Intel Optane for consumers is here

[TheLostSwede]

Yes, because so many budget notebooks use ready cache, right? This is going to be just as successful.

 

[RejZoR]

I frankly don't see why they even bothered with Xpoint. Sure, it's a nice proof of concept but nothing you couldn't do with SSD already. Especially at thse sizes. At 32GB, it costs peanuts for SSD. Every motherboard could come with it integrated to be used with this. They could evolve storage into so much more without forcing users to buy SSD drives. But they threw all that away with silly marketing moves...

 

[notb]

If you are generating 1TB+ of photos, you are going to have a big, fast NAS where all the photos are stored on and only the active projects are stored locally on a much smaller SSD, removing much of the requirement for a Optane+HDD combo

Good theory. Why exactly should I keep my files on a NAS, not on the PC?

 

[Nuckles56]

Good theory. Why exactly should I keep my files on a NAS, not on the PC?

Lets see, much more storage volume and redundancy as well

 

[Devon68]

I watched an LTT video on this today and while is is good to have when you only have a mechanical HDD, for the price of this I would just get an SSD for the system and call it a day.

 

[notb]

Lets see, much more storage volume and redundancy as well

I don't see how a NAS gives more storage volume. Magic? I can simply put those disks in my PC (and not have to pay for NAS host).

As for redundancy - again, NAS is not a magic box with unique properties. It's just a low-cost server.
I have a 3-level storage policy for important files (PC > external backup > off-site backup). For essential files there is 4th one: cloud (it's for personal data, documents, financial history etc).
I feel pretty covered on the redundancy front.

Sure, NAS is a great solution in some scenarios - e.g. if you're main PC is a notebook or a desktop with limited number of 3.5" bays. But what you've said is by far too general.

 

[P4-630]

Not that I'm buying.....But...
Prices at my country...:

 

[Devon68]

Full system SSD for 70 bucks?

Yes a 120gb ssd for the os and a mechanical 1 tb for storage.

 

[RejZoR]

That's not full system SSD... That's just a garbage useless boot drive and a 1TB HDD. Oh, dear god...

Look, I'll explain it one more time.

120GB SSD boot drive + 1TB HDD
SSD speed only for things that you have specifically installed on SSD. Everything off 1TB drive will be at garbage HDD speeds.

120GB SSD + 1TB HDD in hybrid configuration
Basically SSD speeds across entire 1TB capacity. Whatever you use the most simply gets cached and will be at near SSD speeds. When you change your habits and apps or games, they get boosted automatically. Where on above boot drive crap, you have to shuffle data around to have it on SSD. But with hybrid, you essentially get a 1TB SSD drive for a price of that 120GB SSD.

Just try PrimoCache app, it comes in free trial and see for yourself. It's cheap anyway if you buy it (using Intel's Smart Response is limited to 64GB I think). PrimoCache can use ANY SSD capacity you have.

I've only gone full SSD because I sleep in same room and I wanted 100% silence, otherwise I'd stick with SSD+HDD hybrid config.

 

[Devon68]

OH now I get what you mean. You was talking about not being able to buy an SSHD for 70$. Well then I have to agree.

 

[RejZoR]

SSHD's are nice because they are a single drive, but they only have 8GB cache which essentially makes them useless. They'll speed up your OS and small apps, but if you'll play a big modern game a lot, algorithm will throw out the OS and app fiels from the cache, meaning game will load slightly faster, but your boot times and apps will most likely suffer because cache will be taken over by the game data.

I personally believe anything below 32GB cache is pointless. I'd recommend 128GB as minimum when using normal SSD. They are cheap anyway. I mean, you can get a Samsung 850 Pro 128GB for 95€. That's 4x the capacity with some pretty sick TBW characteristics. But you can get decent SSD's at this capacity for as low as 52€. If you include the ~30€ cost of PrimoCache and you're at around 80€. And I can assure you you'll have a FAR better experience than with Optane for same/lower price.

 

[EarthDog]

Deja vu from another thread...

Cache and hybrid drived are played out. They have their place, indeed, but, with how cheap ssd's are, just grab a ssd, 256gb+...

 

[infrared]

What the hell... Is he STILL bleating on about how a cached hard drive is "vastly superior" to an SSD?????? Honestly wow.

I'll repeat my thoughts on this...

500GB is enough active storage for most people. A 500GB SSD isn't crazy expensive. Following this through to the conclusion, if everything you do fits on an SSD that you can afford then it is MUCH better than having a cached hard drive.

