Intel Optane acts as a cache to speed up your system, but just how well does it perform
in a laptop?
To find out I’ve tested a laptop in a number of different tests and benchmarks to help
you decide if Intel’s Optane technology is worth it.
To test this out I’m using an HP 15 laptop, it’s got an Intel i7-8550U CPU, 4GB of memory,
and Nvidia MX130 graphics.
For storage the primary disk and boot drive is a 1TB 5,400RPM hard drive, but this is
paired with a 16gb Intel Optane module, which is what we’re going to be focussing on here.
So what actually is Optane?
Essentially it’s an M.2 stick of 3D Crosspoint memory that acts as a cache layer in front
of another drive, but you can also use it as a standalone disk.
In my HP laptop here the theory is that the faster Optane storage will cache frequently
accessed files and applications over time, speeding up overall system performance when
compared to running off of the hard drive only.
It’s not as fast as RAM, but it’s non-volatile, so unlike RAM data is saved to the Optane
module even if you turn the power off.
It uses a standard M.2 slot, two lanes of PCIe and requires a 7th generation Intel CPU
or higher.
These are the raw speeds of the hard drive and the Optane module stand alone, so with
Optane disabled and not performing any caching, just to show you the baseline differences
in performance between the two types of storage, and as we can see the reads on my 16GB Optane
stick are much higher than the hard drive, though the writes aren’t that much improved
in comparison, but for something primarily acting as a caching device you’d want better
reads anyway.
The larger 32GB Optane module does have faster read and write speeds though, so more performance
is available.
With all that in mind let’s take a look at some Optane enabled benchmarks.
All tests with Optane enabled were tested after enabling Optane from the disabled state,
as Intel note that you can’t flush the Optane cache, so you’ve instead got to go through
the slow process of disabling it and enabling it again.
It’s quick to enable, but can take a while to disable, as presumably it has to copy the
data off to the hard drive.
With a clear cache I’ve run each test three times with a reboot in between to flush the
faster RAM from caching things, with the idea being that we should see improved speeds each
time with Optane, as what we’re opening frequently starts to get cached.
To start with I’ve tested Windows boot times, no Linux support with Optane at this time
unfortunately.
As we can see there’s quite a large improvement using Intel’s Optane in this test after
the first initial cache.
The first boot did take slightly longer than just running off of the hard drive only, I’m
not sure if that was because it was part of the Optane enabling process, as a reboot is
required going from disabled to enabled.
Intel note that within three boot cycles after enabling Optane it should take less time to
boot the OS, and this was holding true in my testing.
Next up after the operating system had fully loaded after each reboot I opened the Google
Chrome browser, so nothing should have been in RAM as this was straight after reboot,
and we can see that with Optane enabled the load time got faster with each test, but it’s
worth noting I measured this as best I could with a stopwatch, so there are minor inaccuracies
due to that, however the results do definitely show us the trend of the Optane cache improving
performance over time.
I’ve also tested opening a game, Overwatch in this case, the first time with Optane enabled
shown in lightest blue was longer than subsequent loadings, though a little ahead of just on
hard drive only, possibly as the Optane cache was being written to the first time and caching
the files, and again like the other tests each test was performed after a full Windows
reboot, so system RAM was flushed between runs.
Here are the results of some synthetic benchmarks, a bit less useful compared to the real world
tests just discussed, but provided for completeness.
Starting with Crystal Disk Mark with Optane enabled the read and write speeds do improve
a little after the first pass, and here are the results from ATTO benchmark which test
different sizes and also lists IOPS.
Honestly not too useful as as soon as the first part of the test runs the Optane module
has cached the results, and with these tests it seems like the first pass is using the
Optane module anyway.
It’s also worth mentioning that you won’t see any improvements to games in terms of
frame rate, I’ve previously compared gaming on a hard drive and SSD in the past and there
was no notable difference in the titles I used, the biggest gains are definitely to
be had from loading the required game files into RAM from slower disk.
I’ve also only tested the scenario where a hard drive acting as the boot drive is sped
up, Optane is now also capable of caching for a separate data disk, so although not
what I have in my configuration, you could in theory have an SSD boot drive, 2TB hard
drive and then an Optane module providing caching of the hard drive, honestly probably
a more useful use case.
Results will of course vary on many factors, for example if I frequently open various video
files that are multiple gigabytes in size I’d quickly fill up my Optane cache, making
it less efficient if the contents have to keep changing, granted probably not the most
common scenario, but worth considering, such a use case would likely benefit from a larger
Optane module.
The 32GB Optane modules and above also give you the option to pin files, so basically
you select the files, folders or applications that you know you use often so that they always
stay cached on the Optane storage for faster access, rather than relying on the Intel software
to figure it out for you.
In terms of general usage, with Optane disabled I did notice that Windows felt less responsive,
it’s hard to accurately measure but just interacting with the start menu felt slow
and tedious, it was noticeably better with Optane enabled.
That’s not to say Optane is a silver bullet though.
With my 16GB Optane module the write speeds aren’t much faster than a standard hard
drive, so as soon as Windows update were going and writing away to disk responsiveness definitely
took a nosedive, granted that would be an issue with just a hard drive by itself too,
but not something you’d typically see to this degree with an SSD.
In general for most people it probably makes more sense to use an SSD instead of an Optane
module where possible, the classic SSD boot drive and hard drive data disk combination
works well, and with an SSD you’re always getting much better read and writes compared
to a hard drive.
There are also third party applications you can install that will use an SSD as a cache
for a hard drive, though that is definitely more of a power user thing compared to Optane’s
simplicity, especially if your laptop comes with Optane as it’s ready to go out of the
box.
So what’s the price difference between a stick of Optane and an M.2 SSD?
You can check up to date pricing using the links in the description as things will change
over time, but at the time of recording the 16GB stick I’m testing in this HP laptop
goes for about $30 USD.
So can we actually buy an M.2 SSD for $30?
Turns out we can, granted it will run at SATA speeds and not have quite as fast read speed
as the Optane module, but I think in many cases the faster write speeds of the SSD would
improve overall system usability.
For just a few dollars more than a 16GB Optane module we could instead have a 120GB M.2 SSD,
not bad.
I would of really liked to have compared a similarly priced SSD, but I didn’t have
one on hand, but based on the read and write speeds noted for the price it’s pretty safe
to say that performance would be quite a nice step up for all round performance as there’s
no cache layer to deal with, although for larger data drives of 1TB and above it would
be too expensive for most people to buy an SSD of that size to fit all their data, so
the hard drive and Optane combo makes more sense there, honestly depends entirely on
your use case as to what’s best.
The technology is definitely interesting, but in terms of price to performance I think
most users who know what they’re doing will be better off running an SSD, though as discussed
there are some niche use cases for Optane, especially if you’re not a power user.
There are some well priced laptops available with Optane preinstalled, and at those lower
price points it’s better than just having a standard hard drive by itself, but personally
I’d be happy with a smaller SSD only.
If the laptop also had a large hard drive installed then sure by all means Optane me
up on that, but finding a budget laptop with two M.2 slots and a 2.5 inch drive bay may
limit this to more expensive models.
Let me know what you guys think about using Intel’s Optane to speed up disk access in
laptops down in the comments, and don’t forget to subscribe for future tech videos
like this one.