Optane memory, what is it, is it better than SSD, and how would a normal user benefit from it?

[Dave_pc_normie]

Hi all, I was reading some stuff about optane memory and I was wondering was it is. Is it like a SSD that you plug into a DDR4 slot, but serve as storage device ? 

Also, would a typical gamer benefit from it versus a normal SSD or M.2 ?  

[Radium_Angel]

10 minutes ago, Dave_pc_normie said:

Hi all, I was reading some stuff about optane memory and I was wondering was it is. Is it like a SSD that you plug into a DDR4 slot, but serve as storage device ? 

Also, would a typical gamer benefit from it versus a normal SSD or M.2 ?  

only useful for those running traditional spinner drives. Home users get better performance form SSDs or m.2 drives. 

[Grabhanem]

There's a few flavors --

Optane DIMMs fit into traditional memory slots, but only on very specific motherboards. They act sort of like RAM and sort of like storage. They're very expensive and impractical for most people.

Optane SSDs are generally either very small capacity or very expensive. They come in either M.2 or PCIe card varieties, and are generally much better at random reads and writes than a traditional SSD. The smaller ones are designed for use as HDD caches, but given how cheap normal SSDs are these days, they're probably not worth the cost for most people.

[Abdullah Bhutta]

14 minutes ago, Dave_pc_normie said:

Hi all, I was reading some stuff about optane memory and I was wondering was it is. Is it like a SSD that you plug into a DDR4 slot, but serve as storage device ? 

Also, would a typical gamer benefit from it versus a normal SSD or M.2 ?  

Generally, Optane provides better response time and the latency is very low. And if the drive is hit with multiple loads. it continues forward.(mean no performance loss I think so)

[batatas]

Well you have optane ssds and optane memory

The ssd is just like a regular ssd but more expensive and with better speeds and latency, not really worth it unless you really want that low latency.

Optane memory is to speed up an hdd, so it stores the files you use frequently in it so they load from the optane instead of the hard drive making things faster.

[Dave_pc_normie]

12 minutes ago, Grabhanem said:

There's a few flavors --

Optane DIMMs fit into traditional memory slots, but only on very specific motherboards. They act sort of like RAM and sort of like storage. They're very expensive and impractical for most people.

Optane SSDs are generally either very small capacity or very expensive. They come in either M.2 or PCIe card varieties, and are generally much better at random reads and writes than a traditional SSD. The smaller ones are designed for use as HDD caches, but given how cheap normal SSDs are these days, they're probably not worth the cost for most people.

So I went and looked at the prices and you are right, optane memory is very expensive. But that raze more question. I've seen a 16 Gb optane module on newegg and that got me wondering, what are you supposed to do with that? You install it in your pc and it serve's as cache for you CPU ? And if so, would you need to install some sort of driver for your cpu to understand that the optane module is there as cache ? 
I really don't seem to understand the point of this kind of memory. 

[WhitetailAni]

I have 1st gen Optane (I think) and yes, it is pretty fast.

It's a 16GB stick, and while it isn't super speed, it has almost 1 GB/s reads.

Very handy for speeding up an HDD.

[Dave_pc_normie]

7 minutes ago, ragnarok0273 said:

I have 1st gen Optane (I think) and yes, it is pretty fast.

It's a 16GB stick, and while it isn't super speed, it has almost 1 GB/s reads.

Very handy for speeding up an HDD.

How does it work? Do you only have to install the optane module and it automatically speeds up your HDD? Or do you have to install drivers and do some software work for it to work? 

[Grabhanem]

1 minute ago, Dave_pc_normie said:

How does it work? Do you only have to install the optane module and it automatically speeds up your HDD? Or do you have to install drivers and do some software work for it to work? 

I believe it's configured through Intel's RAID software.

[WhitetailAni]

4 minutes ago, Dave_pc_normie said:

How does it work? Do you only have to install the optane module and it automatically speeds up your HDD? Or do you have to install drivers and do some software work for it to work? 

1. You put it in your M.2 slot

2. Boot into your OS and initialize and format it

3a. If you have an Intel 7th gen or higher CPU, set up IRST

3b. If you have a Ryzen 2nd gen or higher and a 400 or 500-series motherboard, set up StoreMI

4. Enjoy fast speeds

 

Unfortunately, I can't use StoreMI yet (B350+R5 3600) so I'm using it as a way to get big files quickly.

Once I get my X470/X570 board, I will use it.