Optane "memory" worth it?

[Phil2008]

I have the 32gb version and yeah it works well.
You just install the software, enable the optane in the bios and software
Then just select what drive you want to speed up and then the optane will link itself to that drive

I have my optane linked up to my old 640gb hard drive that I have my games on and I had noticed a massive difference after a loading up a game once, the second time I ran the game it loaded way, way faster, even after I had rebooted windows.

The only problem with Optane is you need win10 and a minimum of a Z370 motherboard if you want to speed up a non boot drive. Also I would get the 64gb or larger version and then optane will be able to store more then 1-2 games at once, I am going to upgrade mine to a larger version when prices drop.

I hope A 128gb or even larger version of optane comes out sometime, and then for exmaple, you could have the optane linked up with a 10tb hard drive and it will be like having a 10tb SSD.

But yeah you just put it in, enable it and forget about it, you just have to remember if you upgrade or change the drive that its linked to, to disable optane before you do so.

 

[BongoHunter]

I hope A 128gb or even larger version of optane comes out sometime, and then for exmaple, you could have the optane linked up with a 10tb hard drive and it will be like having a 10tb SSD.

Ah! You maybe interested in the Optane 800p - it's available in 118gb capacities for about £115.

 

[MaXxBoulton]

I think your rudimentary grasp of the English language makes it a little challenging to "flow" you.
I do agree however that SATAs days are limited, but M2 seems a relationship bodge job as a replacement.

Making it person, always an argument winner

i may have a rudimentary grasp of the English language... but am not a nob about it like you am i
Have a super day

 

[MaXxBoulton]

I have the 32gb version and yeah it works well.
You just install the software, enable the optane in the bios and software
Then just select what drive you want to speed up and then the optane will link itself to that drive

I have my optane linked up to my old 640gb hard drive that I have my games on and I had noticed a massive difference after a loading up a game once, the second time I ran the game it loaded way, way faster, even after I had rebooted windows.

The only problem with Optane is you need win10 and a minimum of a Z370 motherboard if you want to speed up a non boot drive. Also I would get the 64gb or larger version and then optane will be able to store more then 1-2 games at once, I am going to upgrade mine to a larger version when prices drop.

I hope A 128gb or even larger version of optane comes out sometime, and then for exmaple, you could have the optane linked up with a 10tb hard drive and it will be like having a 10tb SSD.

But yeah you just put it in, enable it and forget about it, you just have to remember if you upgrade or change the drive that its linked to, to disable optane before you do so.

Ah! You maybe interested in the Optane 800p - it's available in 118gb capacities for about £115.

am i missing someing? you can pick up a 1tb M.2 drive for £97 right now. and your talking about spending £115 to boost a mechanical drive

 

[Phil2008]

am i missing someing? you can pick up a 1tb M.2 drive for £97 right now. and your talking about spending £115 to boost a mechanical drive

Really, I thought a 1tb ssd or anything along those speeds were about £200-£300 or there abouts?

But wouldn't it be great if you could buy for instance a 512gb optane that could store a huge amount of data on and then knowing any size mechanical hard drive will performing like a ssd or better?

 

[pingu666]

it would only perform that well on some of data (that its cached)
sandisk sata 1tb drives have recently reached 100quidish (dunno how good they are)

 

[Phil2008]

it would only perform that well on some of data (that its cached)
sandisk sata 1tb drives have recently reached 100quidish (dunno how good they are)

Anything that you run or copy onto the optane enhanced drive gets stored onto the optane memory, so that stuff then will run off from the optane memory, for super fast speeds.

So if you have a huge optane memory, it wont have to deleted your most used apps, games or files when it gets full. It should remove the rarely used stuff first, in theory anyway.

As you can see the optane memory and the drive that I have linked it to are showing up as 1 in the device manager.

 

[Phil2008]

Ah! You maybe interested in the Optane 800p - it's available in 118gb capacities for about £115.

But yeah I think I will upgrade my 32gb version to the 118gb and hopefully they will steadily keep increase in size while keeping the price low.

I have looked at the 240/280gb version but they are quite pricey and there's no m.2 version. Well there is a M.2 version but it comes in 2 parts and I quite like the idea of it plugged into the motherboard. hidden away with no cables flying about. Like the M.2 slot is hidden underneath my cpu heatsink, so I cant even see it and I forget that I have even got Optane, as it manages itself with the drive its linked to.

 

[chrcoluk]

I think your rudimentary grasp of the English language makes it a little challenging to "flow" you.

I do agree however that SATAs days are limited, but M2 seems a right bodge job as a replacement.

