Discussion Optane Client product current and future

[IntelUser2000]

(8th-Gen only, apparently, and must be supported by the mobo vendor by a BIOS update?)

Yea, better late than never. I think this might also be related to imminent launch of the Optane H10 drives. Limiting an SSD to Core i3-i9 might be too much!

There is, for 8th gen the supported chipsets are-
Intel® H370 Chipset, Intel® Q370 Chipset, Intel® B360 Chipset, Intel® C246 Chipset (WS), Intel® Z370 Chipset, Intel® Z390 Chipset

So no H310.

Still, its a lot better. The Celeron G4920 is $76 at Newegg.com. Core i3 8100 is double the price at $151. The price difference is worth 16GB Optane + HDD.

Edit:

What's the best/cheapest config for Optane? 32GB Optane Memory + 4TB-6TB HDD? Or 32GB Optane Memory + 1TB Samsung 860 QVO SATA6G 2.5" SSD? Or would getting an Intel 660p 1TB-2TB M.2 NVMe be better, and skip the Optane? Or even use an Optane, with the 660p, as a cache? Would it even make sense to cache NVMe with another NVMe?

If you are going for Intel's official "Optane Memory" configuration with what you outlined above, you could wait for the Optane H10, since that requires support anyway and will likely perform better due to more integration. The integration level goes beyond current Optane Memory and WD^2 and is a step towards full hardware integration like the SSHDs. Pricing might be in the 760p range though. And I'm not 100% sure being available outside of notebooks.

You can't cache NVMe drives(well actually you can with RST, just not with official Optane software which also performs better). I don't know if its them not worth bothering with it(because they said the difference isn't worth it), or its a technical limitation.

 

[VirtualLarry]

https://forums.anandtech.com/thread...tel-6-core-and-optane-memory-and-hdd.2562955/
Didn't want to clutter up this thread, but posted some build ideas for a friend, revolving around an Optane Memory 32GB drive. If anyone wants to comment. One Ryzen 1600 build, one Intel 9400F build, both overclockable (X470 for AMD, Z390 for Intel), both 16GB of fast RAM, both 4TB 7200RPM HDD, around $750 all-in, before tax/ship.

Edit: Is the 9400F overclockable? Maybe it's not, LOL. Stupid Intel. :|

 

[nosirrahx]

Edit: What's the best/cheapest config for Optane? 32GB Optane Memory + 4TB-6TB HDD? Or 32GB Optane Memory + 1TB Samsung 860 QVO SATA6G 2.5" SSD? Or would getting an Intel 660p 1TB-2TB M.2 NVMe be better, and skip the Optane? Or even use an Optane, with the 660p, as a cache? Would it even make sense to cache NVMe with another NVMe?

The only Optane configuration I really feel comfortable suggesting is the 58GB 800P + 2 TB SATA SSD (cheapest one you can find). This will be around $100 cheaper than the 970 Evo.

Optane + 4TB (or higher) SATA SSD is also a reasonable configuration as there are currently no M.2 NVMe SSDs over 2TB so an Optane configuration is the only way to get more than 2TB of space and better than SATA performance.

The 8TB Micron SATA SSD + the 118GB 800P is a LOT cheaper than 4 2TB NVMe SSDs.

Its too bad that Intel does not support any of this because IMO these are the valid enthusiast use cases.


At the 1TB size it is hard to justify a Optane configuration over just a simple 1TB NVMe M.2 drive but at 2TB or higher it starts to make sense.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Well, speaking of my configs, while a 118GB Optane and an 8TB SATA SSD may be more cost-effective than some extravagant 970 Pro arrangement, that whole idea kind of presumes that you already have a 970 Pro-level budget for Solid-State Storage.

I was only going to try out the Optane + HDD arrangement, or what most OEMs seemingly ship with. It's much, much cheaper, than even a 2TB NVMe QLC drive (Intel 660p).

 

[IntelUser2000]

@VirtualLarry I might buy a 32GB for $40 cdn from Craigslist for myself and hand the 16GB and build my dad a new system. Pentium/Celeron support makes it viable.

If I do this I can give you feedback as well. I personally think I can benefit from it which is why I considered the 32GB upgrade. I also want to see if the upcoming modules will be attractive enough though so waiting a bit more haha.

 

[cbn]

@VirtualLarry Pentium/Celeron support makes it viable.

Yes! Indeed Coffee Lake Pentium G5600 and up now supports Optane memory---> https://ark.intel.com/content/www/u...m-gold-g5600-processor-4m-cache-3-90-ghz.html

So happy this finally happened!

