Intel’s Optane Memory Hits The Market, Available In 16GB & 32GB Densities

Following up on its announcement from last month, Intel has this week let its Optane memory loose on the market. At this point in time, two different Optane products exist, with one being targeted at the enterprise, and the other, the consumer.

As discussed in the earlier posts, Intel’s Optane sets out to accelerate user PCs through the use of caching and very fast memory. Unlike most SSDs, Optane is composed of XPoint memory, which Intel says is far more durable than NAND, and in some cases, much faster, too. In time, it could offer unparalleled levels of performance compared to standard NAND drives.

On the surface, Optane might not look too much faster than some top-end SSDs, but the real magic under-the-hood is that the performance can be exercised with a small queue depth. Whereas an SSD like Samsung’s 960 PRO can hit 330,000 IOPS at a queue depth of 32, Intel’s Optane can reach its peak of 240,000 IOPS with a QD of half that, or even less.

Intel’s target market for this particular version of Optane is the consumer, but the company has a battle ahead of it to prove that it’s worth their time. SSD users are not said to be the biggest beneficiaries of Optane; instead, HDD users are. Who uses HDDs as their main drive nowadays? People who don’t know any better. As far as I’m concerned, a “must buy” for any PC is an SSD for the OS drive. So what’s the point?

Optane is in effect a super-fast cache, and like many previous caching solutions, application performance will speed up the more the same files are accessed (and thus given a higher priority for caching). On an HDD system, the differences an Optane module could provide should be significant. A mechanical hard drive might burst a little past 100 IOPS, while this launch Optane module can hit 240,000. That’s a significant difference. Read and writes are also considerably better, at 1.25GB/s read and 290MB/s write – compare that to the ~100MB/s of a hard drive.

Based on what we know of Optane, it seems like it’d be a perfect purchase for those stuck on a hard drive, but considering the cost of $44 for a 16GB module, and $77 for the 32GB, it gets awful close to the territory where simply splurging the extra for an SSD would make more sense. A Crucial MX300 275GB drive is a mere $95 over at Amazon, after all.

Who I think Optane is actually better-suited for are those who have a modest SSD and would like to enhance their performance further – although it stands to reason that the differences are going to be minor. It’s going to be the most hardcore enthusiasts that are most interested in what Optane can do, yet it’s not actually targeted at them. But considering how difficult it’d be to actually show the performance differences with an SSD, it’d be an even harder sell.

As it stands, Optane is a bit of an odd piece of tech, but it would stand to benefit with further development. Or, at the very least, its cost should be at least close to SSDs (we’re talking a difference of $0.33/GB vs. $2.40/GB). Bear in mind also that this is not a drop-in solution for older rigs. Optane requires Kaby Lake, and those building Kaby Lake systems are undoubtedly going to be considering an SSD, as building a new rig without one would be ridiculous outside of catering to a very specific purpose.

That said, that doesn’t consider the fact that a lot of OEMs somehow still ship systems with hard drives, such as CyberPowerPC. We took a look at an awesome rig from the company a couple of months ago, and the biggest issue was the lack of an SSD. But for a modest fee, the company could now add in a 16GB module and dramatically decrease the pain that is mechanical storage (assuming it’s Kaby Lake-based, that is).

There should also come a time when Intel will be able to make consumer versions of Optane SSDs, and if for some reason that never happens, users still have the option to go the SSD + Optane route on their own – if they’re so inclined to eke as much performance as possible out of their rig. At the end of the day, Optane is an awesome technology and is built around awesome hardware, but the biggest audience right now is not the DIYer, but rather those who buy budget OEM rigs.

As the top picture can attest, we have Optane in house, and plan to take a thorough look at it soon.