Intel Optane Exclusive Hands On - SSD Crushing Performance

[CPotter]

Are you guys excited for Optane? Or nah?

 

Thanks to Intel for sponsoring this exclusive look at their new Optane technology!

Learn more about Intel Optane: http://geni.us/anGeaJU

 

 

[Daniel644]

#LinusLateTips

[Sakkura]

Consumers have zero reason to be excited for Optane. It might be nice in a few special enterprise use cases, but even the majority of businesses shouldn't care about Optane.

[Guest]

Did they tape a few hundred dollar worth of storage and ram? What if they... dropped?

[Arty]

Just now, deXxterlab97 said:

Did they tape a few hundred dollar worth of storage and ram? What if they... dropped?

Linus has dropped worse.....

[Daniel644]

3:09 I see what you did there

[Sakkura]

Okay, finished the video. Comparing HDD only to HDD + Optane is not useful. You need to compare with NAND flash, either as actual storage or as a cache (Intel SRT).

 

For cost and density reasons, NAND flash wins for the vast majority of use cases.

[TheDankKoosh]

I know that it will be compatible with kaby lake desktop, but I'm wondering if it will work with kaby lake laptop. If so, then I'll prob pick one up since it will help with overall system snappyness since I plan on using an inexpensive 2x 1tb hdd setup 

[DocSwag]

"SSD Crushing Performance"

 

Compares to an HDD.

[Daniel644]

Should have tested it with an SSD instead of HDD, most consumers that could get by on caching that small an amount of stuff could probably just use a 120GB SSD that can be purchased for around the same price, those folks also are using 5-10 year old PC's that couldn't run this shit anyway.

[Guest]

4 minutes ago, DocSwag said:

"SSD Crushing Performance"

 

Compares to an HDD.

 

8 minutes ago, Sakkura said:

Okay, finished the video. Comparing HDD only to HDD + Optane is not useful. You need to compare with NAND flash, either as actual storage or as a cache (Intel SRT).

 

For cost and density reasons, NAND flash wins for the vast majority of use cases.

Remember when they benchmarked a core i3 at 4K? 

[DocSwag]

1 minute ago, deXxterlab97 said:

 

Remember when they benchmarked a core i3 at 4K? 

Then again, this time it's most likely thanks to Intel, who didn't give them an ssd for comparison. Definitely not a good sign, if Intel is afraid of comparing it with a NAND SSD.

[nzpancakes]

31 minutes ago, CPotter said:

Are you guys excited for Optane? Or nah?

 

Thanks to Intel for sponsoring this exclusive look at their new Optane technology!

Learn more about Intel Optane: http://geni.us/anGeaJU

 

 

So, I'd I've got this right, it's basically just meant to hold your os so it doesn't get mixed up with other things in your ssd?

Edited March 28, 2017 by nzpancakes
Not in your dad, that would be weird

[Guest]

5 minutes ago, nzpancakes said:

So, I'd I've got this right, it's basically just meant to hold your os so it doesn't get mixed up with other things in your ssd?

Mixed up? 

[insan3guy]

Is there any benefit to using an optane chip versus a ramdisk?  The fact they compared it to a regular HDD doesn't exactly scream confidence in optane's speed.

 

E: got it, the nonvolatility.  So just a faster SSD?

[FlightRisk]

Maybe I don't understand the tech or the intended product market properly, However I came away from this video wondering how this is a good option for anybody.

Linus states you need a Kaby Lake CPU or a 200 series Motherboard and I can't imagine a scenario where somebody buys current Gen Intel products but doesn't buy an SSD with decent storage capacity and will generally manage their data well. I could see this being useful if you could throw it in an old PC which is only running an HDD for some reason, but again you need current gen hardware. Ultimately I would like to see the comparison when used in an SSD system too see if it has any tangible difference.

1 minute ago, insan3guy said:

Is there any benefit to using an optane chip versus a ramdisk?

As I spoke about above, I'm still not sure where optane sits in the market. However a key difference between Ramdisk and Optane is (as explained by Linus in the video) Optane is non-volatile memory so whatever is there during a system power loss will be there afterwards, with Ramdisk being stored in your RAM (DRAM) which is volatile so data will be lost in a powerloss. 

[nzpancakes]

1 hour ago, deXxterlab97 said:

Mixed up? 

That's just what I got from the video, not actually sure what he meant, not sure what the benefits of separating the operating system from the rest of stuff would help with

[Sakkura]

Hah, I love how Tom's Hardware describes it:

 

Quote

Intel's Smart Response Technology (SRT) was so successful that we haven't talked about it since it was first introduced in 2011. We say that with a heavy dose of sarcasm, because Intel plans to bring the technology back with a faster media.

 

[Marinatall_Ironside]

For anybody mentioning the fact that Linus compared an Optane SSD to a WD Blue HDD, they were not provided with a SATA or PCIe NVM Express SSD to compare them to, and they had to work with whatever they had access to on site.

