SSD vs SSD+Intel Optane

[Deleted member 362816]

Sandisk 960GB Ultra 2 SSD
Intel Optane 16GB NVME PCIE

Simple question I am going to post two photos with benchmarks from each. Please tell me what is the best way to use my drive. Some people prefer higher Reads. Some Higher Writes. I noticed with Optane+SSD I have very high reads but low writes. Curious on what is the best option over all.

Thanks much.

SSD+OPTANE

SSD ONLY

 

[geofelt]

Not such a simple question.
When you use optane as a cache, the pattern of your I/O is all important.
If the working set of I/O for an app can be contained in the 16gb of optane storage, you will fly.
Most of the time, it is the latency time when at a low queue depth that matters.
That is what Windows C drive does mostly.
Do not be much swayed by vendor synthetic SSD benchmarks.
They are done with apps that push the SSD to it's maximum using queue lengths of 30 or so.
Most desktop users will do one or two things at a time, so they will see queue lengths of one or two.
What really counts is the response times, particularly for small random I/O. That is what the os does mostly.
For that, the response times of current SSD's are remarkably similar. And quick. They will be 50X faster than a hard drive.
In sequential operations, they will be 2x faster than a hard drive, perhaps 3x if you have a sata3 interface.
Larger SSD's are preferable. They have more nand chips that can be accessed in parallel. Sort of an internal raid-0 if you will.
Also, a SSD will slow down as it approaches full. That is because it will have a harder time finding free nand blocks to do an update without a read/write operation.

Neither of the two benchmarks will look as good as a simple Samsung 960 pcie x4 drive.

 

[Deleted member 362816]

I know that there are better single drive options. I already own these 2 products so I am trying to figure out if its worth running the Optane 16gb stick with the ssd or just run the ssd alone and eBay the optane.

Thanks for the information. I'm sure in real world I will never notice it.

Not such a simple question.
When you use optane as a cache, the pattern of your I/O is all important.
If the working set of I/O for an app can be contained in the 16gb of optane storage, you will fly.
Most of the time, it is the latency time when at a low queue depth that matters.
That is what Windows C drive does mostly.
Do not be much swayed by vendor synthetic SSD benchmarks.
They are done with apps that push the SSD to it's maximum using queue lengths of 30 or so.
Most desktop users will do one or two things at a time, so they will see queue lengths of one or two.
What really counts is the response times, particularly for small random I/O. That is what the os does mostly.
For that, the response times of current SSD's are remarkably similar. And quick. They will be 50X faster than a hard drive.
In sequential operations, they will be 2x faster than a hard drive, perhaps 3x if you have a sata3 interface.
Larger SSD's are preferable. They have more nand chips that can be accessed in parallel. Sort of an internal raid-0 if you will.
Also, a SSD will slow down as it approaches full. That is because it will have a harder time finding free nand blocks to do an update without a read/write operation.

Neither of the two benchmarks will look as good as a simple Samsung 960 pcie x4 drive.

 

[geofelt]

Go ahead and run both.
Whenever you get a cache hit you win in performance.
In particular, the single queue hits will happen much faster.

I do not know the exact implementation, but I imagine that writes will also happen faster if they are staged first into optane.