MacBook Air 1.6Ghz HDD vs 1.8Ghz SSD Benchmarks

[MacRumors]

http://www.macrumors.com/images/macrumorsthreadlogo.gif (http://www.macrumors.com)

Many readers are reporting shipments and delivery in our MacBook Air forum (http://forums.macrumors.com/forumdisplay.php?f=122). First impressions and notes of the MacBook Air are being compiled in this thread (http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=425946). Few head to head comparisons between the Solid State Drive (SSD) and Hard Disk Drive (HDD) versions of the MacBook Air have yet been posted, but one user (http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=4876515&postcount=9) did run Xbench 1.3 (http://www.xbench.com/) on the Apple Store's demo 1.8GHz SSD model. We've compiled those results along with earlier 1.6GHz HDD benchmarks (http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/24/first-benchmarks-macbook-air-is-the-slowest-apple-machine-on-th/) in the following table.

Overall, the results of the 1.8Ghz SSD are as expected. The 1.8GHz processor gives a small boost in CPU performance. The SSD option, however, gives the most dramatic speed increases in non-sequential file reading since there is no physical drive head to move. As expected, the SSD is slightly slower at sequential file writing, but the low seek time makes up for this when performing non-sequential writes.

Typical examples of "sequential" writes and reads are when you are loading a very large file into memory or saving it out to the drive. Non-sequential reads/writes are more common when accessing a number of different small files that may be scattered across the drive (such as booting).

A traditional hard drive has a spinning platter over which the "head" moves. In order to access different files, the head may have to physically move to reach the file. The time it takes to physical move the head contributes to the lag time. SSD drives are closer to RAM and have no physical parts to move.

Link to Chart (http://www.macrumors.com/2008/02/01/macbook-air-1-6ghz-hdd-vs-1-8gh-sdd-benchmarks/)

[Spanky Deluxe]

Impressive although not quite the light years ahead of the hard drive that I was expecting it to be. I wonder if the SSD is limited by the ATA interface?

[HenMaster6000]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/4A93 Safari/419.3)

so how fast does it boot?

[theheyes]

Be interesting to see the effect on battery life. I think overall that is going to be more important to mobile users. Someone who requires high disk performance is not going to be using an Air.

That said, even if it extended the battery life by an hour (which it wont) its a large price to pay. I dont expect them to sell many. The traditional disk is a much better option.

[Eriamjh1138@DAN]

Why does everyone think flash is so fast? It isn't. It's improving all the time, though.

Flash stands tall in the random read test because there is no "seeking" of a moving drive head.

[MacNutty]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/4A93 Safari/419.3)

Well that sells me. I'll be getting the hdd option and upgrading the drive later myself.

[eddietr]

Why does everyone think flash is so fast? It isn't. It's improving all the time, though.

Flash stands tall in the random read test because there is no "seeking" of a moving drive head.

And in real world use of a Dell, Sony, and today the MBA with SSD, I can tell you for normal use the difference is remarkable.

Benchmarks are interesting, but they don't really tell the whole story. Random small reads are something most users do a LOT of. Which is why the SSDs feel so fast in actual use.

[dual64bit]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/4A93 Safari/419.3)

makes me want to swap my 80gb drive in my air earlier than later

[shadowfax]

Impressive although not quite the light years ahead of the hard drive that I was expecting it to be. I wonder if the SSD is limited by the ATA interface?

Well, I don't think the numbers really say it all. I mean, you have to weight it. What do you do most of the time? Sequential reading is a fairly rare occurrence. As is booting it up, I don't think I would care about that, because I do it only a few times a month, if even that. What happens a lot is accessing all kinds of random files all over your hard drive, like when you load an application. From what I have read, the start up time difference is dramatic.

It is too bad that the sequential write rate is so low, but everything else, to me, is gold, particularly the part where non-sequential reading is almost entirely as fast as sequential. That is amazing, and I would say that is light years ahead of a disk with a 7-12 ms seek time.

[G5isAlive]

I am not an xbench expert but I am surprised by these low scores even for the SDD. I played with a SDD today at a mac store and applications were launching in one bounce, it subjectively felt very very fast. Faster on launch than my mac pro which scores a 60.1. What am I missing?

[MacTO]

Question is... "Would you really like to pay $1,000 for it?" :D

I wonder how many would. :rolleyes:

Cheers! :apple:

[nagromme]

Both are faster than most machines I've done heavy-duty work on! (And I've never worked on a machine with more than 2GB RAM. It's plenty for the high-end stuff I do.) Portability FAR outweighs performance for me, but dual-processor anything is likely to satisfy my need for speed.

I'm going for the 1.8 GHz because you can't upgrade that later. But I'll pass on the SSD until they get cheaper (and my warranty is out) at which time I plan to self-install a 64 or 128. (And SSD may even keep getting faster.)

Meanwhile, if I end up with huge video files (rare for me) I'll dump them to my Firewire external drive. Which luckily has a USB port too, I just noticed :)

I also have hopes for better Intel X3100 graphics drivers alongside 10.5.2, which would benefit MacBooks and MacBook Airs both. Intel seems to like Apple, and I know Apple has been working on the X3100 drivers. The X3100 should outrun the GMA950 nicely, with decent drivers.

[MrT8064]

i would love to see a GeekBench score for this! can anyone post it?

[shadowfax]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/4A93 Safari/419.3)

Well that sells me. I'll be getting the hdd option and upgrading the drive later myself.

Curious, what are you expecting? benchmarking, especially on disk speed, is virtually meaningless if, again, you don't know the weight of the factors. While the "overall" rating of the flash disk is only 2 times better than the HDD, the sustained, non-sequential read rate is 3.7-20 times better. I think that the test really belies the fact that, again, most of what you do as a user of a drive is non-sequential and not sustained. So even if the maximum read rate is only 1.5 times better than the regular HDD, the flash drive has a seek time that is something like 100 times better, and in real world usage, I would fully expect that 100x boost to become extremely useful.

