Intel Optane 800p SSD 118GB

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Intel Optane 800p SSD 118GB

Last month Intel launched the Optane SSD 800P series as a step below the ultra-fast Optane 900P solid-state drives but still a big step ahead of other SSD options like the Intel 760p series. Here are our first Linux performance benchmarks of the Optane 800p series with testing the 118GB SSDPEK1W120GA 800p SSD on Ubuntu.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=26189

[tildearrow]

Typo:

the Samsung 950 PRO eded up coming slightly ahead of the 800p

[torsionbar28]

Yes it performs well, but at this paltry capacity point, what is the practical use? My PC and servers all boot from spinning hard drives still because who cares if it boots in 6 seconds vs. 18 seconds? My data sets for both PC and server are much larger than 118 GB, so even if you gave me some of these for free, I'm not sure I would have a use for them.

[Sacha]

SSDs are where you put any data that needs to be accessed quickly. Definitely your entire operating system should go there. The difference to spinning disk is night and day.
Put all your heavy data on a spinning disk, fine. It's torture to put your actual operating system on there, however.

Similarly, Optane has its place for data that needs to be really fast. In these benchmarks, for example, databases.

[Sethox]

SSDs are where you put any data that needs to be accessed quickly. Definitely your entire operating system should go there. The difference to spinning disk is night and day.
Put all your heavy data on a spinning disk, fine. It's torture to put your actual operating system on there, however.

Similarly, Optane has its place for data that needs to be really fast. In these benchmarks, for example, databases.

It's really not that big of a difference, only in moving files and certain loading times but Linux (the kernel) specifically is so damn fast, only certain GNU (graphical part) might slow the system down, but to be honest no it's not night and day. You still have to optimize your own system and that can make you gain more (mechanical harddrives in mind). Good Linux distros are so well optimized on mechanical Harddrives that SSD makes it just slight faster. Of course it depends on what want to do with your system but as long as the Linux distro that used is faster than Windows (insert number here)....

Speed is not everything though, when it comes to Linux it's always about how stable the system is after adding stuff.

[torsionbar28]

SSDs are where you put any data that needs to be accessed quickly. Definitely your entire operating system should go there. The difference to spinning disk is night and day.
Put all your heavy data on a spinning disk, fine. It's torture to put your actual operating system on there, however.

Not sure how you reached this conclusion. There is effectively zero performance gain to moving your OS from spinning disk to SSD. Zero. I know, I've benchmarked it many times. My OS is on Western Digital RE4 drives made in 2009 - they're almost a decade old! Installing major OS patches or upgrades is faster on SSD, yes, but how often are you doing that? Your day to day experience does not improve with the OS on an SSD, sorry.

If your OS runs much faster on SSD, you either need to replace your crappy OS with a better one and/or you need to install more RAM.

Your *application workload* belongs on SSD, whether it's the latest games, or a heavy database, yes. But this 118 GB optane won't hold many games, or much of a database. So what good is it?

[arbition]

Image or Video editing scratch drive? Yes scratch data can get bigger than that, but perhaps as part of a cache hierarchy.

[schmidtbag]

Not sure how you reached this conclusion. There is effectively zero performance gain to moving your OS from spinning disk to SSD. Zero. I know, I've benchmarked it many times. My OS is on Western Digital RE4 drives made in 2009 - they're almost a decade old! Installing major OS patches or upgrades is faster on SSD, yes, but how often are you doing that? Your day to day experience does not improve with the OS on an SSD, sorry.

Sorry, but all of this is just completely wrong on so many levels. It is provable not just by benchmarks but by thousands of real-world anecdotal experiences that an SSD can and will boot faster than an HDD. SSDs have a substantially noticeable impact on everything you run. This isn't up for debate; the difference is black and white. Unless you're booting an LXDE system (or no GUI at all), the performance difference is not only measurable, but noticeable. I'm not sure what piece of crap SSD you've been using, but even cheap $60 units offer substantial performance gains.
I'm not trying to talk crap about HDDs here, because I still use them in most of my PCs. SSDs still cost too much at 1TB+. But considering your reference point is a 2009 HDD, perhaps you should consider what modern hardware is actually capable of.
Whatever numbers you claim to have, there are literally hundreds of other published benchmarks from professionals that can be used against it.

If your OS runs much faster on SSD, you either need to replace your crappy OS with a better one and/or you need to install more RAM.

Unless you don't have enough RAM to run your OS in the first place, adding more RAM doesn't make your OS boot faster...
All that being said, once everything is cached into RAM, sure, an HDD is usually plenty fast enough. But you need a lot of extra RAM to fully take advantage of that, so when you account for the additional RAM costs, the SSD still makes more sense.

But this 118 GB optane won't hold many games, or much of a database. So what good is it?

This I agree with. But, it's plenty of space to run your OS, your applications (so, anything that isn't games), and is great for caches. I myself run a 64GB drive on my laptop and 2/3 of it is still free, since I don't game on it and I use a NAS for everything else.

[cb88]

Really 256GB is the bare minimum for a boot drive... give a few months and you'll have 100ish GB full the windows side by side libraries directory alone will get pretty bloaty after awhile of installs and updates.

On Linux 100GB is probably still fine for some years to come.

[untore]

seems a good drive for the l2arc. I wonder of the flexibility of optane allows to build chips for the zil though