I wonder if they will announce that the 900P is already Optane compatible. As of now they still have not updated their list of supported drives: https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/27401/Intel-Optane-Memory-User-Interface-and-Driver-for-System-Acceleration?product=99745 https://i.imgur.com/qcQLEIG.jpg

Useless product with such low capacities and absurd pricing

No offence to Intel but...no ones cares unless price is right which is not.

eddieobscurant:

Useless product with such low capacities and absurd pricing

Fully agreed. My 960 Evo 250GB was only $115 brand new. Why would anyone purchase these at these kind of prices for the storage size. Its not like these would make my evo like a sata II SSD from 2010.

Diminishing returns is all that comes to mind.

A big blunder by Intel was not doing anything at all to explain why 4KQ1T1 speed matters so much. Mixed reads and writes with high queue and thread count and sequential reads matter very little in a desktop environment. Disk bench software lists super impressive numbers for certain drives indicating that they are fantastic at multiple user database workloads and moving very large files from point A to point B over a fast connection, both of which you don't do on a desktop PC. The other blunder was releasing Optane years after it mattered. If you have a motherboard that supports Optane then you did not install windows on a HDD. Conversely if you have a HDD that would be perfect for Optane you likely do not have support for it. On top of all that the only enthusiast case where Optane makes sense is hidden as an undocumented feature. I used a 280GB 900P as Optane cache for a 4TB SATA SSD and the performance is staggering, far better than any of these M.2 cache drives. According to Intel this configuration does not even work even though it is the only current way to get 4TB of storage combined with top of the line 4KQ1T1 performance.

Mind you Optane is not compatible with Ryzen systems.

They can keep it then, theres no sense in that...

These are VERY fast, faster then any NVMe drives and are big enough to install Windows 10, the 4K speed is tad faster then 900p based on this review Check out this 4K performance, 960 pro 1tb does maximum 50-60mb/s https://imagescdn.tweaktown.com/content/8/5/8545_26_intel-optane-ssd-800p-58gb-118gb-2-nvme-pcie-review.png

MegaFalloutFan:

These are VERY fast, faster then any NVMe drives and are big enough to install Windows 10, the 4K speed is tad faster then 900p based on this review Check out this 4K performance, 960 pro 1tb does maximum 50-60mb/s https://imagescdn.tweaktown.com/content/8/5/8545_26_intel-optane-ssd-800p-58gb-118gb-2-nvme-pcie-review.png

That is a really old version of CrystalDiskMark, no idea why they don't upgrade. The newer ones let you control queue depth and threads, 4KQ1T1 is really the only test that matters.

nosirrahx:

That is a really old version of CrystalDiskMark, no idea why they don't upgrade. The newer ones let you control queue depth and threads, 4KQ1T1 is really the only test that matters.

Like this? 🙂 https://cdn.pbrd.co/images/HbkwsRh.jpg

Speeds dont matter with crappy sizes and crappy prices. And no ryzen support, intel can swallow a massive F*** You.

Agonist:

Speeds dont matter with crappy sizes and crappy prices. And no ryzen support, intel can swallow a massive F*** You.

Thats BS, It works fine on ryzen. It doesnt work in Optane Cache mode on Ryzen and Gen6 and lower Intel, but it works fine as SSD 60 and 120Gb are enough for windows 10 install. for most people that keep game on separate SSD/HDD

MegaFalloutFan:

Like this? 🙂 https://cdn.pbrd.co/images/HbkwsRh.jpg

Exactly, that bottom score is what you "feel". The rest are super specific to scenarios like moving massive files from A to B over a fast link or a database being accessed by a lot of users. 4KQ1T1 represents the random reading and writing of small files that make up the majority of desktop disk access.

Agonist:

Speeds dont matter with crappy sizes and crappy prices. And no ryzen support, intel can swallow a massive F*** You.

I am an Optane user and fan but I do agree that the capacity and price point suck. I love my 900P but it sucks that it only comes in a U.2 or add in card interface and has a capacity and price from 2015. I'm not even using my 900P the way Intel wants me to use it because as intended it is just not worth it.

nosirrahx:

I am an Optane user and fan but I do agree that the capacity and price point suck. I love my 900P but it sucks that it only comes in a U.2 or add in card interface and has a capacity and price from 2015. I'm not even using my 900P the way Intel wants me to use it because as intended it is just not worth it.

I got 480gb version and sold the game code to get 140$ back. Just got a new case and in this build ill have 200Gb for windows and 280GB for PrimoCache to cache all my HDD's and NVMes (except system drive which already optane) Maybe ill get that 120Gb optane and use it as system and dedicate all 480Gb as to L2 cache for PrimoCache

MegaFalloutFan:

I got 480gb version and sold the game code to get 140$ back. Just got a new case and in this build ill have 200Gb for windows and 280GB for PrimoCache to cache all my HDD's and NVMes (except system drive which already optane) Maybe ill get that 120Gb optane and use it as system and dedicate all 480Gb as to L2 cache for PrimoCache

It would be interesting to see what performance you get out of that 900P with PrimoCache. I have played around with their L1 cache on a system with a lot of RAM, was surprisingly decent.

nosirrahx:

It would be interesting to see what performance you get out of that 900P with PrimoCache. I have played around with their L1 cache on a system with a lot of RAM, was surprisingly decent.

