Intel Optane Memory: The Revolutionary Memory Booster Is Here!

Intel has recently announced to ship Optane memory products in the M.2 format in the second quarter of 2017. The newest Optane Memory promises to dramatically improve PC performance and shorten boot time.

Intel's Optane SSD DC P4800X Is said to bridge the performance gap of the NAND density and DRAM performance in types of data workloads. Intel Optane Memory will work on 7th Gen Core i5/i7-based systems with the Z270, Q270, H270, Q250, and B250 chipsets. The same chipsets are supported on Core i3 processors as well, in addition to the C236.

However, the drive is not yet meant for home users, instead, the first real Optane drives are built for enterprise use. Intel stated that the consumer versions of the Optane will be coming out later, a report from Digital Trends said.

The first two Optane Memory devices are meant to be used mainly as cache drives for a traditional hard drive. So if you are thinking on how to install Windows 10 on one of these, you can't.

Unlike DRAM's, the Optane Memory works like an HDD or an SSD which retains data when the PC is turned off. This would be greatly beneficial for enterprise and consumer users, as the benefits could be substantial: faster application launching, instant booting, and a lot better video game experience.

According to PC World, this Optane Memory will be available in two M.2 trims: The 16GB model for $44 and the 32GB model for $77. Both are said to be rated with crazy-fast read speeds of 1.2GBps and writes of 280MBps.

Intel's Optane Memory won't be replacing SSDs any time soon. Rather, the new device will work in combination with very large HDDs to improve performance on high-end PCs.

The first PC brands that will contain the 16GB and 32GB Optane storage were namely the Lenovo, HP, and Dell. The storage will first go into sockets on motherboards.