ReadyBoost reboot ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReadyBoost

What real advantages will this give over a cheap 120gb SSD for the same price?

I think I'll pass.

So if you buy an Intel SSD, you get a free CPU. Misleading title...

moo100times:

What real advantages will this give over a cheap 120gb SSD for the same price?

Optane differs from traditional SSDs in that they are lower latency and higher random IOPS. Intel's software can use these drives as a caching medium to speed up reads and writes, thus making your system more responsive. Most SSD manufacturers already ship software that does this with a portion of your RAM, so if you don't mind losing a few GBs of RAM it's more practical to just use that software. With all the chipset / cpu / hardware limitations of using optane, Intel has managed to take a pretty straight forward way of enhancing your system's responsiveness and make it as convoluted and expensive as possible. I suggest you check out PrimoCache. It lets you cache any / all drives on your system using an L1 RAM cache and L2 SSD Cache (amazing with M.2 Drives). I believe AMD is shipping a software solution like this with their x470 chipsets for Ryzen 2.

Useless waste of an M.2 socket. It would be much better to place an NVMe SSD of a decent size into that socket instead. If it was instead a real Otane SSD of a usable size, heavily discounted when bought in that package with a CPU, it would make a lot more sense. Now it's obvious Intel manufactured too many of those Optane cache things and are trying to get rid of them using any means imaginable.

"Useless waste of an M.2 socket..." Useless+stewpid. Intel obviously "thinks" they are over+Intel+igent, whereas the rest of the world sleeps in diapers... What I see is: Intel itself is in a deep sleep + in a $hi*ty diapers... It's gonna be a deep$hit wake-up one fine day.

Does Optane memory actually help? M2 speeds are already pretty high, so not sure how Optane will help with that?

Seagate Firecuda did prove that it is not some kind of miracle. In some cases it did perform bit better than normal HDD in some cases worse. 8GB SSD which it has is not enough. 16GB makes no difference. What makes difference is user having brain and using adequate drive type for each data type.

Can they sell these as regular, plus and premium? https://media.angieslist.com/s3fs-public/styles/widescreen_large/s3/s3fs-public/fuelgrades.jpg?itok=1v8a4Ms9

vbetts:

Does Optane memory actually help? M2 speeds are already pretty high, so not sure how Optane will help with that?

Optane 900p helps 🙂 Perfect for OS, programs and games. 4k random read @ QD=1 is way faster than m.2 nvme ssd's

nizzen:

Optane 900p helps 🙂 Perfect for OS, programs and games. 4k random read @ QD=1 is way faster than m.2 nvme ssd's

I get that part, but does is actually make a noticeable difference? Not something like the OS loads .1 seconds faster, or puts your FPS from 50 to 51 or your frame timing little better, is it a worthwhile addition to an Intel system?

Seeing as Windows is still terrible at handling paging files in system with oodles of RAM, I think one of these drives would be ok as a dedicated paging file drive. I still wouldn't buy one, though. For a capacity this small, I'd rather just partition my RAM as a scratch disk.

vbetts:

I get that part, but does is actually make a noticeable difference? Not something like the OS loads .1 seconds faster, or puts your FPS from 50 to 51 or your frame timing little better, is it a worthwhile addition to an Intel system?

No. I put OS on any SSD, old, new 3Gbps / 6Gbps, does not matter. IOPs is benefit on its own. And for OS drive where data are mainly loaded at boot time, it is waste to use 3200MB/s M.2 drive. And for games, it is actually bit opposite, IOPs are secondary bonus which any half decent SATA SSD has plenty. Main thing is actual read speed as today games have easily 40GB+. This 16GB cache may help tiny bit here and there. But mainly old good HDD can benefit. And if someone feels that content which is on HDD performs badly, then ti should be moved to SSD. I run steam libraries on HDD and SSD. HDD is for games where loading times are good (small games or have good caching). Those which misbehave go to SSD. I would rather put money aside for M.2 than to buy this thing. Even 64GB is not worth it for home user as it takes valuable M.2 slot.

As far as comparing...say a 32 gig optane vs 32 gig of ddr 4, yes ddr 4 is faster but also a lot more expensive, seems to be a lot saying optane is a waste of money but has anyone bought one and given it chance to learn what files to give cache priority. Also using ram as a cache drive means all data needs loading at startup where as optane...as far as i know is non-volatile so data is already loaded.

The Goose:

As far as comparing...say a 32 gig optane vs 32 gig of ddr 4, yes ddr 4 is faster but also a lot more expensive, seems to be a lot saying optane is a waste of money but has anyone bought one and given it chance to learn what files to give cache priority. Also using ram as a cache drive means all data needs loading at startup where as optane...as far as i know is non-volatile so data is already loaded.

A few things: 1. This is a 16GB drive, not 32GB. I personally would be a little more open to 32GB, since you can do a lot more with that, but they're still pretty limiting. 2. Since we're looking at 16GB here, it wouldn't take that long to fill/read from 16GB RAM drive. I figure most people who get the 16GB drive are only using temporary data, anyway; stuff you don't expect to keep after reboots. 3. Sure, RAM is more expensive, but at least you're not limited by what motherboard/chipset and CPU you're allowed to use it on. Also, when you don't need a high-performance cache/scratch disk, just disable the RAM drive and use your memory like normal memory. If RAM were back to mid 2016 prices, Optane would be an even tougher sell. 4. There's no point in giving it a chance. These 16GB models are too niche to be of any interest. If I want the sheer speed, a RAM drive is a more practical option. If I want a good mix between high performance and non-volatility, I'd rather get an SSD with a larger capacity (or, just a larger Optane). If I wanted a cheap non-volatile drive and didn't care much about performance, I'd get a USB flash drive. These low-capacity Optanes just don't cater to any market that makes sense. It's not so much that these are bad drives, because they're not. But they're not worth buying.

Not worth it for someone who already has some thing like a Samsung 960 pro, but someone on sata 3 ssd would gain...even on a 16 gig optane

For the swap file?

Could this be their way of combatting the loss of performance relating to spectre patches?