And who cares how fast the 1-2+TB storage drive is... it's for cold storage of films, downloads, whatever... it doesn't need to be fast as the boot drive.

It won't be long until 1TB SSD's are affordable, and then the tenuous reasoning for a cache drive becomes even more tenuous.

As EarthDog said, Cached hard drives are played out.

 

[silkstone]

Well.. 1TB HDD costs $50, when a 1TB SSD is $400.
If it turned out to be true that a HDD + Optane performs similarly to an SSD (in general daily use), it would make Optane extremely good value.

My 750 GB SSD was $100. Unless prices have gone up ridiculously, you aren't saving much with optane

 

[RejZoR]

What the hell... Is he STILL bleating on about how a cached hard drive is "vastly superior" to an SSD?????? Honestly wow.

I'll repeat my thoughts on this...

500GB is enough active storage for most people. A 500GB SSD isn't crazy expensive. Following this through to the conclusion, if everything you do fits on an SSD that you can afford then it is MUCH better than having a cached hard drive.

And who cares how fast the 1-2+TB storage drive is... it's for cold storage of films, downloads, whatever... it doesn't need to be fast as the boot drive.

It won't be long until 1TB SSD's are affordable, and then the tenuous reasoning for a cache drive becomes even more tenuous.

As EarthDog said, Cached hard drives are played out.

I suggest you first learn to read before you accuse others of garbage like this. I've said hybrids are superior to HDD's in every single aspect. And they still beat every SSD in price and capacity and in terms of day to day use come essentially on SSD territory of performance. But whatever, insist on shitty boot drives. Ignorance really is a bliss. Even if 512GB isn't "crazy" expensive, it's still just 512GB. 2005 called and it wants its capacity back... Boot drive. Laughable.

 

[infrared]

I suggest you first learn to read before you accuse others of garbage like this. I've said hybrids are superior to HDD's in every single aspect. And they still beat every SSD in price and capacity and in terms of day to day use come essentially on SSD territory of performance. But whatever, insist on shitty boot drives. Ignorance really is a bliss. Even if 512GB isn't "crazy" expensive, it's still just 512GB. 2005 called and it wants its capacity back... Boot drive. Laughable.

 

[Ahhzz]

View attachment 87327

Sorry, lemme help.

"I suggest you first learn to read before you accuse others of garbage like this. I've said hybrids are superior to HDD's in every single aspect. And they still beat every SSD in price and capacity and in terms of day to day use come essentially on SSD territory of performance. But whatever, insist on shitty boot drives. Ignorance really is a bliss. Even if 512GB isn't "crazy" expensive, it's still just 512GB. 2005 called and it wants its capacity back... Boot drive. Laughable."

 

[notb]

My 750 GB SSD was $100. Unless prices have gone up ridiculously, you aren't saving much with optane

It's great that you got yourself such a deal. How is this even relevant in this discussion?
Low-mid range 500GB hover around $160 on Amazon, with high-end models easily reaching $250-300.
You can get a 1TB for $280, but that will be a slow 2.5" model (e.g. MX300). To get a 1TB NVMe you'll have to spend the $400 that I've mentioned or a bit more (e.g. Samsung 960EVO is $480).

And we should compare the Optane cache to NVMe drives, not the cheap SATA models. Why?
Because in typical usage scenario - when you boot the OS, check e-mail, browse web or start one of your 2-3 favourite games/applications - the "live" performance will remind that of Optane, not the slower HDD behind it. Everything needed often and quickly will be in the cache.
Yes, HDD will work in the background loading other OS files or game graphics, but this should not be noticeable - the ~100MB/s that modern HDDs offer is really enough.

Of course a pure-SSD setup has many advantages: no noise/vibrations and universally good performance - even when loading data that you seldom use. But you'd expect that given the huge price premium.

The popular SSD+HDD setup (SSD for OS, Documents and software), however, is not optimal, because you're wasting a lot of expensive SSD space.
In such scenario the SSD has to keep many irrelevant files (half of the Windows directory, most games' data, things in ./Documents that you haven't used for years etc).
And unless you have a large SSD (~1TB), you're limited by the size as well. You either fill it and are forced to move other files to HDD (less important games etc) or you end up using just a small part. As a result quite a lot of people have half of their SSD empty or filled with rubbish (mp3 or something).

Also, the small size could be a problem e.g. for avid Steam users. If you have a lot of Steam games, chances are that your Steam directory will not fit in your SSD. I'm not sure if you can divide it between multiple partitions (maybe via Windows links).