It is a bodge. U.2 and PCIE are both better. I think the only reason m.2 has been chosen by board manufacturers is pressure from drive manufacturers who perhaps dont want to make consumer SKU's with u.2 or pcie, maybe they already were making m.2 for laptops.

PCIE is better as slots are way easier to access than m.2, also PCIE lanes already allocated.
u.2 is better as no screwdriver needed and can put drive in a drive bay away from motherboard. Better thermals etc.
m.2 is suited for things like laptops and NUC devices where space is a premium.

I wouldnt consider SATA days numbered tho as long as there is demand for spindles.

In fact I think it maybe be to do with market fragmentation, if drive manufacturers make consumer u.2 and PCIE drives, then it may make enterprise customers use those drives in servers which in turn loses them revenue, I think market fragmentation is the most plausible reason. Remember when nvme was brand new and we seen people like linus connecting PCIE nvme drives? then suddenly the industry changed direction and we started seeing m.2 devices.

 

[MaXxBoulton]

it would only perform that well on some of data (that its cached)
sandisk sata 1tb drives have recently reached 100quidish (dunno how good they are)

The crucial m500 can be had for £97, but even a 500gb ssd as to be better than a 32gb boost drive.

 

[Oblivion007]

You could get lot bigger standard SSD for less and have one partition for OS and use rest as big cache for HDD with PrimoCache.

How is your experience with PrimoCache? What size of GB do you need to make your partition so get the benefit?

 

[chrcoluk]

The crucial m500 can be had for £97, but even a 500gb ssd as to be better than a 32gb boost drive.

of course its better, in vast majority of consumer use the end user wont tell the difference between a nvme and sata ssd.

 

[EsaT]

How is your experience with PrimoCache? What size of GB do you need to make your partition so get the benefit?

Not myself using it now, but intending to start using it after upgrading PC to Zen2 Ryzen.

Anyway it works like any other HDD caching using SSD.
Not good in write intensive stuff, but for nearly pure read based stuff like playing games benefits are big:
First access of (non cached) files works at speed of HDD.
After that subsequent reads work at SSD speed, until cache fills and that data gets evicted as longest time ago needed data.
Only limit for how big/many games it could speed up is how big cache partition you use.

Some 50GB should quite comfortably cache two average games.
With you being able to keep playing both alternately like they were installed on SSD.
Unlike in overhyped "SSHDs" with tiny 8GB NAND caches.
And even if/when whole game isn't cached, it would speed up loading of next level.
Because asset files needed by previous level(s) are already cached lowering amount of new data read from slow HDD.

If you have big game library and more games you play frequently, you could just increase cache size.
Even from very cheap quarter TB SSD bought for OS and programs, you could easily cut 100GB partition for caching.

PrimoCache has fully functional 30 day trial period if you want to try it.

Just remember that caching targets whole drives/partitions like handled by Windows Explorer. (eg C: D
And if you have any big files like videos on that drive, those are going to get cached evicting longest time ago used cached data.
So you have to take that into account in cache size, unless you store media files in other drive/partition.
(and cached drive can't be just taken temperatorily to other PC and then returned, because that can break data consistency)

 

[Oblivion007]

Not myself using it now, but intending to start using it after upgrading PC to Zen2 Ryzen.

Anyway it works like any other HDD caching using SSD.
Not good in write intensive stuff, but for nearly pure read based stuff like playing games benefits are big:
First access of (non cached) files works at speed of HDD.
After that subsequent reads work at SSD speed, until cache fills and that data gets evicted as longest time ago needed data.
Only limit for how big/many games it could speed up is how big cache partition you use.

Some 50GB should quite comfortably cache two average games.
With you being able to keep playing both alternately like they were installed on SSD.
Unlike in overhyped "SSHDs" with tiny 8GB NAND caches.
And even if/when whole game isn't cached, it would speed up loading of next level.
Because asset files needed by previous level(s) are already cached lowering amount of new data read from slow HDD.

If you have big game library and more games you play frequently, you could just increase cache size.
Even from very cheap quarter TB SSD bought for OS and programs, you could easily cut 100GB partition for caching.

PrimoCache has fully functional 30 day trial period if you want to try it.

Just remember that caching targets whole drives/partitions like handled by Windows Explorer. (eg C: D
And if you have any big files like videos on that drive, those are going to get cached evicting longest time ago used cached data.
So you have to take that into account in cache size, unless you store media files in other drive/partition.
(and cached drive can't be just taken temperatorily to other PC and then returned, because that can break data consistency)

Thank you very much for the explanation - very useful.

I'm planning to buy a 1TB SSD in the next few weeks as a game drive, have a 250GB SSD for OS but still have 2 HDDs (2TB and a 5TB) which are filled with games. Certainly sounds like partitioning 100GB or so for those HDDs could yield great benefits.

