The first Intel Optane 800p units are coming out, which are already based on 3D XPoint memories, although they are not quite convincing in terms of performance, capacity and price.

The segment of processors must seem little to Intel, because the company is working intensively on other compact, such as the development of its own graphics cards, to enter to compete with AMD and NVIDIA, for now. It is also entering the market for solid state hard drives or SSDs. For this segment it has shown the first units with 3D XPoint memories, intended for the general market. These drives offer faster speeds than SSDs with NAND Flash memories and greater durability. The first Intel Optane 800p drives will arrive in capacities of 58GB and 118GB.

The rather unusual capacity drives will arrive in M.2 2280 format and will be connected via a PCIe 3.0 x2, as well as offering support for NVMe 1.1. The read speed is 1450MB / s and the write speeds are 640MB / s, which is not bad at all. Regarding sequential reading, it offers a speed of 250.000IOPS and 140.000IOPS, in both models.

One of the great advantages of these new memories is the reduced latencies, which is 6.75µs in reading and 18µs in writing, infinitely higher than the latencies of the NAND Flash units integrated in the SSDs. Additionally, these units have a really low consumption, being 8mW when idle and 3.75W when working.

The 800GB Optane 58p will be priced at $ 129, while the 118GB version will be priced at $ 199. Logically, these prices are completely out of the market, since they are much more expensive than the SSD units that can be found on the market. For a home user, they are not worth it, for a person who is dedicated to photo and video editing, not much, really.

Source: Guru3D