Again, backing up your disk to another disk is not going to be much faster, but booting up (maybe), and especially loading applications and normal-sized files, etc. is going to be way, way faster. I wouldn't go by this table, I would go by the reviews.


I am not an xbench expert but I am surprised by these low scores even for the SDD. I played with a SDD today at a mac store and applications were launching in one bounce, it subjectively felt very very fast. Faster on launch than my mac pro which scores a 60.1. What am I missing?

see above :)

I'm going for the 1.8 GHz because you can't upgrade that later. But I'll pass on the SSD until they get cheaper (and my warranty is out) at which time I plan to self-install a 64 or 128. (And SSD may even keep getting faster.)

I totally agree with this, even though I am impressed by the results of the SSD. $1000 is a lot. I am not going to be in the market for a laptop for about 7-8 months, at which point I will likely wait for Rev. B of the MBAir. Unless SSD drops by about 30-50% by then, I am probably going to also tuck it and go with the regular HDD. With Apple's market, even going out and buying an aftermarket SSD the next day will probably save me money, along with having a spare drive. Hopefully MCE will sell them, and sell a little kit box to stick your spare drive in to make it into an external drive. I got a 7200 rpm 160 GB drive for the MBP awhile back, and it came with one. It was pretty cool, because I didn't even realize that it included that till the box came. Very fun surprise. :)

[Rare]

I just want to know when it will be commercially viable to buy 3.5 inch SSD drives for my Mac Pro - not only for the speed - but for the silence - it currently resonates with 4 drives spinning in sync.

And surely in 3.5" format we can expect massive speeds - I mean it is already rumoured a 3.5" 512GB drive can be 1000x faster than a 15000rpm SAS, so I'll take 4 and RAID 5 them please! They shouldn't cost too much, because if you compare laptop drives to desktop drives at the moment, you can get a 500GB for the price of a 160GB 2.5", so surely a 512GB 3.5" drive should work out just a tad more expensive than a 64GB 2.5"?

[daneoni]

Just as expected, OK performance overall. SSD reads faster but writes slower

[shadowfax]

I just want to know when it will be commercially viable to buy 3.5 inch SSD drives for my Mac Pro - not only for the speed - but for the silence - it currently resonates with 4 drives spinning in sync.

And surely in 3.5" format we can expect massive speeds - I mean it is already rumoured a 3.5" 512GB drive can be 1000x faster than a 15000rpm SAS, so I'll take 4 and RAID 5 them please! They shouldn't cost too much, because if you compare laptop drives to desktop drives at the moment, you can get a 500GB for the price of a 160GB 2.5", so surely a 512GB 3.5" drive should work out just a tad more expensive than a 64GB 2.5"?

Yeah, I wouldn't expect that to play much of a role in the price. Miniaturization of hard disks is extremely costly and difficult, that is why there is such a premium on large-capacity laptop disks. That is not nearly as much of a factor in SSD. You will be ABLE to get a 512GB SSD in 3.5" format a lot sooner than you will in 1.8", but don't expect it to be comparably priced with smaller drives. Your numbers are all VERY optimistic, but the pricing numbers are just impossibly so. Buying 2TB worth (4 drives @ 512GB) of SSDs is going to be way, way out of your market for at least 2 years, probably more like 4...

[The Menacer]

I don't know why anyone would py an extra thousand dollars for a small speed increase and 16Gb less space..

[Maxintech]

Impressive although not quite the light years ahead of the hard drive that I was expecting it to be. I wonder if the SSD is limited by the ATA interface?

Yes it's strange. The Parallel ATA in MBA supports Ultra DMA mode 5 transfers (100 Mb/s). I known that number it's almost never reached, but SSD can do better rates.

See http://developer.apple.com/documentation/HardwareDrivers/Conceptual/MacBookAir_0801/Articles/ProductDeveloperNote.html for more details.

[twoodcc]

seems like that SSD drive is nice, but not really worth the price right now

[rezonat0r]

I don't know why anyone would py an extra thousand dollars for a small speed increase and 16Gb less space..

Perhaps because the speed increase is actually huge? Doing pretty much anything involves hundreds of individual random reads. It all adds up.

[Marx55]

TO THE ADMINS. Thanks for this. Suggestion: a graph plot instead of the table would be awesome. Note that the graph may also contain numbers.

[QCassidy352]

I don't know why anyone would py an extra thousand dollars for a small speed increase and 16Gb less space..

because the SSD will use less power and run more silently... because the speed increase is actually fairly substantial... and because $1000 is not a lot of money to some people.

[bluebomberman]

Interesting, although the numbers are still a bit abstract.

I guess we'll have to wait for a "real-world" style benchmark, something more along the lines of Macworld's tests (where they use Apple apps).

Either way, probably not worth the extra grand - buying the Macbook Air for performance seems a bit strange to me. That said, the future looks incredible - LED backlighting and SSD drives will become more commonplace soon.

[gnasher729]

Yes it's strange. The Parallel ATA in MBA supports Ultra DMA mode 5 transfers (100 Mb/s). I known that number it's almost never reached, but SSD can do better rates.

100 Mb/s would be quite pathetic. Fortunately, Ultra DMA mode 5 runs at 100 MB/s, that is eight times as fast as you say. (Mb = Megabit, MB = Megabyte).

[ccantrell]

I just came back from the store and they had both the 1.6 hd and the 1.8 ssd models.