 

[chrcoluk]

AMD can make ssd's act as caching devices for spindles also.

 

[EsaT]

Thank you very much for the explanation - very useful.

I'm planning to buy a 1TB SSD in the next few weeks as a game drive, have a 250GB SSD for OS but still have 2 HDDs (2TB and a 5TB) which are filled with games. Certainly sounds like partitioning 100GB or so for those HDDs could yield great benefits.

That would definitely be very expensive to move more into pure SSD storing and place for SSD caching.

Apparently PrimoCache doesn't do basic/dumb just blindly cache everything caching.
Algorithm which manages caching analyses file accesses (and over time frequency) and at least at first access can skip big sequential accesses like reading movie file.
Though price of that more intelligent caching is needing memory to store data of that analysis and cache usage.
Here's one actualy real world test of loading time speedup from PrimoCache:
https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/did-some-benchmarking-of-an-ssd-caching-solution.2533859/

While that was done using also 2GB of RAM as (volatile) level 1 cache, that second round of tests after clearing RAM shows almost all speed up comes from level 2 SSD cache.

AMD can make ssd's act as caching devices for spindles also.

FuzeDrive isn't caching, but tiered storage...
Which can be thought as kind of RAID0 using different storage devices:
It combines both devices into single combined size "drive/volume" and then distributes data between them depending on its frequency of use.
Lot used data gets moved onto SSD, while little/long time ago used data gets moved to HDD.

Sure it doesn't "waste" space like cache does, but it also inherits all the bad things/weaknesses of RAID0:
If either of drives fails, you're screwed and good luck for getting data out of that tiered storage volume on your own.
And there's no way of adding any kind redundancy into it.
Also there's no way to access data on those drives by plugging drive into other PC.

PrimoCache can again be used to speed up any existing storage volumes, including ones on redundant mirrored arrays.
And if caching SSD breaks, original data isn't affected in any way. (except for write caching mode)
In fact cached normal drive could be just moved to any other PC and accessed normally.

Intel's Smart Response Technology is also caching mechanism similar to PrimoCache and more sense making for home use with less "pitfalls".
IMO AMD chose wrong program to license.

 

[pingu666]

linus tech tips did a video about caching/accelorator type of things awhile back, best solution was 3rd party and maybe free

 

[Phil2008]

I keep thinking, maybe I should just replace my hard drive for a 1tb/2tb ssd, but then I think if a huge capacity optane drive comes out, it would be great because any hard drive would run like a ssd.. I might even bite the bullet and just buy the Optane 900p 280gb and hide the cable as best as possible.
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/inte...e-drive-with-m.2-cable-adaptor-hd-08m-in.html

 

[chrcoluk]

That would definitely be very expensive to move more into pure SSD storing and place for SSD caching.

Apparently PrimoCache doesn't do basic/dumb just blindly cache everything caching.
Algorithm which manages caching analyses file accesses (and over time frequency) and at least at first access can skip big sequential accesses like reading movie file.
Though price of that more intelligent caching is needing memory to store data of that analysis and cache usage.
Here's one actualy real world test of loading time speedup from PrimoCache:
https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/did-some-benchmarking-of-an-ssd-caching-solution.2533859/

While that was done using also 2GB of RAM as (volatile) level 1 cache, that second round of tests after clearing RAM shows almost all speed up comes from level 2 SSD cache.


FuzeDrive isn't caching, but tiered storage...
Which can be thought as kind of RAID0 using different storage devices:
It combines both devices into single combined size "drive/volume" and then distributes data between them depending on its frequency of use.
Lot used data gets moved onto SSD, while little/long time ago used data gets moved to HDD.

Sure it doesn't "waste" space like cache does, but it also inherits all the bad things/weaknesses of RAID0:
If either of drives fails, you're screwed and good luck for getting data out of that tiered storage volume on your own.
And there's no way of adding any kind redundancy into it.
Also there's no way to access data on those drives by plugging drive into other PC.

PrimoCache can again be used to speed up any existing storage volumes, including ones on redundant mirrored arrays.
And if caching SSD breaks, original data isn't affected in any way. (except for write caching mode)
In fact cached normal drive could be just moved to any other PC and accessed normally.

Intel's Smart Response Technology is also caching mechanism similar to PrimoCache and more sense making for home use with less "pitfalls".
IMO AMD chose wrong program to license.

ahh ok yeah, I agree stay away from anything like a raid 0.

 

[Cromulent]

Just get an NVMe drive.

I bought an NVMe drive and was expecting it to feel massively faster than my old SATA SSD, but in the end, it didn't make such a big difference for me. When I buy my next computer, I'll put the money towards a larger SATA SSD rather than a smaller NVMe SSD.