Explain Intel Optane please

Winuser said:

Do you need the Optane memory? If you just need a larger drive, I don't see why you couldn't just get a 1TB NVMe drive.

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Yes that was the initial plan - I was querying whether swapping the nvme for the optane drive would cause any issues, but it seems not from what you've said. Although I am finding the optane quite intriguing now!

This seems to be the one I have. Same model number but has the octane (the hp description for the model doesn't mention octane). Same colour as well.

Hazel123 said:

HP Pavilion 14-ce3514sa

And below is the Optane program info about drive slots
View attachment 20568

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I never used that program, so I don't know if the laptop really has an open NVMe slot or not. So far all I can find is the basic laptop specs listed on the HP website.

Hazel123 said:

She doesn't lol

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Neither would I, but I do occasional graphics work, which definitely would need a bit more speed.

Wynona said:

Neither would I, but I do occasional graphics work, which definitely would need a bit more speed.

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Faster SSD Speed or processing power?

I'm following this as I got a new Dell Vostro 14" Notebook [with 8GB RAM and 256GB NVMe] 3 months ago with Win10 Pro then Upgraded to Win11 Pro. It appears to have Optane but it may not be active. It is quite fast with the things I do so don't know how much Optane will help.

Berton said:

I'm following this as I got a new Dell Vostro 14" Notebook [with 8GB RAM and 256GB NVMe] 3 months ago with Win10 Pro then Upgraded to Win11 Pro. It appears to have Optane but it may not be active. It is quite fast with the things I do so don't know how much Optane will help.

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I doubt that the average user would see a difference.

Winuser said:

Faster SSD Speed or processing power?

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Probably processing speed. I haven't done any "real" graphics since I had PaintShop Pro (before it was bought out), which was pretty slow.

Wynona said:

Probably processing speed. I haven't done any "real" graphics since I had PaintShop Pro (before it was bought out), which was pretty slow.

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When it comes to graphics or video work, I think the processor and memory are the most important. Optane memory might help if the computer had an HDD instead of an SSD.

I have a 1 TB octane nvme drive, and it is is still more responsive with optane on. I have a second nvme (not optane).

If I turn octane off I get an extra 32 GB drive which is not much use really.

Only slight negative of the optane drive is that it does not seem to be quite as write durable as my secondary nvme data drive.

Wynona said:

Neither would I, but I do occasional graphics work, which definitely would need a bit more speed.

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This article says

"I typically run two browsers with around 50 to 250 tabs and one or two Microsoft Office programs, which are lightweights by today’s standards. I also do some photo and video editing. Given my predictable usage, Optane works very well. If I did run into problems, I think I could solve them by swapping the 16GB module for a 32GB version."

Although the writer is referring to optane boosting an hdd rather than the ssd with optane inclusive. What I read elsewhere (can't remember where now) is that the 32gb module does make a difference but the 16gb might not have enough capacity for things like multimedia or other larger programs. But with the 32gb it would "remember" loading photoshop etc and the next time would load it lightning quick. So it could be useful for multimedia. Elsewhere I read that the 1tb with 32gb optane is a pretty good ssd on its own - so maybe the best of both worlds. But it does cost about £60 more than a straight Samsung NVME ssd.

Some benchmarks for the 1tb 32gb optane. Although not sure how that compares with real world usage doing various different tasks.

This is quite an indepth article on the ssd version with optane

"Random read performance is where the Optane H10 really shines, though. It achieved an average random read speed of 124MBps on the Crystal DiskMark 6.0 test, compared with just 61MBps for the 760p. Random write speeds are much closer, at an average of 113MBps for the Optane H10 and 129MBps for the SSD 760p."

"This random throughput advantage and other features unique to Optane can come into play in certain situations, such as program launches. When you're using a hard drive or an SSD as a boot drive, app launches depend in part on caching within the Windows operating system. If you start an app for the first time, you may have noticed it take a lot longer to start up the first time than it does when you close it and reopen it a second time.


Indeed, with the SSD 760p, it took 10 seconds to launch Adobe Photoshop CC on the first try, and 3 seconds on the second and third tries. With the H10, meanwhile, it took just 4 seconds on the first try, and 3 seconds on the second and third."

But as other articles say, it says a standard ssd will be faster for large data transfers.

Berton said:

I'm following this as I got a new Dell Vostro 14" Notebook [with 8GB RAM and 256GB NVMe] 3 months ago with Win10 Pro then Upgraded to Win11 Pro. It appears to have Optane but it may not be active. It is quite fast with the things I do so don't know how much Optane will help.

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If you have it installed and have the driver for it installed you should have this app in the menu. Opening that leads to the optane management page. On the management page you can turn it on or off. I'm finding this laptop with it, very speedy.

