Intel Optane Memory With 3D XPoint Review: Easy, Robust PC Acceleration

Name: Intel Optane Memory
Brand: Intel

by Marco Chiappetta — Monday, April 24, 2017, 12:00 PM EDT

Performance Summary: Intel Optane Memory delivered a dramatic lift on overall system performance in our testing. Boot times, application load time, file searches, and overall system responsiveness were improved significantly. Setting up Intel Optane Memory was also very quick and easy. And once set up, it’s a “set it and forget it” type of solution.

One of the other side benefits of the technology don’t show in the benchmarks. We’ve gotten a little spoiled around here, so powering up our test rig with only a hard drive handling storage duties was a bit of an eye opener. Not only was system responsiveness degraded with only an HDD in the system, but the noise generated by the drive was ever present, as it chunked along during boot-up or when handling background tasks. With Optane Memory enabled, however, hard drive activity drops significantly. When the cached data is accessed on the Optane Memory SSD, the hard drive doesn’t have to do anything, which resulted in a noticeably quieter system and it would likely prolong the life of the hard drive too.

Intel Optane Memory - Find It At Amazon.Com

16GB and 32GB Intel Optane Memory modules will be available through retailers with MSRPs of $44 and $77, respectively, and will be offered in OEM system builds (and All-In-One system) as well. At their MSRPs, there is an obvious premium for Intel Optane Memory versus NAND-based solid state drives in terms of cost per gigabyte, which will probably make many of you question their value when much larger SSDs are available for only a few dollars more. The short answer is that Intel Optane Memory isn’t ideal for every user. If you’ve got the budget to afford a larger-capacity, high-performance NVMe based SSD, and are familiar with managing multiple drives in Windows, the benefits of Intel Optane Memory and its caching solution won’t be as apparent. Those users will probably be interested in larger-capacity Intel Optane SSDs when they ship at some point in the future, however, due to their expected high-performance at low queue depth. For users on a budget though, that want high-capacity bulk storage and aren’t savvy enough to manage multiple drives, accelerators and the caching solution offered by Intel Optane Memory may make sense.


Affordable Significant Performance Improvement Easy To Setup And Configure	Price Premium Over NAND Compatibility Limited To Kaby Lake and 200-Series Chipsets

Tags: Intel, SSD, Storage, (NASDAQ:INTC), nvme, optane, 3d-xpoint

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com