Originally Posted by
tpi2007
That is not a real review, it's a video sponsored by Intel where he didn't test with an SSD to show the differences. The same with the article in the OP, "a controlled atmosphere" as the author says and further adds: "I was not allowed to take photographs or screenshots, and we were closely supervised by Intel staff. Take these observations with a grain of salt.".
And this is very relevant because you can get a 256 GB SATA 3 SSD for under $90 or a 120 / 128 GB one for under $50 to put your OS, applications and even a game or two and they won't need a second run to realise the benefits, nor possibly yet one more when the data you want to be sped up was evicted from the Optane Memory, nor do they need a special chipset to be able to use. If the objective is to get people still using an HDD as a boot and application drive to get better performance, this isn't it because it won't work in older systems and newer systems can just have either a SATA 3 or an M.2 SSD installed. Many 2-1s and laptops are using flash storage exclusively, so what are the benefits of this? Nobody knows because nobody was allowed to test prior to release.
Semiaccurate didn't have nice things to say about what they did with the tech media. Here's an interesting read:
http://semiaccurate.com/2017/03/27/intel-crosses-unacceptable-ethical-line/
These two cache modules are a disappointing product for 2017. Their twisted examples of using a 2017 PC with 4 GB of memory (something you could get on a mid-range laptop from 9 years ago) show how this isn't what people were waiting for. Not to mention the bad taste marketing slide where they mention "Fanatic Gamer" and "eSport Gamer" (
here).
When they release a properly sized Optane Memory SSD later this year for the consumer space then we can talk again.