But it looks like Coffee Lake Celeron does not have Optane memory support yet---> https://ark.intel.com/content/www/u...eleron-g4900-processor-2m-cache-3-10-ghz.htmlhttps://ark.intel.com/content/www/u...eleron-g4900-processor-2m-cache-3-10-ghz.html

EDIT: See post #533.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Wow, Pentium 5500 Gold is $102, Pentium 5600 Gold is $182, neither one is carried by Newegg themselves any more.

OT:
Considering that the Athlon 200GE is like $50 on sale, and can be overclocked by a $50-60 B350 MSI, ASRock, or Gigabyte mobo with AGESA 1.0.0.6, to 3.80Ghz easily, it seems like a no-brainer. Combined with a PCI-E x2 NVMe Patriot Scorch 256GB SSD for $42.99, it seems like AMD is the clear value winner on the low-end, still.

I want to build a lower-end Optane Memory-using browser box, but I'm finding it really hard to justify, given Intel pricing right now for even their lower-end Pentium 2C/4T CPUs, and their Optane 32GB modules. Not to mention, I'll need at least a $70-80 mobo.

All so I can have a "fake" SSD (cached HDD)? Methinks that this is more Intel smoke-and-mirrors technology, more than anything else. Especially now that real NVMe SSDs don't have much of a premium anymore, except at the real high-end of the market.

Maybe I should do both. Get a B450 board ('StoreMI' support!), and a 1-2TB HDD (have a few 2TB WD Blue 5400RPM drives, perfect test mules for this), get another Athlon 200GE, overclock it, and get a 32GB Optane Memory module, and use it with StoreMI, and see how it performs.

 

[cbn]

Virtual Larry,

Here is what IntelUser2000 is referring to---->

https://www.reddit.com/r/intel/comments/b52c2w

(My mistake on the previous post)

 

[IntelUser2000]

I actually mentioned back in post #524.

The Celeron not being shown as supported at ark is probably a mistake, considering the 17.2 driver has been released not too long ago.

@VirtualLarry Just until a few months ago, the NAND prices were quite a bit higher. It works, its just that the prices are too high.

Yea the value position for AMD is noticeably better. The G5400 has tray pricing for $64, but its quite a bit higher at $90. This is probably due to their ongoing supply issues.

Looks like the near-term hope for Optane is on the H10 being really really good and the server DIMMs going well. They'll have to do something cool like have a consumer version of a memory extender for others.

I actually wouldn't mind a DIMM variant of Optane Memory even if the sequential read/write stays at the M10 level. Significantly lowered latency will make it viable for real RAM extension and act as "slow" memory.

 

[cbn]

Big Optane news: https://downloadcenter.intel.com/do...-Driver-for-System-Acceleration?product=35125



Step in the right direction!

First page updated.

This is big news!

Now if only we could accelerate RAID volumes. (RAID supported on H370, Z370 and Z390 chipsets)

 

[biostud]

Looking forward to the 815p, I was going to get a 800p and use caching software, but with the 815p around the corner, I'll wait for it to be launched.

 

[cbn]

Looking forward to the 815p, I was going to get a 800p and use caching software, but with the 815p around the corner, I'll wait for it to be launched.

Another thing right around the corner is multi-actuator hard drives (though I am not sure when we would see a "somewhat affordable" short stroked Prosumer version).

That would be very nice with either 800p or 815p.

P.S. Very interested in the 815p for its increased write and how that affects page-out performance.

 

[nosirrahx]

Looking forward to the 815p, I was going to get a 800p and use caching software, but with the 815p around the corner, I'll wait for it to be launched.

I have a use for at least 3 of them, likely more. 2 are going into my NUC8i7HVK and another into my Vivobook Pro. I will post up the before and after benchmarks for sure once I get them including microcode fixes enabled/disabled.

Specter and Meltdown mitigation really screws with Optane from my experience to the tune of 25%. It will be interesting to see if this has been improved.

 

[IntelUser2000]

Specter and Meltdown mitigation really screws with Optane from my experience to the tune of 25%. It will be interesting to see if this has been improved.

That loss is due to the CPU, so you'll have to wait until Icelake at least.

 

[nosirrahx]

That loss is due to the CPU, so you'll have to wait until Icelake at least.

I was reading something about regaining some lost performance with more mature patches, will be interesting to see if this is real.

 

[cbn]

I was reading something about regaining some lost performance with more mature patches, will be interesting to see if this is real.

You must be referring to Retpoline.

I believe this is only for Pre-skylake CPUs.

EDIT: Some info from this News Post--> https://hothardware.com/news/windows-10-update-adds-retpoline-support

It's important to note that newer processors are going to be unaffected by this patch. Microsoft itself says that only Intel Broadwell chips and earlier will be impacted, while anything newer already has firmware in place to negate the need for this patch.

 

[IntelUser2000]

I was reading something about regaining some lost performance with more mature patches, will be interesting to see if this is real.