Interesting side by side comparisons

Booting - 25 secs faster on ssd
Shutdowns - 10x faster on hd model. Weird???
Application Loads - initial loads 2x faster

Here is what blew me away ... Load multiple apps, safari, iTunes iPhoto etc ... Close all apps ... Subsequent loads of any of the previous apps is SAME or even faster.

This was surpises to even the apple employees. Based on my first impressions, I'm opting for the 1.8 with a hd and save a few dollars :)

-chris

[Erix18]

I just came back from the store and they had both the 1.6 hd and the 1.8 ssd models.

Interesting side by side comparisons

Booting - 25 secs faster on ssd
Shutdowns - 10x faster on hd model. Weird???
Application Loads - initial loads 2x faster

Here is what blew me away ... Load multiple apps, safari, iTunes iPhoto etc ... Close all apps ... Subsequent loads of any of the previous apps is SAME or even faster.

This was surpises to even the apple employees. Based on my first impressions, I'm opting for the 1.8 with a hd and save a few dollars :)

-chris
I was playin with a MBA ssd at an apple store and times the startup twice (of the MBA) on my iPhone and it was 60sec....

[bluebomberman]

Application Loads - initial loads 2x faster

Here is what blew me away ... Load multiple apps, safari, iTunes iPhoto etc ... Close all apps ... Subsequent loads of any of the previous apps is SAME or even faster.

-chris

Um...wanna clarify which model applications load faster?

Second, keep in mind that doing the same action twice (reopening apps, or refreshing web pages, for instance) get a boost from data caching in RAM and elsewhere- MS-DOS had this way back when (Smartdrive?), so this isn't exactly surprising or groundbreaking tech.

[Doctor Q]

As expected, the SSD is slightly slower at sequential file writing
Please explain why this is expected.

[jonny]

I read somewhere that Macbook Airs were designed for the wives of rich men. Thought that was kind of funny. Nevertheless, I think it's a pretty cool product and given Apple's track record for having new models every year, it's a pretty exciting prospect that this is the first model. Imagine what they'll have next year. I mean. I wouldnt buy one of these models for my own use. But who know's what they'll be able to do next time.

[bxs]

I just came back from the store and they had both the 1.6 hd and the 1.8 ssd models.

Interesting side by side comparisons

Booting - 25 secs faster on ssd
Shutdowns - 10x faster on hd model. Weird???
Application Loads - initial loads 2x faster

Here is what blew me away ... Load multiple apps, safari, iTunes iPhoto etc ... Close all apps ... Subsequent loads of any of the previous apps is SAME or even faster.

This was surpises to even the apple employees. Based on my first impressions, I'm opting for the 1.8 with a hd and save a few dollars :)

-chris

The reason the App re-loads are SAME for the HDD and the SSD is that most of the Apps (if not all) are still in memory so there's no need to load from the HDD or SSD. The load times should be close to identical. This is an expected result and should not surprise anybody.

I just returned from Apple store where I was able to test/compare HDD vs. SSD stock models side by side for around 10 to 15 mins. I can tell you the SSD was much more responsive than the HDD model with just about anything I tried. The SSD model is much snappier and much more pleasing to operate with less wait times.

The MBA is incredibly light, has solid look/feel, torsionally stiff when held up at one corner, thin enough to slide into my folder sleeve in my brief case with ease, track pad enormous area, gestures work as advertised, keyboard feel was great, screen nice and bright, ambient light sensor and keyboard backlight worked well, looked far more professional than the MacBooks sitting along side them, wakeup speed of the SSD vs. HDD model was noticeably faster, easier to pickup as the front and side edges are raised up some from the underlying surface the MBA sits on allowing more of the fingers to reach under and grip, visually more exciting than MacBooks and the MacBook Pros - in fact the MacBooks and MacBook Pros look almost antique in comparison, screen has stops to avoid lid from straining the hinges (a good design as this is a constant issues with other laptops I've owned) and it was a joy to hold and carry about.

The MBA is simply an advance in workmanship, design, looks, ergonomics, energy saving, earth friendly and minimalist wrt needed ports. The USB, audio and Micro DVI along with bundled Micro DVI-to-DVI, Micro DVI-to-VGA and optional Micro DVI-to-Video should meet travelers needs well. I suspect the USB-to-ethernet will need to be purchased to cover non Hot Spot areas in hotels and the like.

If you're in the market for a laptop simply for travel or as a second Mac to add to the stable, and have a budget around what the top end MB with 2GB RAM would cost this MBA would be a sensible choice as a mobile and travelers delight.

[Deanster]

So, I tried a SSD MBA at the University Village Apple store today, and while it's the slowest Mac currently sold, for a wide variety of basic tasks - e-mail, Safari, iTunes, etc., it absolutely FELT like the fastest and most responsive Mac I've touched.

They didn't have an HD MBA to do side-by-side testing with, but the advantage in perceived responsiveness over my 2.4 Aluminum iMac was quite remarkable.

Now, I don't need my laptop to be the fastest machine I've ever touched, and I'm not going to drop $1000 on the upgrade, but I can totally understand how people might make that choice, which I didn't a couple hours ago.

Move me from the 'Expensive useless upgrade' camp to the 'Expensive very cool upgrade' camp.

And the MBA itself... feels like the laptop everyone wants. It may not be what you ACTUALLY want in the real world... giving up an optical drive, Firewire, and GigE is a BIG hit, but it's something approaching the absolute minimum form factor for a clamshell laptop with a 13" screen and full keyboard, and it's exactly the weight and size that's perfect for a mid-size laptop. It might not work for you, but it's hard not to want it too...

I'll be buying mine (base model, most likely) as soon as I can get my hands on it... it's pretty darn cool. I wish it had Firewire, though... Firewire disk mode is one of the best things Macs have that PC's don't, and giving it up is a bigger hit than optical or GigE...

