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I haven't found a good source to answer this question which deals with Intel's Optane products. I'm looking to build a new gaming computer primarily but I also do use my computer for the occasional video edit or design work (among the traditional computing tasks of email and web).

I saw the article for the Optane SSD which is expensive, but promising and then I came across a motherboard that supported x2 Optane Memory slots and started researching that more.

My understanding is that the Optane Memory was geared towards individuals who use HDD's and not SSD's, so if you're looking to get an Optane SSD it stands to reason that you would not need the Optane Memory modules. However, looking at the rates of the Optane Memory, I read it is "rated for crazy-fast read speeds of 1.2GBps and writes of 280MBps" (PCWorld). Whereas the speeds of the Optane SSD are listed as "Up to 550K IOPS 4k Read; Up to 500K IOPS 4k Write" (Newegg). On Newegg's listing for the Optane Memory the speeds are "Up to 240k IOPS 4k Read; Up to 650K IOPS 4k Write" (Newegg).

So with those speeds it looks like there is differences in the reads/writes of both. So if you choose one over the other, it would be best to go with the Optane SSD it seems (with the exception of that Memory Write speed), but can they be stacked?

Would you get any benefit to using an Optane SSD with Optane Memory or even a NAND SSD with Optane Memory? Additionally, if you were to have a C: drive as an SSD and one or more HDD's as secondary drives, would those benefit from Optane Memory if the primary SSD is an Optane SSD?

Thanks in advance!

Jeremy
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So, the Optane memory modules are a disk cache:

The second time an application is launched or a file is used, it is accelerated and the user will experience the vast majority of the benefit. On the third run is technically when the full benefit kicks in.

Note: Intel® Optane™ memory prioritizes frequently used files and applications for acceleration. Thus, infrequently used files and applications may fall out of the cache overtime.

( source )

Adding this for an HDD is very similar to using an HDD/SSD hybrid and your system already does similar caching using system memory (though system memory is volatile, there is still some persistence AFAIK)

The above document also states that the memory:

can be used to accelerate any type of SATA-based storage media, including SATA SSDs

So if the Optane Memory is faster than the storage it is backing, then it will be a benefit of some sort: the benefit is the gap between how fast the cache is and how fast the storage is.

On an SSD, the result is going to be far less noticeable, since the goal is to cache things so they get fed from the Optane memory rather than actually reading from the storage.

It is really important, however, to understand that the majority of games do the majority of their loading up front so the performance they are talking about is time-to-load: how long it takes before you get control of your game piece.

This tweak will, realistically, have little impact on frame rates, excepting the unicorn-rare game that streams without any sort of preloading.

Gameplay today is not that different between an SSD based system and an HDD based system since the game data is loaded into DRAM during game play. Adding Intel® Optane™ memory is not expected to enhance game play unless the game vendor specifically optimizes the game to take advantage of the hardware.

You might just wind up being the first to load into the lobby.

Check the required specs in that document before you commit so you know your system will support it. I could not find any info about whether or not it works with multiple drives, whether it needs to be paired with a specific drive etc. but you might try and dig up a manual.

IMO, the money is better spent on extra storage and ensuring reasonable VRAM capacity on the GPU.

Yorik
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