News Intel Core i9 Buyers Can Add a 280 GB Optane SSD for $1 at Amazon

[Admin]

Amazon currently has a bundle deal on 12th Gen Core i9 processors and the Optane 900P 280 GB SSD.

Intel Core i9 Buyers Can Add a 280 GB Optane SSD for $1 at Amazon : Read more

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

The funny thing being that with game sizes being so large, it won't be long before you can only got 1 or 2 games on it.

 

[Lucky_SLS]

Maybe for those ppl who use storage speed up softwares like fuzedrive...

 

[helper800]

For those of you wondering why this is a good deal, and how fast this drive is for practical use as an OS drive, here is a chart that will not be matched for years to come. Optane is still the fastest low queue depth drives available.

 

[jeremyj_83]

For those of you wondering why this is a good deal, and how fast this drive is for practical use as an OS drive, here is a chart that will not be matched for years to come. This is still the fastest low queue depth drive available.

The QD1 performance for Optane drives is amazing. I use them for the caching drives at work for my all NVMe VMware vSAN array. We have a different all flash (75% NVMe) SDS with 48GB RAM caching and the vSAN is noticeably faster in writes.

 

[cyrusfox]

Always sad to see such promising technology relegated to the budget bin. Guess Intel/Amazon are clearing old stock. I am personally waiting on a cheap p5800x Happy to even buy that used with how good the endurance is(182k cycles).

 

[TCA_ChinChin]

For those of you wondering why this is a good deal, and how fast this drive is for practical use as an OS drive, here is a chart that will not be matched for years to come. This is still the fastest low queue depth drive available.

How would something like this or the P1600X 118GB model fare as a boot drive compared to more modern high end PCIe gen 4 SSDs like WD SN850x, Samsung 990 Pro, or SK Hynix P41? The charts you've linked were to some pretty old SSDs. Was thinking of upgrading my current gen 3 ssd (move the current gen 3 drive to be only storage and buying a new 1 tb ssd for OS + couple of apps). Would optane latency and low queue depth performance translate into snappier Windows experience compared to a modern PCIe gen 4/5 SSD? I wouldn't be getting this bundle deal since I already have a 7600x build, but I've been seeing some deals on optane P1600x and P905 drives and wondering if they're worth it.

 

[cyrusfox]

How would something like this or the P1600X 118GB model fare as a boot drive compared to more modern high end PCIe gen 4 SSDs like WD SN850x, Samsung 990 Pro, or SK Hynix P41?

I have a couple P1600x, and I would say not worth it for the trade offs (Exceptional QD1 performance @ limited size and slow sequentials). Perhaps Optane is slightly snappier, but I found it imperceptible. The hangups of Optane bug me more than the benefit, Optane is always hot with its high idle consumption and total capacity is far too small.

If you get a killer deal on a larger drive (480gb+) and you want to play with it, by all means go play with this twilight tech. But as a boot drive, I would save the money and get a $20 512gb used NVME drive. 58GB,118GB drives make sense for a cache/specific use case but are too costly and small.

 

[bit_user]

This is still the fastest low queue depth drive available.

Uh, I rather doubt that. The 900p is first-gen and was much improved upon by the 905p, which is still PCIe 3.0.

The P5800X is a non-consumer product using newer-gen Optane memory and PCIe 4.0 interface. In terms of QD1 IOPS, it smokes its predecessors. Not available in PCIe form factor, however.

On the same Crystal Disk benchmark, it got 403.6 MB/s.

Intel Optane DC P5800X 800GB Workstation SSD Review

In our Intel Optane DC P5800X 800GB SSD review, we see how this high-end data center drive performs as a workstation SSD

www.servethehome.com

I am personally waiting on a cheap p5800x Happy to even buy that used with how good the endurance is(182k cycles).

I predict you'll only find good deals on them used. Even then, demand could keep prices relatively high, since there's not currently anything quite like them.

NAND-backed DRAM should eventually take their place, but those products will likely be CXL-based.

 

[tek-check]

Wow! They must be desperate to sell old stock...