[tinotopia]

The impression I was left with after about 15 minutes was that the SSD more than makes up for the relatively slow processor and small amount of RAM.

My regular computers are a 2x 3 GHz dual-core Mac Pro with 10 GB of RAM, and a week-one Core Duo 2.0 GHz MBP with 2 GB of RAM and a 5400 RPM 120 GB disk.

At the Apple Store, I launched all bunch of applications, rotated the Documents Folder PDF a few times (rotating that PDF is the killer demo of the MBAs at the store, as they were just taken out of the boxes and plugged in; the usual demo movies, pictures, etc. aren't there -- the store guys were rotating the hell out of that PDF), and dinked around with GarageBand a bit, as this was the biggest hog of the apps that were available to me.

The MBA with the iPod disk felt about as snappy as my old MBP (which is to say definitely usable, but not really snappy at all). The SSD model felt significantly faster than my Mac Pro.

I'm sure that this wouldn't be the case if I were editing video, or working on a large file in Photoshop. But the SSD speed difference is definitely and immediately noticeable. Having fast swap space available might go some way toward making up for having only 2GB of RAM.

[deathshrub]

Please explain why this is expected.

Because that's how flash memory works. Reading is faster than writing.

[scottamoulton]

SSD has a controller for Bad Block Management and Wear Leveling Firmware, and those functions make it much different than a hard drive. The major issue is that any SSD drive larger than 256 Megs, the Sector Size it writes to the drive is much larger than it is on a hard drive. The Smallest Unit you can write on a real hard drive is 512bytes, but on a SSD the smallest Unit you can write is 2048 bytes. That makes a Sector 2k and is called a Page. However, you cannot erase a single sector when it is freed, it has to be erased in Blocks. A block is 64 x Sector. So when you move a file, change a file, etc you have to erase 128k and that is the smallest Erase Unit. On a hard drive the smallest erase unit is still 512bytes.

Once Data is written in the sector it cannot be changed AT ALL without an erase block occurring. So every single time you modify a file it is opened and written in to a new location. You cannot change a file in its own location like you can in a hard drive.

Once you start understanding 2+2 you can see why it is slow to write, fast to read. So when you shutdown if files have to be updated or you do a hibernation where it has to write out the whole 2 gigs of ram to the drive it will be very very slow.

Also since function on NAND are serial in control, you will see if you watch a movie, play a song, and copy new files to the same drive at the same time that you will start to see studdering (at least on all SSD's I have tried so far, but the MacAir has a new Samsung SSD), but I guess only time and testing will tell on this issue.

One other thing to take in to consideration is that wear leveling's purpose is to keep the erase cycles even across the entire drive, including the FAT tables. So the drive will move non-changing files around to more active locations. The drive then changes the the LBA pointer to the PBA location (meaning that you can not view the original sector because you have no idea where it is). This process is a slow process and can affect drive performance, but it has to move the fat table around even if it is a simple change like the access times on a file.

Well any ways, I hope that was informing and maybe would explain some of the numbers.

Scott Moulton

BTW: There is a speech at Shmoocon in DC on Feb 16th on this very topic and how SSD works.

[AidenShaw]

100 Mb/s would be quite pathetic. Fortunately, Ultra DMA mode 5 runs at 100 MB/s, that is eight times as fast as you say. (Mb = Megabit, MB = Megabyte).

That's my pedantic comment - knock it off! :)

And don't forget that "MiB = MebiByte" (http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/binary.html).

[AidenShaw]

If you're in the market for a laptop simply for travel or as a second Mac to add to the stable, and have a budget around what the top end MB with 2GB RAM would cost this MBA would be a sensible choice as a mobile and travelers delight.

And you never are away from an electrical outlet for more than 3 hours (or you don't care if the battery goes dead on you until you can find an outlet)....

A real weak point, though, is the lack of a user-swappable battery so that one could carry a spare battery or two for the long flight or all-day meeting at a conference.

It's a shame when your laptop dies before lunch, and you can't simply swap a spare battery in and keep on going.

[bxs]

And you never are away from an electrical outlet for more than 3 hours (or you don't care if the battery goes dead on you until you can find an outlet)....

...but this is true for any laptop, and even if you had a spare battery then what do you do after 6 hrs prey tell me?

A real weak point, though, is the lack of a user-swappable battery so that one could carry a spare battery or two for the long flight or all-day meeting at a conference.

I would use my iPhone for movie watch on the long flight. :D ...and at conferences there's always a power strip so no worry there either. :D

It's a shame when your laptop dies before lunch, and you can't simply swap a spare battery in and keep on going.

Not sure I follow you on this point. I'd rather eat my lunch. :D

I've run about all day long with other laptops without having an extra battery and I get along just fine. I do not see any issue with the MBA having a battery that cannot be easily switched out for another. This is simply a non-issue for me.

[MacTheSpoon]

Don't you think 3d parties will make external batteries, for those who really need them?

[uNext]

I cant believe people are actually saying a 1.8 with ssd feels like a macpro lol
Jeez iwonder how my 2.6 mbp with dedicated memory and 4gb ram with 64 ssd (got cheap from dell) will feel. Well considering how some of you are saying the MBA feels like a pro then is safe to assume my computer is 2x the macpro.

[ViveLeLivre]

2.2ghz MacBook w/ Hitachi 200GB vs. 1.8ghz MacBook Air w/ 64GB SSD

I'll let the numbers speak for themselves. MBA figures in parentheses.

