Conclusion, Pricing, and Final Thoughts
Conclusion:
Pros:
- Simple, no-frills installation process
- Outstanding performance gains, especially to HDD-equipped systems
- It's the fastest (lowest latency) thing we've ever tested. Period. (yes, again)
Cons:
- Requires current generation motherboard, preventing upgrades to older systems
- Cost (see below)
- Too small to use as a boot SSD!
- (clearly not its intended purpose, but you can RAID them!)
Pricing:
- Optane Memory 16GB: $44 ($2.75/GB) (Amazon)
- Optane Memory 32GB: $77 ($2.40/GB)
These prices are expensive for the capacity you are getting, but the performance benefits alone more than make up for the cost. Further, since a little gets you a long way in terms of cache performance, even 32GB of it still comes in at less than $100.
Final Thoughts:
I knew XPoint was going to enable all sorts of performance gains to storage systems, but I honestly did not expect Optane Memory to net such large benefits and to do it so well. While previous hybrid/caching technologies have been decent, the outstanding latency of XPoint enables an Optane Memory cache to boost HDD systems to meet or even exceed the performance of NAND-SSD equipped machines! While the intended market is clearly as an upgrade to HDD-only systems, measurable benefits can be seen even when caching a SATA SSD. When paired with a budget SATA SSD, we saw boot times cut in half and coming in nearly a second faster than a NAND-NVMe SSD! Overall I am extremely impressed with the performance benefits and implementation of Optane Memory.
This is an outstanding product. My only wish is that support is added to prior generation chipsets.
http://www.legitreviews.com/i
http://www.legitreviews.com/intel-optane-memory-tested-boot-drive-secondary-raid-0_194237
Intel Optane Memory Tested As Boot Drive, Secondary and RAID 0
Posted by Nathan Kirsch | Tue, May 09, 2017 – 9:42 AM
Was wondering if you had a
Was wondering if you had a 32GB Optane, a NVMe SSD and a SATA HDD. if the NVMe is the boot drive would the SATA HDD speed increase? Would the NVMe speed lower?
I need to buy a new laptop
I need to buy a new laptop (for work usage) and I am shopping for different models. Can someone please tell me which is the fastest to load applications and to run modelling programs such as AutoCAD, STAAD.Pro etc??
1. SSHD (Seagate FireCuda)
2. HDD + Intel Optane
3. SSHD (Seagate Firecuda) + Intel Optane
4. Storage HDD + M.2 SSD drive for OS partition and applications
5. Intel Optane in m.2 slot + 2.5 inch SATA SSD in storage slot
6. SATA SSD 2.5 inch as primary storage and empty/unused m.2 slot
7. SSD in m.2 slot and empty/unused slot for the 2.5 inch storage.
I already have a laptop for personal use and that’s running an ordinary HDD, it’s enough for me as all I do is check my email or watch movies. However for my work laptop I want a storage which can open and run applications quite fast. I’m confused if I should go for (HDD + Optane) or (SSD + Optane) or use only an SSD?? Will Optane give good results when combined with a 2.5 inch SATA SSD??
NOTE: All SSDs (m.2 or 2.5 inch SATA) will be Samsung.