible reason to.

[Thinkfreely]

1 minute ago, Enderman said:

Just get a 120 or 240GB SSD instead.

She cares more about extra space for the budget then speed, might add a SSD later. I already ordered all the parts, I was just curious if anyone actually ever bout intel optane?

[Bananasplit_00]

its a pretty pointless product. buying an SSD for the money is better in every way i can think off.

[Damascus]

It's useful if you only have the budget for one drive (say $100) 

Buy a 2tb hdd and optane module for fast boots OR buy a 256gb ssd.

 

Its got a point, just not applicable for anyone who can afford both. (Also it doesn't work with ryzen)

[knightslugger]

only useful for new builds. existing builds with PURELY mechanical storage would benefit but only with Kabylake CPUs and supported MBs, which i don't even know of any "budget friendly" offerings there would be...

[Enderman]

6 minutes ago, Thinkfreely said:

She cares more about extra space for the budget then speed

Then why would you consider optane in the first place?

[Himommies]

It's dead because nobody's buying Kaby Lake 

[Vacras]

9 minutes ago, Thinkfreely said:

Oh I know, I wasn't even considering it. I was just curious in general if anyone actually bought it? Cause I never did and can't see any possible reason to.

Yeah when I first heard it I kinda liked the idea but after seeing the implementation and worse the restrictions Intel used with optane it seemed pretty much pointless to begin with ...

[Thinkfreely]

5 minutes ago, Enderman said:

Then why would you consider optane in the first place?

Poory worded op, went back and edited it

[Enderman]

3 minutes ago, Thinkfreely said:

Poory worded op, went back and edited it

Ok yeah some people have bought it, however most people who did their research know that it's better to just get an SSD and control yourself what goes on it

[MageTank]

24 minutes ago, Thinkfreely said:

So I was just thinking about this. I am doing a build for the wife with Ryzen 3 which is a value build (Because budget builds are basically f*cked right now). It got me thinking about Intel Optane, which I know is not compatible with Ryzen and I wouldn't buy it regardless, but It was marketed as a budget solution to improve Hard drive speed and pc performance. I was curious did anyone actually but it, or use it?

It is pointless in every regard. You can buy any SSD and cache an entire array of HDD's with it. Buy yourself a large NVMe drive, cache your HDD's, and you will out perform Optane. I use Primocache, and do the exact same thing. Level 2 cache (SSD to HDD) and level 1 cache (ram to SSD). Level 2 allows my HDD's to be as fast and responsive as SSD's, and level 1 defers mundane writes from ever hitting my SSD's, prolonging their lifespan. 

 

Primocache is like $30, which is cheaper than buying an Optane drive if you already have SSDs on hand. Also saves you from having to buy a new platform. If you'd like to see the differences in speeds between Optane and my setup, I can show you. It's simply not even close, lol. 

[Thinkfreely]

6 minutes ago, MageTank said:

Primocache is like $30, which is cheaper than buying an Optane drive if you already have SSDs on hand. Also saves you from having to buy a new platform. If you'd like to see the differences in speeds between Optane and my setup, I can show you. It's simply not even close, lol. 

Ive done raid arrays and the like before, but that is interesting. I am a baby youtuber and I am already running out of space in my main my pc with video files (I keep original material just in case), so I have been thinking about building a cheap nas rig, and using something like that to run the array (unless there are better ways but haven't gotten that far into it)

[Thinkfreely]

38 minutes ago, Enderman said:

Ok yeah some people have bought it, however most people who did their research know that it's better to just get an SSD and control yourself what goes on it

Yeah for sure, super gimmicky. Also Enderman I have talked with you since I joined the forums and holy S*ht batman, your at 41,140 posts? Jezus

[Thinkfreely]

17 minutes ago, Vacras said:

Yeah when I first heard it I kinda liked the idea but after seeing the implementation and worse the restrictions Intel used with optane it seemed pretty much pointless to begin with ...

And I assume since your in Germany its like 2x more expensive anyways right?

[DragonTamer1]

Optain was pretty pointless and felt like a gimmick to get more people to invest in a platfirm that offered little improvement over its predecessor. It boosted the performance of a hard drive but used an m.2 slot on a Kaby lake system where people were likely to just buy an SSD from the get go. It basically turned your HDD into a SSHD which if you wanted that then just buy one int the first place sice it would be $30 cheaper.

[Vacras]

59 minutes ago, Thinkfreely said:

And I assume since your in Germany its like 2x more expensive anyways right?

Based upon a quick search I would say that the 16 GB model is 50€ here and 50$ for the us so currently it's a little more expensive here yeah.

[SpaceGhostC2C]

3 hours ago, Vacras said:

Based upon a quick search I would say that the 16 GB model is 50€ here and 50$ for the us so currently it's a little more expensive here yeah.

Which is the price of a 120-128GB SSD, negating the supposed trade-off between optane+HDD vs just SSD: if you can afford optane+HDD, then you can afford SSD+HDD, which is superior. It would have to be easy cheaper than that to have a place. 

 

Also, it will work on Ryzen, but as a regular SSD (I assume in non-Kaby Lake intel as well), without the dedicated caching functionality. 

[Thinkfreely]

1 minute ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

Also, it will work on Ryzen, but as a regular SSD (I assume in non-Kaby Lake intel as well), without the dedicated caching functionality. 

Thats something I didn't consider, although once again for the cost would make 0 sense.

[ravenshrike]

5 hours ago, MageTank said:

It is pointless in every regard.

Not in every regard. There are some very specific edge cases where it might be beneficial. Various modeling programs where you change the parameters constantly but use the same initial dataset a bunch of times come to mind. However none of that applies to the consumer space.

[MageTank]

7 minutes ago, ravenshrike said:

Not in every regard. There are some very specific edge cases where it might be beneficial. Various modeling programs where you change the parameters constantly but use the same initial dataset a bunch of times come to mind. However none of that applies to the consumer space.

I don't think you read my post. You can cache an NVMe drive in exactly the same way that Optane caches your HDD. Block level cache is block level cache. Even so, a ram cache would be magnitudes faster than Optane if bandwidth and latency are of the utmost importance. So yes, Optane is pointless in every regard. It's a proprietary tech when used in it's only applicable use case, and alternatives are not only superior, they are cheaper in the grand scheme of things. Once again, if you'd like to see benchmarks between Optane and my ram, I can provide those results if it better illustrates my point. 

[SpaceGhostC2C]

42 minutes ago, MageTank said:

. Once again, if you'd like to see benchmarks between Optane and my ram, I can provide those results if it better illustrates my point. 

But RAM is more expensive than optane. The question is whether its intermediate place is justified in more specialized use cases, like Wendell intended to try on his storage array (with all its hardware/software restrictions, probably not even then). 

The whole "make your home HDD faster", though... I think it came a little late to the party

 

[Thinkfreely]

16 minutes ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

But RAM is more expensive than optane. The question is whether its intermediate place is justified in more specialized use cases, like Wendell intended to try on his storage array (with all its hardware/software restrictions, probably not even then). 

The whole "make your home HDD faster", though... I think it came a little late to the party

 

What like get a 4gb or 8gb kit and use Octane to fill in the "ram gaps" as it were.