 

For me, personally, when I move to an M.2 SSD eventually, I'm not that excited for Optane to say the least, and I intend to get a 250GB Samsung 960 EVO SSD, because quite frankly, that's all I really need if I only plan on putting my OS and software on one (which only consumes 178GB grand total). If you're wondering what I have on there aside from the OS and a bunch of Windows 10 stuff I don't use (aside from Calculator and Snipping Tool, duh), I have:

Spoiler

 

Adobe CS6 Master Collection (every applicaiton)

Autodesk Maya

Autodesk 3ds Max

Autodesk Mudbox

Autodesk Sketchbook

Blender

All compatible Asus Rampage V Edition 10 utilities

AI Suite 3

Curse

Discord

GeForce Experience

Open Broadcaster Software

Logitech Gaming Software

Unreal Engine 4

CryEngine V

Steam

Origin

Blizzard App

CPU-Z

HWMonitor

Intel XTU

...and a bunch of others I'm not going to rattle off here, TL;DR.

 

 

[Proesterchen]

2 hours ago, nzpancakes said:

That's just what I got from the video, not actually sure what he meant, not sure what the benefits of separating the operating system from the rest of stuff would help with

There's not benefit from separating the OS from the rest, the benefit demonstrated in the video is solely from putting the OS files needed during boot-up on much faster media, hence reducing the time the PC is waiting for them to be read.

 

Which is what brings me to the complete lunacy of this technology: It's great for doing things a second time. 

 

Reboot after having run your PC for days, weeks, or the full month? Prepare to be waiting for a long time, because few of the above-mentioned boot files should still be cached on the quick storage (here: Optane, but the same was true for the old NAND-based version of the same caching technology), because they should be replaced with applications and data that you have used more recently.

 

But boy howdy, after that first reboot, your next one is going to be, well, quicker. Why you would reboot again after already waiting to get back to work? No idea. Probably to show that this product has any merit.

 

So lets not reboot, and instead go to work, or "work" as I call it. Open your applications of choice (game), open your files (fav list of servers), and open your browser if you desire contact with the world at large. Will any of that significantly benefit from this brilliant technology? Of course not, because most of the data once present in the caching module was just replaced with OS boot files, you know, to make that coveted second reboot that much quicker!

 

But soon everything will be great again, because the software has now recognized your desire to hasten that particular application and will do its best to cache important parts of it on the tiny module. Of course, that will again slow down reboots, should your overclock crap out and lock-up your PC.

 

And what if, pray tell, you'd like to play another game? Well, I see what you did there my friend, and back to HDD-ville just for that! You are a savage! You are not worthy of caching technology! You might indeed be the use-case for an already established, non-proprietary, always-performing technology!

 

Let me introduce you to the magic of SSDs ...

[Space Reptile]

i see the graph of boot times , and then i go

"wait a second , the garbage Pentium G620 mashines here w/ 4gb ram and a 500gb WD blue boot to Windows 10 in less than 20 seconds"

 

WHY DOES YOUR HIGH END MASHINE TAKE OVER 2 MINUTES

[cynexit]

Okay, so as most of you guys here I don't really think this will take off. But for the sake of argument and because I am certain that Intel wouldn't "waste money" on developing something without an actual market let's try to figure out who would actually buy this.

 

Let's for one second forget that you currently need the "latest and greatest" from Intel to run this because in two or three years it's probably part of every chipset and CPU Intel produces. But even then: you get ~32GB for ~50$. In which case would this be the better choice over an simple 120GB SATA SSD? It's obviously not that much faster because the initial bottleneck, the HDD, is still there and the capacity of the Optane is very limited.

 

Can anybody imagine a real world use case for this?

[vESP]

So if i loose power or have to reboot i loose the benefit of the cache? sooo why is this better then more ram in my system like 64gb? or does the optane for into the tripple digit GB?

 

[anotherriddle]

4 hours ago, FlightRisk said:

Ultimately I would like to see the comparison when used in an SSD system too see if it has any tangible difference.

Exactly!

I'll give Linus the benefit of the doupt and assume he did not have enough time to test both but come on. Having both an SSD and HDD comparison would be much more useful (not that I plan on buying an Optane drive).

[Guest Darth Revan]

This was a weird video. Really bizarre decision from Intel to only allow this "new" technology that was actually introduced in 2011, but re-branded in 2016.

So this Optane is only good for those who have a new generation Intel processor so Kaby Lake or newer and a what was it a 200 series motherboard.

For those who actually have or will get those components, they have two choices either spend 50$ to get the latest and greatest Optane Cache that has to be paired up with an HDD, or get a 50$ SSD on which you can install your OS and programs and have the HDD (assuming you have one) separate.

 

From this video, I honestly see no benefit for consumers to use Optane.

It makes no sense to spend 50$ to get it when you can spend those 50$ on a SSD.

If this was something like a 5$ module to speed up you hard drive for those who build a budget latest generation system from Intel, but couldn't fit an SSD in the mix, then yeah it would make sense.