Okay, so if you've read the title of the video, you've probably got a pretty good
idea of what's in this box. But I don't
have my knife. Clearly, at this point, I'm filming the video. I haven't read
the title, so you're going to have to humor me as we
uh come along on a voyage of discovery here.
Okay, so we know it's from Intel Corporation. Could this be the plans for
world domination that we ordered? I mean, what could be what could be red
hot rush? That sounds dirty.
All right, then. So, let's pop the side panel on this ow puppy.
There we go. and get a better look at
what's going to be pretty much the most generic damn computer I think I've ever
seen in my life. But wait,
maybe this is exactly the point they're trying
to make. Maybe this 3D cross point
accelerator Optane module is so amazing
that it can make even this mid2000
style beauty fly.
Well, let's see if it can.
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All right, so what do we got here? We got B250 motherboard, the most generic
RAM ever, WD Black, Core i57500. Yeah.
Okay, whatever. Let's let's skip all over that. Let's get straight to the
Optane memory series, Opane module,
whatever. Let's let's skip over to this thing. So, this is a fundamentally new
type of computer memory. It's different
from both NAND flash and DRAM, offering
up a lot of the benefits of both. So, lightning fast latency and lower cost
than system memory and lower cost than
system memory. Okay, here let's just pull this out with the ability to retain
the data without being constantly powered on like this stuff. You can
actually learn more about 3D cross point in a couple of videos that we've done in
the past, which you can check out in the cards up there. Okay. So, the way this
is supposed to work, why am I holding this? Sorry. The way this is supposed to
work is kind of like Intel's SRT
technology of yestery year, where you would take a a small SSD and you would
like bolt it to a larger hard drive in order to accelerate your operating
system and frequently used programs. The difference though is that in the last
seven years, we've gone from 32 gigs of
NAND flash being a reasonable cost to
achieve this functionality to 32 gigs of
Optane, which Intel is boasting at the
cell level is up to a thousand times
better in terms of access latency, which should translate to dramatically
improved system responsiveness. Okay. So, for starters, let's get the
Oops. Let's get the module back in there. Get this baby fired up.
Get this baby fired up and validate Intel's claims the way the product is
intended to be used. So, an Optane module with a mechanical spinning hard
drive. Probably shouldn't have been knocking on that. So in terms of benchmarks, we used pass marks, discark,
ADO at a variety of QEPs, boot times,
and Grand Theft Auto 5 since it's
notoriously long loading times are the
bane of the existence of gamers who
really play a lot of Grand Theft Auto 5 everywhere.
But come on, you guys, this is Linus Tech Tips. You don't want to see me test
the Optane module the way it's supposed to be used, the way Intel expects us to
test it. We need uh Here, hold on. Get
one of these out of here. Ah, yes. We
need an SSD. I mean, by my logic, if an
SSD could accelerate a hard drive, cuz
it's a lot faster with much lower latency, then an Optane module
should be able to accelerate an SSD. I
asked them about this at the super embargoed event, and they refused to
answer me, opting instead to stick to the marketing message. I'm not going to
accept that. I've got the hardware in my hands. There's nothing that would
prevent me from testing this. So, let's shut this baby down the manly way.
That's right. And fire it back up with one of these and have a look at some
numbers here. Before we can evaluate whether Optane
can accelerate the SSD, we need to get a baseline reading for the SSD in all
those same performance benchmarks. So, it's a Kingston SSD now KC4001 TB. And
you can see here we've got all of our numbers run now and Intel Optane memory
is disabled. Now this is really important. We enable it by clicking
enable then yes and then it takes a
couple of seconds here in order to prepare the system, copy some files,
whatever the case may be. Okay, there we go. So now what we need to do is run all
of our benchmarks a second time to see
on our clean Optane run if there's any
improvement and the numbers are pretty
much the same but we were expecting that Optane like any caching solution works
by watching data access patterns over
time and then using the knowledge that
it gains to predict what data the user
is going to need in the future. So then
what we needed to do was run an entirely
new round of testing to get a second run
of data to see what our module learned the first time around. And this time now
we are looking at a significant difference. And by significant, I do
mean in the scientific sense, not in the sense that in realworld applications,
the average user would actually notice it since the Optane acceleration of an
SSD was only really noticeable in
synthetic benchmarks. Okay, so it's conclusion time then.
That was a lot of fun, but I think we uncovered the reason why Intel doesn't
want people talking about accelerating an SSD with an Optane module. If you
want greater than SSD performance, there
will actually be full-on Optane SSDs for
enthusiasts coming in the future. But for now, I'd recommend at the price that
they come in at, so 40 bucks or 77,
depending on the capacity you choose, I'd recommend sticking with the way
Intel's marketing them as a way to accelerate a mechanical hard drive for a
system that otherwise wouldn't be able to achieve that level of responsiveness.
It works like SRT, but thanks to the improved responsiveness, we did notice a
tangible difference day-to-day just launching applications and navigating
the operating system from having the Optane module installed on our drive. Is
it worth the 77 bucks for the top-of-the-line one? It's hard to say.
Like so many things in life, I guess it
kind of depends on your priorities. And that's where Intel has lost me a little
bit on this one because they are limiting compatibility with Optane
memory to 200 series chipsets with KBL
Lake processors and up. So most of the
people that Intel's trying to sell an accelerator module for a hard drive to
have a brand new system. And I would question why exactly it is that they
don't then have a boot SSD for that
aforementioned system. But I'd love to hear that I'm wrong. Let me know you
guys based on what you know now that Optane is flipping cool and that it
really does work. Do you see this as a
valid way to use your system or would you just kind of go, you know what, I'll
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enjoyed this video, then you can click that like button. I mean, there is also
the other one, but
and if you really enjoyed it, you can get subscribed. You can check out where
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community forum, which we will also have linked, you know, down there, if you
know what I mean.
I'm always watching out of the corner of my eye for the camera person to uh
cringe. Then I know I've delivered it just right.
Oh.