CPU Test 113.26 (99.61)
Thread Test 185.00 (134.99)
Memory Test 157.54 (148.00)
Quartz Graphics Test 171.20 (107.74)
User Interface Test 235.54 (113.53)
Disk Test 41.40 (47.26)
Sequential 71.63 (40.82)
Uncached Write 107.36 65.92 MB/sec [4K blocks] (20.83MB/s)
Uncached Write 105.57 59.73 MB/sec [256K blocks] (26.32MB/s)
Uncached Read 34.26 10.03 MB/sec [4K blocks] (7.97MB/s)
Uncached Read 127.12 63.89 MB/sec [256K blocks] (48.75MB/s)
Random 29.11 (56.13)
Uncached Write 9.57 1.01 MB/sec [4K blocks] (2.23MB/s)
Uncached Write 90.98 29.13 MB/sec [256K blocks] (16.92MB/s)
Uncached Read 72.73 0.52 MB/sec [4K blocks] (7.02MB/s)
Uncached Read 123.05 22.83 MB/sec [256K blocks] (48.24MB/s)


Price as tested: $1446.00 ($2868.00) <-- Academic pricing, both systems. Did the Air a favor and didn't include tax.


Results 109.44
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.5.1 (9B18)
Physical RAM 4096 MB
Model MacBook3,1
Drive Type Hitachi HTS722020K9SA00
CPU Test 113.26
GCD Loop 259.62 13.69 Mops/sec
Floating Point Basic 123.36 2.93 Gflop/sec
vecLib FFT 73.91 2.44 Gflop/sec
Floating Point Library 101.76 17.72 Mops/sec
Thread Test 185.00
Computation 197.26 4.00 Mops/sec, 4 threads
Lock Contention 174.18 7.49 Mlocks/sec, 4 threads
Memory Test 157.54
System 163.50
Allocate 249.85 917.55 Kalloc/sec
Fill 134.78 6553.18 MB/sec
Copy 144.36 2981.74 MB/sec
Stream 152.00
Copy 142.54 2944.15 MB/sec
Scale 142.73 2948.80 MB/sec
Add 163.20 3476.48 MB/sec
Triad 162.18 3469.47 MB/sec
Quartz Graphics Test 171.20
Line 161.96 10.78 Klines/sec [50% alpha]
Rectangle 210.23 62.76 Krects/sec [50% alpha]
Circle 166.54 13.57 Kcircles/sec [50% alpha]
Bezier 165.61 4.18 Kbeziers/sec [50% alpha]
Text 160.48 10.04 Kchars/sec
User Interface Test 235.54
Elements 235.54 1.08 Krefresh/sec
Disk Test 41.40
Sequential 71.63
Uncached Write 107.36 65.92 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 105.57 59.73 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 34.26 10.03 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 127.12 63.89 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 29.11
Uncached Write 9.57 1.01 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 90.98 29.13 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 72.73 0.52 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 123.05 22.83 MB/sec [256K blocks]

[dual64bit]

Hahaha, that is interesting. It's certainly not being sold as the worlds fastest, thinest laptop. It's suppose to be thin, not fast. The ssd is saving some power, nothing more.

[Analog Kid]

Well any ways, I hope that was informing and maybe would explain some of the numbers.

Excellent summary, thank you for that.

---------------

This is pretty much what I would have expected. People have been way over hyped about Flash. Glad we're finally getting some numbers in to anchor the discussion. I would have liked independent tests across processors and then across drives, but I figure they'll come.

I think it's going to take a long time for the realities of SSDs to sink in. There are some applications where it will be absolutely invaluable, but for most people they're going to be expensive oddities for a while. You can't swing the results much more than testing against an iPod drive, and my reaction to the benchmarks is still pretty lukewarm. I can't help but think I'd get more of a benefit with $1000 of RAM and a big-ass disk buffer.

To those saying "you can't judge by benchmarks", let me just add that you can't tell by taking a brand new unit out of the box and opening every application on it twice either. To really get a sense of the difference, you need to have let the SSD get good and dirty from use and run some real world tests. And leave the caches on...

[Analog Kid]

I'll let the numbers speak for themselves. MBA figures in parentheses.
Do we have a numbers spokesperson out there? I'd like to know what the UI test is...

[ViveLeLivre]

Do we have a numbers spokesperson out there? I'd like to know what the UI test is...

When the test runs, it manipulates a small window w/ some various window elements (buttons, text boxes, etc), throws up some text in various font sizes and colors. It runs very quickly, less than 2 seconds tops, and I suspect performance in the test is a function of both processor and memory bus speed.

Score was a little higher this time: 266.72

[winterspan]

Impressive although not quite the light years ahead of the hard drive that I was expecting it to be. I wonder if the SSD is limited by the ATA interface?

The Ultra ATA interface should easily be enough for the SSD. Although sequential writes on SSDs are usually slower than coresponding HDDs, it really depends on the exact model/manufacturer/SSD architecture.

Why does everyone think flash is so fast? It isn't. It's improving all the time, though.
Flash stands tall in the random read test because there is no "seeking" of a moving drive head.

For normal operations, the extremely quick seek speed of an SSD will definitely make it feel very fast. And it really seems that the read/write speed of
SSDs vary by a large margin depending on model and manufacturer,.

I just want to know when it will be commercially viable to buy 3.5 inch SSD drives for my Mac Pro - not only for the speed - but for the silence - it currently resonates with 4 drives spinning in sync.

And surely in 3.5" format we can expect massive speeds - I mean it is already rumoured a 3.5" 512GB drive can be 1000x faster than a 15000rpm SAS, so I'll take 4 and RAID 5 them please! They shouldn't cost too much, because if you compare laptop drives to desktop drives at the moment, you can get a 500GB for the price of a 160GB 2.5", so surely a 512GB 3.5" drive should work out just a tad more expensive than a 64GB 2.5"?

