Questions on Intel Optane

[smoke665]

Lately I've been seeing computers advertised with 8GB of memory and 16GB of Intel Optane.

• What is it???? How does it work?
• How does it compare to 16GB of memory??
• How well does it work with Lightoom or Photoshop?

 

[snowbear113 44]

It seems to be a bridge between RAM and hard drive.

https://www.howtogeek.com/317294/what-is-intel-optane-memory/

 

[smoke665]

It seems to be a bridge between RAM and hard drive.

As it appears to be more attuned to caching then storage, I'm wondering how well it might work with Lr or Ps as they rely heavily on caching

 

[RowdyRay]

Yes it's for caching. Not storage. Sounds like it will turn a traditional hard drive more into a Hybrid.

We're moving to Solid State hard drives. They're super fast, no mechanical parts and costly. I have a hybrid. Part solid state, part traditional. It learns and stores info for frequently used programs. Like Windows. My boot up is faster than any previous PC. You can have tons of fast RAM, but it's erased every time you power down or reboot. Solid State is not.

Depending on the cost, and if your PC is compatible, it may help. But a hybrid hard drive is probably cheaper. At least until the SSDs come down in price.

 

[smoke665]

Depending on the cost, and if your PC is compatible, it may help. But a hybrid hard drive is probably cheaper. At least until the SSDs come down in price.

Looking at a new computer. Trying to decide if the Optane will perform equally with 16GB of ram.

 

[jcdeboever]

Depending on the cost, and if your PC is compatible, it may help. But a hybrid hard drive is probably cheaper. At least until the SSDs come down in price.

Looking at a new computer. Trying to decide if the Optane will perform equally with 16GB of ram.

Two different things.

Optane will be a noticable improvement on general use, day to day performance over ram. Put it this way, people think by adding ram will make their general computing experience faster but it really isn't noticeable. Stick an SSD drive in, and their like, Wow, your a genius. So Optane will be noticable.

High end computing calculation and 3D rendering will benefit from physical ram modules.

Optane was designed for the business customer that choose massive storage space, cost of data per GB, over speed. This technology helps increase performance at the spin drive.

@smoke665 .... if I were building a windows based photo computer today, and lots of storage space was important, this would be a technology to consider. However, this is marketing on a consumer level. The hardware was initially designed as a performance and cost saving solution for the mass storage commercial user. The Optane module requires a specific Intel chipset which is becoming a current standard, much like PCI, AGP, PCIe became.

 

[smoke665]

@jcdeboever the SSD drive is on my short list as well. I'm wavering between a desktop and a laptop, with the laptop probably the winner because of travel. What would be the minimum size SSD you'd go with in a laptop? I've found a few with both HD and SSD's. Plus there's always the option of an external.

 

[jcdeboever]

@jcdeboever the SSD drive is on my short list as well. I'm wavering between a desktop and a laptop, with the laptop probably the winner because of travel. What would be the minimum size SSD you'd go with in a laptop? I've found a few with both HD and SSD's. Plus there's always the option of an external.

512 GB.