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

I wonder if you can use a 280GB Optane SSD as "Optane Memory" — like the M.2 x2 drives that were 32GB or 16GB. If the Optane Memory software supports the 280GB drive as an option, it might be kind of cool to have a big cache like that.

As for why Optane died, it was just really expensive to make is my understanding. With 3D NAND and QLC improving in performance, plus other controller optimizations to improve QD1 workloads on M.2 SSDs, it just couldn't effectively compete. There are still data center people that run Optane for this reason, but 3D XPoint didn't scale and get significantly better with newer nodes I guess.

 

[jeremyj_83]

I wonder if you can use a 280GB Optane SSD as "Optane Memory" — like the M.2 x2 drives that were 32GB or 16GB. If the Optane Memory software supports the 280GB drive as an option, it might be kind of cool to have a big cache like that.

As for why Optane died, it was just really expensive to make is my understanding. With 3D NAND and QLC improving in performance, plus other controller optimizations to improve QD1 workloads on M.2 SSDs, it just couldn't effectively compete. There are still data center people that run Optane for this reason, but 3D XPoint didn't scale and get significantly better with newer nodes I guess.

I'm one of those datacenter people running Optane but only as the caching tier for VMware vSAN. The QD1-4 iOPS in conjunction with the high DWPD cannot be ignored in this sense. IMO this is where Optane is really able to shine as it was never fast enough to be a real RAM "replacement" even in newer versions.

 

[Ewitte]

Depends on the case I have 58GB, 2x118GB and 2x 960GB 905p drives. I mostly utilize them on my servers. Partially for ZFS and partially for running vms/containers directly.

 

[USAFRet]

I wonder if you can use a 280GB Optane SSD as "Optane Memory" — like the M.2 x2 drives that were 32GB or 16GB. If the Optane Memory software supports the 280GB drive as an option, it might be kind of cool to have a big cache like that.

They were two different things, unfortunately under the same name.
That is one of the things that killed it...confusion.

 

[Leadros]

is it big enough for Windows 11? You probably have to disable 1/2 of the options to get it to run correctly

 

[USAFRet]

is it big enough for Windows 11? You probably have to disable 1/2 of the options to get it to run correctly

280GB.
Yes, that is certainly large enough, without disabling anything.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

They were two different things, unfortunately under the same name.
That is one of the things that killed it...confusion.

I know they were different, but I'm pretty sure that at one point Optane Memory (the software) was updated to allow you to use larger drives. Like, there was the 118GB M.2 Optane 800p, and I know for sure that you could use that as a caching drive or a standalone drive.

Anyway, even if Optane Memory won't let you use the 900p as a caching drive, there are other similar utilities that can do that. So you could run PrimoCache for example. That's $30, so $31 for a 280GB caching SSD might not be a terrible idea.

 

[thestryker]

This could definitely be interesting to use as a caching device. It doesn't look like the Optane Memory software supports anything other than the consumer M.2 drives.

As for 3D Xpoint cancelation itself it seemed to be a culmination of a lot of things. Manufacturing undoubtedly cost a lot, and scaling wasn't guaranteed though it did seem to scale fairly linearly between gen 1 and 2. Intel would have had to spin up a chunk of fab space as well as get the technology working on their manufacturing processes. Gelsinger wasn't interested in advocating for a technology which was never going to deliver big margins. Lastly it seemed like Intel banked on the memory aspect more than the storage one and DRAM caught up capacity wise.

I keep hoping a similar tech will make it to the consumer space as the forthcoming enterprise solutions will never be viable on consumer platforms. XL-Flash is the closest tech that I've seen actual benchmarks for, but no devices have been generally available on the market.

 

[bit_user]

I keep hoping a similar tech will make it to the consumer space as the forthcoming enterprise solutions will never be viable on consumer platforms. XL-Flash is the closest tech that I've seen actual benchmarks for, but no devices have been generally available on the market.

I don't see the value proposition for consumers. Even if they don't have things like virus scanners getting in the way, it's just really hard to notice an improvement in read latency, when they're already so low.

As for writing, the OS normally buffers writes in DRAM, so you don't often "feel" the native write speed of the medium, anyway. In those instances when you do, the pseudo-SLC write buffers tend to be large enough and fast enough for the amount of data people typically write in one go.