Remember the problem is related to speculative execution. So software patches have a limit on what they can do.

There's a google report that says the only way to be totally secure could be to remove speculative execution altogether. The problem with that approach is abandoning the last 30 years of architectural improvements.

So assuming it can be fixed, it has to be in hardware, or else it'll always be a bandaid solution.

 

[biostud]

Here is a user test of optane with primocache (from hardforums), that I find quite interesting and is a way to integrate an optane drive without the limitations set by intel.

https://hardforum.com/threads/optane-memory-is-it-for-you-opinion-review.1961497/

 

[cbn]

Have you seen this video also:

AMD did well with Optane using Primocache:

 

[cbn]

Some Game load time results from the following Tweaktown review (which I found in the link provided by Biostud in post #543):

https://www.tweaktown.com/articles/8661/best-ssd-gaming-over-120-ssds-tested/index2.html

We paired all Optane Memory (cache) drives with a Seagate BarraCuda Pro 12TB HDD.

Optane cache does a great job here.

My only real complaint is that if someone wanted to do 4K editing with an intermediate codec (using a large single volume) current hard drive Sequential is too slow for this.

Maybe this is where using Primocache with Optane comes into play (i.e. Optane caching RAID volume of 3.5" or 2.5" HDD)? This until affordable multi-actuator hard drives arrive or Intel decides to include Optane caching for RAID volumes (like they did with SRT).

EDIT: Very Very good news for anyone wanting to make an inexpensive (but high capacity) RAID volume for Optane and Primocache (and hopefully Intel Optane application eventually)---> https://forums.anandtech.com/thread...rracuda-and-non-pro-iron-wolf-drives.2563113/ (In fact, I remember just last year reading the (non-Pro) Barracuda and (non-Pro) Iron Wolf specs as 1 in 10^14 for URE. In fact, at that time the only drives with 1 in 10^15 URE from Seagate and WD Were the various Pro models of Barracuda, Iron Wolf and Red + the enterprise drives).

 

[IntelUser2000]

Latest Intel RST drivers support Optane Memory H10 with Solid State Storage.

Also, new BIOS updates released for boards to support Optane H10. Interestingly, the support is shown on H310 boards as well.

 

[cbn]

I want to build a lower-end Optane Memory-using browser box, but I'm finding it really hard to justify, given Intel pricing right now for even their lower-end Pentium 2C/4T CPUs, and their Optane 32GB modules. Not to mention, I'll need at least a $70-80 mobo.

I wonder if that last underlined part changes.

Reason: As IntelUser2000 pointed out in the previous post Optane H10 is coming to H310:

https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/support/H310M-GAMING-PLUS

So does this also mean the Intel Optane Application also comes to H310?

 

[VirtualLarry]

Reason: As IntelUser2000 pointed out in the previous post Optane H10 is coming to H310:

https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/support/H310M-GAMING-PLUS

So does this also mean the Intel Optane Application also comes to H310?

Interesting. Another Intel product segmentation barrier falls.

Maybe they did a little more market-research, and realized, that the real target market (volume sales) for Optane Cache / Memory / etc., is not at the high-end (Z390 purchasers), since they can just also already purchase a large NAND NVMe drive, and be set. It seems that Optane might be more advantageous to pair up with the lower-end systems, H310/B360, Pentium/Celeron, and HDD (and Optane) rig.

 

[cbn]

It seems that Optane might be more advantageous to pair up with the lower-end systems, H310/B360, Pentium/Celeron, and HDD (and Optane) rig.

A consumer version of memory drive would really help that too. Especially as Pentium and Celeron are the very systems to be used primarily for internet browsing and the current way Windows handles page out is not optimized for making the most of Optane for that purpose.

With that mentioned, I was impressed with Optane as OS drive* for page out during browsing......It is just I imagine extensive browsing (i.e. many tabs open) in low RAM systems could be so much better if the system would allow more to be stored in Optane rather than being held with high affinity in RAM.

*Haven't tested Optane as cache drive with HDD or SSD yet.

 

[IntelUser2000]

It seems that Optane might be more advantageous to pair up with the lower-end systems, H310/B360, Pentium/Celeron, and HDD (and Optane) rig.

I think its also that H10 is an SSD, so its better to make it neutral as possible. Still it seems quite limited as I don't see older chipsets being available with it.

I made a mistake saying RST is available with H10. It's actually the Solid State Drive Toolbox.

Yea, they charge a lot for the datacenter version. Since they hate cannibalizing they'll have to change their policies, like offering the DC versions for free. Maybe they will anyway since DC PM versions will make it sort of redundant.

SSD prices going down is the biggest barrier now. I don't see how apart from showcasing a new feature that NAND drives can't do, how Optane will survive. If memory extension software is available on consumer, then the value of Optane will increase.