Hardrive pricing structure/dynamics does not translate into flash SSDs. With HDs, it's much easier and cheaper to scale capacity by using a 3.5" platter vs a 2.5" latter. With SSDs, they have to add more units of flash and other components causing the costs to scale faster than the capacity. There's no way in *** you'll see a 512GB 3.5" for relatively the same price as a 64GB 2.5". But eventually they'll be affordable. My guess would be $10/GB for large capacity SSDs in 3 years or so.

I don't know why anyone would py an extra thousand dollars for a small speed increase and 16Gb less space..
I don't know why anyone would make such a comment without having a good grasp on the issue. The "small speed increase" you refer to is actually LARGE when you take into consideration the normal disk activity of a person (lots of random reads and writes) and the strengths of SSDs (very fast seek speed for navigating between random data locations).

I'm not disappointed with the SSD that the Air uses. I understand that the costs involved can get pretty big, and I'm glad that Apple even decided to offer an SSD, and a 64GB one instead of a 32GB one. However, I think I've been spoiled by looking at all the announcments from the storage companies about their super fast SSDs.

I mean HOLY CRAP, Samsung announced their new SATA II 64GB SSDs that are BLAZING FAST:
SEQUENTIAL Write speed: 100MB/sec
SEQUENTIAL Read speed: 120MB/sec


You can get them in 1.8" and 2.5". I can't wait to throw one of these in a Macbook Air.

Here's some links:
http://www.dailytech.com/Samsung+Launches+Speedy+SATA+II+SSDs/article9537.htm
http://www.dailytech.com/BiTMICRO+Pumps+SSD+Capacities+to+832GB/article10232.htm
http://www.dailytech.com/Mtron+Rolls+Out+UltraFast+SSDs/article8713.htm
http://www.dailytech.com/SanDisk+Announces+64GB+SSDs/article7546.htm

[ccantrell]

The reason the App re-loads are SAME for the HDD and the SSD is that most of the Apps (if not all) are still in memory so there's no need to load from the HDD or SSD. The load times should be close to identical. This is an expected result and should not surprise anybody.


We killed the apps ... so no they were not running.

[bxs]

Excellent summary, thank you for that.

---------------

This is pretty much what I would have expected. People have been way over hyped about Flash. Glad we're finally getting some numbers in to anchor the discussion. I would have liked independent tests across processors and then across drives, but I figure they'll come.

I think it's going to take a long time for the realities of SSDs to sink in. There are some applications where it will be absolutely invaluable, but for most people they're going to be expensive oddities for a while. You can't swing the results much more than testing against an iPod drive, and my reaction to the benchmarks is still pretty lukewarm. I can't help but think I'd get more of a benefit with $1000 of RAM and a big-ass disk buffer.

To those saying "you can't judge by benchmarks", let me just add that you can't tell by taking a brand new unit out of the box and opening every application on it twice either. To really get a sense of the difference, you need to have let the SSD get good and dirty from use and run some real world tests. And leave the caches on...

The sensible comparison of HDD vs. SSD is to compare the MBA's HDD vs. SSD with no other computer in the mix. Comparing the MBA with any other non MB (and this includes the MBP) is really quite silly unless one simply wants to see what the difference is.

Putting cost aside as there's no way around this because 64GB SSD cost what it cost today.

The question for many is what benefits does the SSD have over the HDD in the MBA. Much of the benefits have already been posted here and I'm sure there will more to come both +ive and -ive ones at that. ;)

[louden]

Shutdowns - 10x faster on hd model. Weird???


I agree this is weird, but true. I was in the store, and we rebooted the MBA with SSD, and it too forever to shut down. What's up with that?

[bxs]

We killed the apps ... so no they were not running.

When you kill the Apps their memory images are still left in memory unless kernel requires their memory pages for other reasons. So your re-loads of same Apps will not require HDD/SSD accessing or if there is some it will be minimal.

[ccantrell]

Um...wanna clarify which model applications load faster?
The 1.6HD model was 1 to 2 seconds faster on Safari loads, after the initial load. iTunes & iPhoto were about the same on both systems.

Second, keep in mind that doing the same action twice (reopening apps, or refreshing web pages, for instance) get a boost from data caching in RAM and elsewhere- MS-DOS had this way back when (Smartdrive?), so this isn't exactly surprising or groundbreaking tech.

I agree, but would have thought after opening 5 to 6 applications, closing them (ensuring they were not running with 'ps') the cache hit would not be as good as it was.

Even though some things were faster, like the initial application load times & bootup, IMO it is not worth the $1000 price difference. I say this considering what this laptop is focused on. On the road ... all I want is Internet access, email access and basic services. IMO, the MBA hits this perfectly.

Has anyone been able to test VMware and Parallels?

-chris

[bxs]

I agree, but would have thought after opening 5 to 6 applications, closing them (ensuring they were not running with 'ps') the cache hit would not be as good as it was.

Even though some things were faster (initial application load times & bootup), IMO it is not worth the $1000 price difference, especially considering what this laptop is focused on. I would like to see real-world testing of things like VMware and Parallels.

-chris

This is the crux of the matter for many people - "IMO it is not worth the $1000 price difference"

Like most things some people look at computers from a price/performance position whereas others will look at the same thing from a price/benefits&capability position.

The decisions made therefore can be quite opposite to each other. ;)

[flashframe]

But today at the Apple Store in The Grove, Los Angeles, people were snapping them up pretty quickly.

[tinotopia]

I cant believe people are actually saying a 1.8 with ssd feels like a macpro lol
Jeez iwonder how my 2.6 mbp with dedicated memory and 4gb ram with 64 ssd (got cheap from dell) will feel. Well considering how some of you are saying the MBA feels like a pro then is safe to assume my computer is 2x the macpro.