Well with Defer-Write enabled you get Optane write speed across ALL your drives, be it SATA or NVMe, it copies the file to your L2 cache and i think it makes hardlink or something, basically. it looks like your HDD has the file but it still in the cache, later it will copy it The same option has for RAM L1 cache, but i dont have UPS so i have L1 cache in Read only mode, when i get good UPS i might enable defer-write on L1 cache it shows great results. As far as read cache be it L1 or L2 its like intel SRT but better because it works on as many drives as you want and unlike Intel SRT its not limited to 60gb, you can have as much L2 cache and L1 ram cache as you can Right now before i move to new case (Define R6 with glass door) i have my system on 850 sata drive, so for testing primo cache i have 8gb of L1 Read cache across all drives and 100gb of L2 cache Optane cache in defer-write across all my drives except my download HDD (it has the most writes so for now until i do more research about it because im not sure but i think Optane unlike flash is almost immortal even better than HDD so there is no need to optimize writes to it, if this is true then ill enable cache to my download HDD too it should improve write access for torrent downloads). When i move to my new system ill throw out the 850evo and use i think 150Gb partition of Otane and leave all the rest for L2 cache, exclude system drive from caching (because its already optane) and have the rest of my drives to use 8gb L1 and 300ish gb L2 optane If i find a deal for 120gb 800p, ill get it for windows 10 install and use all 900p as L2 cachhe On Primo cache forums people with data servers do that, they get 900p in RAID and use as huge cache drives

MegaFalloutFan:

Well with Defer-Write enabled you get Optane write speed across ALL your drives, be it SATA or NVMe, it copies the file to your L2 cache and i think it makes hardlink or something, basically. it looks like your HDD has the file but it still in the cache, later it will copy it The same option has for RAM L1 cache, but i dont have UPS so i have L1 cache in Read only mode, when i get good UPS i might enable defer-write on L1 cache it shows great results. As far as read cache be it L1 or L2 its like intel SRT but better because it works on as many drives as you want and unlike Intel SRT its not limited to 60gb, you can have as much L2 cache and L1 ram cache as you can Right now before i move to new case (Define R6 with glass door) i have my system on 850 sata drive, so for testing primo cache i have 8gb of L1 Read cache across all drives and 100gb of L2 cache Optane cache in defer-write across all my drives except my download HDD (it has the most writes so for now until i do more research about it because im not sure but i think Optane unlike flash is almost immortal even better than HDD so there is no need to optimize writes to it, if this is true then ill enable cache to my download HDD too it should improve write access for torrent downloads). When i move to my new system ill throw out the 850evo and use i think 150Gb partition of Otane and leave all the rest for L2 cache, exclude system drive from caching (because its already optane) and have the rest of my drives to use 8gb L1 and 300ish gb L2 optane If i find a deal for 120gb 800p, ill get it for windows 10 install and use all 900p as L2 cachhe On Primo cache forums people with data servers do that, they get 900p in RAID and use as huge cache drives

The last system I built uses a UPS and we have a backup generator that kicks on in 3 seconds so I was not afraid of setting up Primo that way, also went with 32 GB of RAM specifically to experiment with RAM cache. Currently I have the RAM cache set 12 GB on top of the 280 GB Optane 900P as Optane cache on top of a 4 TB SATA SSD. Even when cache misses it falls back to the 900P which is of course also insanely fast. Obviously the issue with all of this is the price. Between the price of 32 GB of RAM, the 900P and the Primo key this is hardly cost effective. Its too bad because this system is crazy fast. It kind of feels like Samsung moved a lot faster than Intel expected and forced the Optane drives into the market before they were ready to be competitive solutions. On the topic of RAID 0 and the 900P, check this out. Its a bench from the bootable RAID 0 a guy made from 4 900P drives attached to a Asus Hyper 16X: https://i.imgur.com/hstUl6T.jpg

MegaFalloutFan:

Thats BS, It works fine on ryzen. It doesnt work in Optane Cache mode on Ryzen and Gen6 and lower Intel, but it works fine as SSD 60 and 120Gb are enough for windows 10 install. for most people that keep game on separate SSD/HDD

60GB is not enough really for Win 10. Its barely enough with a bare OS. Its why I removed my 60GB SSD from my server, and dropped a 160GB raptor in it since it runs 24/7. 80GB is the min I would use anymore for a Win 10 OS drive. I still have a middle finger for Intel with sizes and price. Sure they are nice and fast, but not justifiable.

Those capacities are way too small for this day and age.