On the other hand, the idea of cache (Optane or not) is so much easier. You still live in a comfortable reality with big HDD-like partitions - you don't have to worry about space, move things around etc. But most of the time this setup is every bit as fast as NVMe SSD-only for a fraction of price.
In cache setup your fast and expensive SSD is always used optimally - storing just the things you need. Half of Windows, half of each game, the 1% files from ./Documents that you've opened this month and so on.

 

[silkstone]

It's great that you got yourself such a deal. How is this even relevant in this discussion?
Low-mid range 500GB hover around $160 on Amazon, with high-end models easily reaching $250-300.
You can get a 1TB for $280, but that will be a slow 2.5" model (e.g. MX300). To get a 1TB NVMe you'll have to spend the $400 that I've mentioned or a bit more (e.g. Samsung 960EVO is $480).

And we should compare the Optane cache to NVMe drives, not the cheap SATA models. Why?
Because in typical usage scenario - when you boot the OS, check e-mail, browse web or start one of your 2-3 favourite games/applications - the "live" performance will remind that of Optane, not the slower HDD behind it. Everything needed often and quickly will be in the cache.
Yes, HDD will work in the background loading other OS files or game graphics, but this should not be noticeable - the ~100MB/s that modern HDDs offer is really enough.

Of course a pure-SSD setup has many advantages: no noise/vibrations and universally good performance - even when loading data that you seldom use. But you'd expect that given the huge price premium.

The popular SSD+HDD setup (SSD for OS, Documents and software), however, is not optimal, because you're wasting a lot of expensive SSD space.
In such scenario the SSD has to keep many irrelevant files (half of the Windows directory, most games' data, things in ./Documents that you haven't used for years etc).
And unless you have a large SSD (~1TB), you're limited by the size as well. You either fill it and are forced to move other files to HDD (less important games etc) or you end up using just a small part. As a result quite a lot of people have half of their SSD empty or filled with rubbish (mp3 or something).

Also, the small size could be a problem e.g. for avid Steam users. If you have a lot of Steam games, chances are that your Steam directory will not fit in your SSD. I'm not sure if you can divide it between multiple partitions (maybe via Windows links).

On the other hand, the idea of cache (Optane or not) is so much easier. You still live in a comfortable reality with big HDD-like partitions - you don't have to worry about space, move things around etc. But most of the time this setup is every bit as fast as NVMe SSD-only for a fraction of price.
In cache setup your fast and expensive SSD is always used optimally - storing just the things you need. Half of Windows, half of each game, the 1% files from ./Documents that you've opened this month and so on.

Only relevant in that consumer drives aren't all that expensive, especially if you hunt around for a deal.

How I understand Optane is that you'd be getting a excellent performance in a few situations over an SSD (a few ms?), but vastly inferior performance in other situations. This is not going to have much effect, if any, on productivity to power users who do more than read e-mails and browse the web. A large SSD can easily handle a few games; not having your entire steam library is not really a problem with fiber and backups, but not only that it will handle applications that move and manipulate large amounts of data (anything adobe) with ease in comparison to Optane.

That is not to say that some people wouldn't want or need to spend the extra for a full SSD, but I'm assuming they'd be in the minority on TPU.
Those that really want to save money and get good performance should os RejZoR suggested and use PrimoCache. For the same cost as Optane, you can get a very fast 128 Gb SSD and use 64GB of it as Cache and then the other 64 GB dedicated to whatever takes your fancy.

 

[RejZoR]

Why stop at 64GB ? PrimoCache doesn't have any limitation like Intel Rapid Response had. You can stick a 1TB SSD cache to a 10TB HDD if you want. Or you can use half of SSD for boot drive if you really want it and other half for SSD cache accelerating the attached HDD. It's a very flexible thingie. And I believe going with slightly slower, but larger regular SSD cache over Optane would be more beneficial. More data being able to be cached means more of everything will essentially behave like it's on SSD. Even if you bounce between several large modern games.

 

[silkstone]

Why stop at 64GB ? PrimoCache doesn't have any limitation like Intel Rapid Response had. You can stick a 1TB SSD cache to a 10TB HDD if you want. Or you can use half of SSD for boot drive if you really want it and other half for SSD cache accelerating the attached HDD. It's a very flexible thingie. And I believe going with slightly slower, but larger regular SSD cache over Optane would be more beneficial. More data being able to be cached means more of everything will essentially behave like it's on SSD. Even if you bounce between several large modern games.