I would be surprised if it *weren't* faster than a Mac Pro with a spinning disk at doing things that involve reading lots of files. And that describes quite a bit of what you ordinarily do with a computer.

[tba03]

so for let's say audio recording, does that mean that it' s better to have the file totally fragmented?

[scrambledwonder]

I just touched a MacBook Air in my local Apple Store tonight. Absolutely beguiling. It could have a processor from a Speak 'N Spell and I'd still want it.

I think the majority of people in the store felt the same way.

So say what you will. It's a wonder, regardless of the benchmarks.

[mdriftmeyer]

And in real world use of a Dell, Sony, and today the MBA with SSD, I can tell you for normal use the difference is remarkable.

Benchmarks are interesting, but they don't really tell the whole story. Random small reads are something most users do a LOT of. Which is why the SSDs feel so fast in actual use.

Users aren't doing it. The underlying VM and the Kernel do it.

[Tosser]

so for let's say audio recording, does that mean that it' s better to have the file totally fragmented?

Digital recording is linear. You certainly don't want a fragmented audiofile. Besides, even if recording, say, four tracks at 24bit/192kHz, you're writing to the disk at 2,11 (2.11 for you americans) MB/s. That's not exactly much.
The disk-speed on that butt-slow iPod-drive doesn't matter when recording. It does matter in other circumstances, but not the recording in itself.

How many tracks do you record ("record"=real time audio-gathering), at what bitrate etc? And what do you use it for? Which programmes do you use?

[Okay, this might actually be better in another thread, but it's all related to whether that iPod drive will live up to his(?) needs]

[Rocketman]

My takeaway is the net benefit is more marginal than expected. The value to small files is large, but we are moving to an era of increasingly larger blocks and files, thus minimizing the benefit.

It seems Seagate was right after all. Shocking to me I agree, but undeniably true. ZFS will continue the block size and file size trend thus verifying once again RAID beats ramdisc, except for the boot volume.

Rocketman

[shadowfax]

Users aren't doing it. The underlying VM and the Kernel do it.

... now you're just nitpicking. the underlying VM and Kernel do it as a result of user action.

My takeaway is the net benefit is more marginal than expected. The value to small files is large, but we are moving to an era of increasingly larger blocks and files, thus minimizing the benefit.

It seems Seagate was right after all. Shocking to me I agree, but undeniably true. ZFS will continue the block size and file size trend thus verifying once again RAID beats ramdisc, except for the boot volume.

Rocketman

Hmmm, I dunno. On any file transfer on a standard drive, you have an 8-9ms seek time. At least one of those, potentially several. Regardless of block size. So while large block size will reduce the impact of this (and note: the SSD already has a large block size), it's still going to make a difference.

But what's really remarkable to me at this point is the articles discussing SSD transfer rates--Apple, it seems, is using one of the slowest SSD's out there. There are SSD's with transfer rates that could saturate the PATA bus available, or soon to be. That's where we're headed, and that's exciting. Standard hard drives are only going to get faster as the density of the platters increases, and the prospects of that aren't all that great, are they?

[nja247]

Shouldn't it have been 1.8 HDD v 1.6 SSD, or maybe the same processor v different hard drives? Quite dumb test to put the model with a slower processor AND drive against the faster in both areas. Basically what I'm saying is that it's obvious to anyone without running any tests that the 1.8 with SSD will be faster than the 1.6 with HDD, so what was the point really?

[Rendwich]

Okay, the SSD is *much* faster than the HDD for most reads, that's good. But it costs maybe 5-10 times as much as the HDD. Can't we do better?

Why doesn't someone build a notebook with a big, slow, crappy HDD and maybe 16GB of RAM? You load everything you need into RAM when you boot up. Any kind of smart software can keep track of which files you access frequently and automatically load them. This part is slow.

After that, you have the fastest "disk" in the world. You can shut down the HDD right after booting, so there's no power drain use at all until you shut down.

Tigerdirect will sell you 2GB of Macbook RAM for $80 US. x8 =
$640. I'm sure you can find cheaper RAM which will work fine. Plus a big, crappy HDD for permanent storage, maybe $150. Total cost < $800 US.

The speed increase is maybe 2000x faster than an SSD. It's more expensive per GB, but you don't need 64GB of chips because the big, crappy HDD is carrying the bulk load at bootup and shutdown (and maybe a few times in-between).

Are we ready for the Revenge of the RAM Disk? Maybe someone has jammed their Mac Pro with RAM and can comment if they've tried this?

[Analog Kid]

I don't know why anyone would make such comments without having a good grasp on the technology. The "small speed increase" you refer to is actually subjectivly large when you take into consideration the normal disk activity of a person (lots of random reads and writes) and the strengths of SSDs (very fast seek speed for navigating between random data locations).

That said, Although the Air will feel faster due to the quick seek time of the SSD, It's not like Apple choose to use the best SSD on the market, nor even a moderately fast one..You can't possibly sit here and dismiss all SSDs as a waste of money that only speed up a "few" apps. That's like dismissing all Intel processors by looking at a Celeron and claiming AMD's are faster.

The truth is it TOTALLY depends on the specific SSD model and manufacturer as to how fast it will be.
There are many different SSD flash technologies and architectures. The macbook Air happens to use a cheaper/less power intensive/slower model than are out there.
You can already purchase 1.8" SSDs that are twice as fast as the one currently in the macbook air

I'm not necessarily disappointed with the SSD that the Air uses. I understand that the costs involved can get pretty big, and I'm glad that Apple even decided to offer an SSD, and a 64GB one instead of a 32GB one. However, I think I've been spoiled by looking at all the announcments from the storage companies about their new super fast SSDs.

