What is Intel Optane?

Cheap way of speeding up loading times of fave apps and
saved games if you have a spare M.2 slot.

Few months ago, at the time I bought the most new parts for my pc, Intel Optane was still a little too expensive, specially the larger ones. (64gb+)
Also my motherboard only has 1 m.2 slot, so I chose for a regular m.2 with 256gb space. Enough for windows and some games.
I could still add a Intel Optane, but then I would need to buy a PCIE M.2 adapter, which aren't that pricey.

Now considering to buy an m.2 adapter and smallsized Intel Optane drive(16-32gb). Leave it empty and use it as virtual memory drive.

I notice the optane drives that use PCIE slots are still very expensive so
the M.2 epansion is the way to go if you want that little extra.

Looking for Optane at a random store, I accidentaly found this mentioned in the negative points for the Optane Memory. :

- Intel Optane Memory is only compatible with Intel Kaby Lake processors.

Searched a little to find out more, and: https://www.dignited.com/27899/intel-optane-memory-explained/

Quote :

Optane does come with a few annoying caveats before you can use it. For starters, it only works with newer 7th generation processors (Kaby Lake chips with Core i3, i5, and i7 and model numbers in the 7xxx series) running Windows operating systems. Sorry Skylake, Broadwell, AMD, et al. It’s been fun having you around. Stop gloating Kaby Lake.
Matter of fact, even then, Optane currently only supports the M.2 expansion slot supporting the NVMe interface on your motherboard. That rules out a large swath of PCs lacking the M.2 form factor, old and new.

Actually a bit cheaper since i last looked..and is compatible with coffeelake plus all gen 8 chips i think

Intel optane PCIE

muckyman wrote:

Actually a bit cheaper since i last looked..and is compatible with coffeelake plus all gen 8 chips i think

Intel optane PCIE

Could not find anything about cpu compatibility, but found an article that makes me doubt the Optane is worth the hype.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/11953/the-intel-optane-ssd-900p-review

Should read the comments below the article from the link I posted.
Somebody posted an extensive rant about his firsthand experience with the Optane.
Here's a copy of what I mean, more on the page itself, but this is the most important part.:

---

Quote :

• ddriver - Friday, October 27, 2017 - link

  
  
  I got myself a bucked of salt. The necessary requirement to swallow that Houdini "2.7x better" claim from the launch PR.
  
  I've been rendering stuff since the days of 3d max for frigging DOS. And I am yet to experience a scenario where CPU load is not in the 99% range.
  
  Having a rendering job that cannot feed the CPU to above 10% load with the insanely fast 960 pro has got to be an unprecedented case of cooked-up benchmark in human history. Reply
  

• extide - Friday, October 27, 2017 - link

  
  
  Did you read the article? It pretty clearly explains how they got that result, and it makes sense. Reply
  

• ddriver - Friday, October 27, 2017 - link

  
  
  Oh yeah, I get it. Hypetane is a synthetic beast. Which allows to showcase said advantage as long as you focus on it in a carefully devised and completely detached from real-world usage workload.
  
  Don't get me wrong. It is good that hypetane is now available in capacities that actually allow to use it. And if endurance turns out to be tangibly better than nand, I might actually buy it. Low queue depth performance is good, especially random read, which may not be of that much practical use to most of the people out there, but I could make good use of that.
  
  But it will remain "hypetane" even after I go and buy it. Because intel said "1000 times better", and it is not even 10 times better. A zero on its own might be nothing, but two zeroes after a positive number make quite a lot of difference. Reply
  

• ddriver - Friday, October 27, 2017 - link

  
  
  "no other alternative nonvolatile memory technology is close to being ready to challenge 3D XPoint"
  
  Except for SLC, which was so good it was immediately abandoned once inferior and more profit friendly NAND implementations were available.
  
  A SLC based product coupled with MRAM cache will easily humiliate hypetane in its few strong aspects.
  
  Too bad NAND drives are now moving to TLC and QLC, even MLC is heading in the "luxury item" category. Too bad because 3D SLC has tremendous potential. Let's see if it gets realized. Reply
  

• extide - Friday, October 27, 2017 - link

  
  
  How would that work. SLC is slower than Optane, can't be written at a block level, needs trash collection, etc. Then you cache it with a technology similar to Optane? Why not just build a drive with all MRAM, oh yeah, too expensive. Looks like Optane wins. Reply
  

• ddriver - Friday, October 27, 2017 - link

  
  
  Nope, SLC is actually faster. Look it up.
  
  And what it cannot do is write at the bit level. Which is not really a big deal. Even CPUs cannot address RAM at bellow a byte, if you want single bit operations, you have to use bitwise operators. Writing at a higher level is actually very efficient, because it reduces overhead. If single bit addressing was important, that's who computers would work.
  
  Furthermore, single bit writes produce a significant challenge when tracking wear levels. Hypetane still wears out, you know... It will be tremendously harder to accurately track wear at bit level, and I am abot 99.999999% sure it is not how intel does it, meaning that a lot of that supposed extra endurance will be forfeited by managing wear at a coarsely grained level. They won't be managing that at bit level, the overhead will be tremendous and will completely diminish potential advantages.
  
  The MRAM cache will reduce a lot of write amplification and garbage collection.
  
  It also looks like 3d SLC has about 3 times the density of the chips intel is currently using for hypetane.
  
  "Why not just build a drive with all MRAM" - density is too low. Which is also why we use RAM for working memory, I mean volatility can easily be solved by say adding a RTG battery to a DRAM drive, giving it effectively about a century of continuous, uninterrupted power. It is doable, but then again, redundant, and while it is true that the industry does a lot of pointless things nowadays, the only ones that qualify are those with a desirable usability to profitability ratio, and a RTG DRAM drive is simply too good to offer...
  
  "Looks like Optane wins" - anyone can win when running unopposed. The moment someone makes a SLC/MRAM hybrid and it loses to hypetane, I will retract my statement and admit I was wrong. I have zero problem with that Reply
  

• vanilla_gorilla - Friday, October 27, 2017 - link

  
  
  So you're saying Optane sucks because it would be slower than a drive that doesn't exist?  Reply
  

• ddriver - Friday, October 27, 2017 - link

  
  
  No, I am saying it "sucks" because for all intents and purposes, it is not any faster than a 2 year old drive that it was supposed to beat by a 1000 times.
  
  And the reason I put it "sucks" is because I never said it does suck. I give it a very realistic valuation. What sucks is how far that realistic valuation is from what intel promised. Which is entirely on them.
  

I don't think he was very happy. 
Looks like the Optane is one more of those marketing gimmicks that barely lives up to the hype.