Hazel123 said:

If you have it installed and have the driver for it installed you should have this app in the menu. Opening that leads to the optane management page. On the management page you can turn it on or off. I'm finding this laptop with it, very speedy.

View attachment 20598View attachment 20599

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I have that but hadn't taken time to investigate until now but find a message that it can't find a suitable pair of disks. Further checking finds the original/factory setup with Win10 was with the RAID set in the BIOS. Whoopee, get to do a reinstall to get that changed as I have only the NVMe drive.

Thanks for this thread. I am learning from it. My specs are Acer Aspire TC-885-ACCFLi5O Desktop, 8th Gen Intel Core i5-8400, 8GB DDR4 + 16GB Optane Memory, 1TB HDD. I have struggled with the Optane from time to time in that it appears like an SDD and cannot be defragmented. Also Macrium Reflect provides a special driver for it when making a backup. Some backup programs will not recognize it. I wished I had not bought it at first, but it seems to have worked out for me with time. I am not a techie like many in here so I need to learn all I can each day,

John said:

Thanks for this thread. I am learning from it. My specs are Acer Aspire TC-885-ACCFLi5O Desktop, 8th Gen Intel Core i5-8400, 8GB DDR4 + 16GB Optane Memory, 1TB HDD. I have struggled with the Optane from time to time in that it appears like an SDD and cannot be defragmented. Also Macrium Reflect provides a special driver for it when making a backup. Some backup programs will not recognize it. I wished I had not bought it at first, but it seems to have worked out for me with time. I am not a techie like many in here so I need to learn all I can each day,

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When setup with the correct driver an Optane memory drive is not a storage drive that needs to be backed up. You could do like I did on my old desktop. I never installed the Intel driver and eventually removed it and replaced it with a 500GB NVMe drive that I made my system drive. I don't know if you have to use the Intel software to turn it off first or not. If you decide to do anything with it remember to make a system image first.

Hazel123 said:

This article says

"I typically run two browsers with around 50 to 250 tabs and one or two Microsoft Office programs, which are lightweights by today’s standards. I also do some photo and video editing. Given my predictable usage, Optane works very well. If I did run into problems, I think I could solve them by swapping the 16GB module for a 32GB version."

Although the writer is referring to optane boosting an hdd rather than the ssd with optane inclusive. What I read elsewhere (can't remember where now) is that the 32gb module does make a difference but the 16gb might not have enough capacity for things like multimedia or other larger programs. But with the 32gb it would "remember" loading photoshop etc and the next time would load it lightning quick. So it could be useful for multimedia. Elsewhere I read that the 1tb with 32gb optane is a pretty good ssd on its own - so maybe the best of both worlds. But it does cost about £60 more than a straight Samsung NVME ssd.

Should I buy a PC with Intel Optane drive acceleration?

Ruth wants to replace her old desktop PC and is trying to decide between one with an SSD and one with an Optane accelerator

www.theguardian.com

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I looked for prices here in the States, and it looks like they're a bit more proud of optane than they are in other parts of the world.

I'm not too sure the extra cost would be worth it.

I agree Wynona. This laptop happened to come with it, but if I'm looking for extra storage would I want to pay an extra £60 over the cost of a samsung evo 970 plus, to keep Optane. It would be nice to test the difference in real world use. Which isn't possible without buying the Samsung!

John said:

Thanks for this thread. I am learning from it. My specs are Acer Aspire TC-885-ACCFLi5O Desktop, 8th Gen Intel Core i5-8400, 8GB DDR4 + 16GB Optane Memory, 1TB HDD. I have struggled with the Optane from time to time in that it appears like an SDD and cannot be defragmented. Also Macrium Reflect provides a special driver for it when making a backup. Some backup programs will not recognize it. I wished I had not bought it at first, but it seems to have worked out for me with time. I am not a techie like many in here so I need to learn all I can each day,

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That is interesting - so when you say you need a special driver for making a back up with Macrium, do you mean a system image backup? Surely a system image could be made without needing a driver? I made one of this laptop when first setting it up - but just used the built in Windows 7 imaging program initially and it just made an image without issue. I might try doing one in EaseUS as well and see what happens.

Berton said:

I have that but hadn't taken time to investigate until now but find a message that it can't find a suitable pair of disks. Further checking finds the original/factory setup with Win10 was with the RAID set in the BIOS. Whoopee, get to do a reinstall to get that changed as I have only the NVMe drive.

View attachment 20601

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I don't quite understand that. Do you mean the original Optane drive was replaced with a standard nvme at some point? In which case the Optane app won't show anything as your photo shows. But does the computer work fine anyway? No issues with booting or bios? I read that to replace the optane ssd with a standard one, all you needed to do was turn optane "off" in the app, before replacing the drive.