Just to illustrate that even if you were to use 1/2 the space, it would be better value than Optane for a lot of people.

In other news, prices on SSDs are coming down again, a 1TB drive can be obtained for $226. http://www.pcgamer.com/get-a-1tb-ad...source=facebook&utm_campaign=buffer_pcgamerfb

Not that many people would require 1TB. So far I'm using 300 GB of 750 GB. Media and archived stuff is on my 2 TB drive while movies and music are on my plex server. The only way I could imagine filling my SSD is if I got super lazy over the next year with where I stored my stuff and with deleting things. I'm sure that Optane would give me a boost to boot times, maybe 3 seconds over 5 (Bios actually takes up most of that time) and I don't mind waiting the entire 2 seconds it takes to open up outlook, which is my slowest loading application due to the mailbox size and plugins.

 

[EarthDog]

Why stop at 64GB ? PrimoCache doesn't have any limitation like Intel Rapid Response had. You can stick a 1TB SSD cache to a 10TB HDD if you want. Or you can use half of SSD for boot drive if you really want it and other half for SSD cache accelerating the attached HDD. It's a very flexible thingie. And I believe going with slightly slower, but larger regular SSD cache over Optane would be more beneficial. More data being able to be cached means more of everything will essentially behave like it's on SSD. Even if you bounce between several large modern games.

id look i to how optane works a bit more deeply if yoy think that.

Optane is, supposedly a lot faster than a
hybrid catching from what i read...

 

[RejZoR]

It's not. Having more stuff in cache will benefit you more than having little in a faster cache. That's why difference between SSD and HDD is massive, but between SATA3 and M.2 NVMe it's almost non existent even though on paper, NVMe should win hands down. It's the same with Optane.

 

[notb]

Only relevant in that consumer drives aren't all that expensive, especially if you hunt around for a deal.
How I understand Optane is that you'd be getting a excellent performance in a few situations over an SSD (a few ms?), but vastly inferior performance in other situations.

You get excellent performance in a very wide range of scenarios. For most PC users this could mean basically all that they do.

This is not going to have much effect, if any, on productivity to power users who do more than read e-mails and browse the web.

You'll have to define a "power user".
Is software designer / coder a power user? Is a data analyst a power user? Photo processing specialist? CAD designer?
Generally speaking, if one's way to use PC (as a "power user") is copying files from one place to another for a hobby, he won't benefit much from a cache. But quite a lot of people will and it clearly doesn't stop at reading e-mails.

A large SSD can easily handle a few games; not having your entire steam library is not really a problem with fiber and backups, but not only that it will handle applications that move and manipulate large amounts of data (anything adobe) with ease in comparison to Optane.

I totally agree. But then there are people here saying that their Steam library is over 1TB. So if one has e.g. 50+ games installed all the time, but he (I suppose) plays just a few of them in a ~month window, caching could work. He'll spend <$100 for Optane or a different small NVMe SSD, setup it as cache and it'll make the latest few games of choice work faster. The rest of Steam stuff will remain on a cheap HDD. Compared to that getting a 1TB SSD ($250 for something cheap, double that for fast NVMe) seems expensive and wasteful.

Those that really want to save money and get good performance should os RejZoR suggested and use PrimoCache. For the same cost as Optane, you can get a very fast 128 Gb SSD and use 64GB of it as Cache and then the other 64 GB dedicated to whatever takes your fancy.

I think people are too attached to the idea that Optane is a cache. At this point it's just a showcase of a new, better SSD tech that will move to other product types in coming years. That's some proper innovation going on.
Furthermore, I struggle to understand the price arguments and constant comparisons to simply getting a fast SSD. Cache is not a replacement for SSD. It should work with disks, boosting their performance.
We're still waiting for proper real-life tests of Optane caches, but, honestly, we should not expects miracles - Optane could give a few % performance boost in some productivity tasks.
But hold on. Few % for under $100? How much people here spend on OC that quite often gives similar benefits?
Suddenly we arrive to a conclusion that spending a $1000 on OC (high-end RAM and mobos, watercooling, high-end cases/PSU) is awesome, but spending $100 on a cache is pointless and lame.

 

[RejZoR]

Just got a word from moderator. Apparently me debunking SSD caching myths and telling people how to save money and still have great performing system is now an offensive thing. Got it. Everyone buy awesome SSD for boot drive. And 5400 RPM HDD for storing of data. It's excellent. If everyone use such configuration, they can't possibly be wrong... I apologize for being helpful.