And I don't really see why consumers would need endurance of even 1 DWPD.

 

[helper800]

How would something like this or the P1600X 118GB model fare as a boot drive compared to more modern high end PCIe gen 4 SSDs like WD SN850x, Samsung 990 Pro, or SK Hynix P41? The charts you've linked were to some pretty old SSDs. Was thinking of upgrading my current gen 3 ssd (move the current gen 3 drive to be only storage and buying a new 1 tb ssd for OS + couple of apps). Would optane latency and low queue depth performance translate into snappier Windows experience compared to a modern PCIe gen 4/5 SSD? I wouldn't be getting this bundle deal since I already have a 7600x build, but I've been seeing some deals on optane P1600x and P905 drives and wondering if they're worth it.

The older optane drives like the P1600X would still beat modern drives in low queue depth metrics, however, it would be beaten on most other things if not all. Here's the thing, low queue depth performance is 80% of what a consumer will benefit from, and they are not atrociously slow for everything they lose on.

Uh, I rather doubt that. The 900p is first-gen and was much improved upon by the 905p, which is still PCIe 3.0.

The P5800X is a non-consumer product using newer-gen Optane memory and PCIe 4.0 interface. In terms of QD1 IOPS, it smokes its predecessors. Not available in PCIe form factor, however.


On the same Crystal Disk benchmark, it got 403.6 MB/s.

​

Intel Optane DC P5800X 800GB Workstation SSD Review

In our Intel Optane DC P5800X 800GB SSD review, we see how this high-end data center drive performs as a workstation SSD

www.servethehome.com

​

I predict you'll only find good deals on them used. Even then, demand could keep prices relatively high, since there's not currently anything quite like them.

NAND-backed DRAM should eventually take their place, but those products will likely be CXL-based.

When I made that statement I was referring to Optane in general against standard flash based drives. No nvme flash based drive comes close to the performance of the P5800X in low queue depth, and the P5800X is not slow at most traditionally flash advantaged tasks either.

 

[thestryker]

I don't see the value proposition. Even if they don't have things like virus scanners getting in the way, it's just really hard to notice an improvement in read latency, when they're already so low. As for writing, the OS normally buffers writes in DRAM, so you don't often "feel" the native write speed of the medium, anyway. In those instances when you do, the pseudo-SLC write buffers tend to be large enough and fast enough for the amount of data people typically write in one go. And I don't really see why consumers would need endurance of even 1 DWPD.

I think it mostly depends on what the pricing looks like as Optane was definitely much too large of a price premium. The random read performance can make a difference with data streaming (write as you say is usually covered by the buffers) if it's in smaller chunks. That's where I've noticed it mostly on the drives I have versus their NAND counterparts.

That being said with the software side stuff Solidigm has been working on showing a lot of promise benefits could be negated just by using resources already available.

 

[bit_user]

That being said with the software side stuff Solidigm has been working on showing a lot of promise benefits could be negated just by using resources already available.

I'm intrigued. Got a link?

BTW, I'm planning to buy a Solidigm D7-P5520 for my next SSD (also sold as Intel P5520). Here's a thread I started about it:

Discussion - Datacenter SSDs for Home Lab

With SSD prices near bottoming-out, I got the idea that it's probably a good time to replace some of the older SSDs in various machines I use. I'll be first to admit that none of these is subject to particularly intensive use, but I always like to "over-build" my machines, particularly when it...

forums.tomshardware.com

 

[thestryker]

I'm intrigued. Got a link?

I'm not sure what all they've got going for enterprise, but on the client side this: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/solidigms-new-synergy-20-ssd-driver-claims-up-to-170-speed-up

I haven't seen any independent reviews of the drives with and without the driver yet unfortunately.

L1T also had a really interesting interview on the topic which led me to believe they've got bigger plans than what we've seen:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YBeriMsDS0

 

[bit_user]

I'm not sure what all they've got going for enterprise, but on the client side this: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/solidigms-new-synergy-20-ssd-driver-claims-up-to-170-speed-up

Thanks! Comments left in that thread.