I mean HOLY CRAP, Samsung announced their new SATA II 64GB SSDs that are blazing FAST. Check out these specs..
SEQUENTIAL Write speed: 100MB/sec
SEQUENTIAL Read speed: 120MB/sec

I don't remember the random read/write speeds, but they would be even better. You can get them in 1.8" and 2.5". I can't wait to throw one of these in a Macbook Air.

The SSD in the Air is actually slower than nearly all the recent SDD model announcements that I've seen on different tech websites. I would say for people who are on a budget, just get the HDD, and wait until SSD prices come down a bit, and buy a much faster 1.8" SDD. You'll probably spend less than the $1,000 you would be spending now anyways.

Let me start by suggesting that if you are making the argument that people don't understand a technology that you make sure they don't and that you do. Just sayin'...

There's an old adage among engineers: "Better, cheaper, faster-- choose two". Apple chose a performance/price/power tradeoff they felt they could live with.

Here's the only data I can find on the current PATA (http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/productInfo.do?fmly_id=161&partnum=MCCOE64GEMPP) drive in the Air:
Read: 57MBps
Write: 38MBps
Power: 0.17W active (write)

Here's what I find on the newfangled SATAII (http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/products/flash/Products_FlashSSD.html) drives:
Read: 100MBps
Write: 80MBps
Power: 0.5W active

Since they don't publish datasheets, I can't see what those numbers actually mean. What I gather from this though is they're pumping more power through the system to gain performance. No magic. I'd almost wonder if they were running some sort of RAID under the hood with those numbers. If you're looking for performance, you'll be happier with the new drives, whenever you can get your hands on them, if you're juiced about the longer battery life you'd prefer the existing ones (not that half a Watt counts for much these days). SATA II wasn't chosen because it was necessary to handle the data rates.

You're also missing a link on what OS X's disk access habits are-- what gives you so much confidence that you spend all your time reading little bitty files all over the disk? I see all the numbers listed as uncached, which doesn't match normal use. Looks to me like the type of HDD the Air (http://www.samsung.com/global/business/hdd/productmodel.do?group=72&type=60&subtype=68&model_cd=343&tab=fea&ppmi=1160) uses probably has a 2MB cache. Again, no datasheet, but I'd guess the cache can accept writes at 100MB/s, and will probably boost sequential read times if they are OS limited.

On top of the cache you have the OS buffering which will likely read more of the file than you've requested. If you are doing all the little reads and writes that you're suggesting and your disk is slowing you down, then the application should have been written to read in everything up front. The only time I might be doing a lot of little reads all over a disk with no buffer is at application start with highly fragmented disk images. I spend a very small amount of time launching apps during the day.

See how the hard drive starts to beat the flash drive at "random writes" of 256k? That's because it's not random anymore-- it's one seek followed by a bunch of sequential writes.

Writes should only block in very specific cases, most of the time the write call should return almost instantly and the application can get on with its business while the system completes the writes in the background, or at application close (ever notice your preferences don't always get saved if the app crashes?).

All of this starts to point back to my earlier comments-- I'd rather have more RAM than a flash disk for my money. I don't want virtual memory paging out to a device with significantly slower sequential write times.

As scottamoulton so succinctly explained, and I apologize for not being as brief, flash is a very different medium from rotating platters. Even as things are, I'd expect that there are some uses for which flash drives might show a significant benefit. In order to really benefit, Apple would have to significantly rework their file system, their memory manager and their file tree structure, and I haven't heard any talk of that being done.

I'm not arguing the SSD doesn't have any benefits. The only benefit Apple is comfortable trumpeting seems to be increased reliability, and I haven't seen enough data from other sources yet. I suspect there will be power benefits and probably performance benefits under certain conditions. My argument is merely that there are more cost effective ways of getting those benefits and all the superlatives aimed at flash might have been a bit wide of the mark. Additional RAM would be one. Running an external drive would also probably give you a performance boost at the cost of power, but with USB in the equation I'm hesitant to insist on that...

[Analog Kid]

When the test runs, it manipulates a small window w/ some various window elements (buttons, text boxes, etc), throws up some text in various font sizes and colors. It runs very quickly, less than 2 seconds tops, and I suspect performance in the test is a function of both processor and memory bus speed.

Score was a little higher this time: 266.72
GPU performance maybe? That looks like the biggest difference on the list...

[Lord Sam]

Interesting. It's nice to see the benchmarks though. It makes the 650 buck price for the SSD somehow seem worth it.

[Full of Win]

Shouldn't it have been 1.8 HDD v 1.6 SSD, or maybe the same processor v different hard drives? Quite dumb test to put the model with a slower processor AND drive against the faster in both areas. Basically what I'm saying is that it's obvious to anyone without running any tests that the 1.8 with SSD will be faster than the 1.6 with HDD, so what was the point really?

Not dumb, but rather a fact of the newness of the product and the absence of other modes to test with.

In science you strive to remove all but one variable from any experiment; and the difference seen can be correlated to that one variable. However, as in life you sometimes cannot control all the variables to the degree you would like. The test were likely done on what was available due to a limited initial selection, which so happened to have two variables.

[OS X Dude]

OK, I'm worried.

My C2D 2.0GHz MB with 1GB RAM only managed 99.84 - nearly same as 1.8GHz SSD MBA

Is that seriously right?

I have an XP partition and 44GB free (53 if i remove unnecessary components like GarageBand). Should I have defragged in Onyx too?

It's just people say the MBA is slow and my MB doesn't seem much faster!!

[OS X Dude]

I just touched a MacBook Air in my local Apple Store tonight. Absolutely beguiling. It could have a processor from a Speak 'N Spell.

Speak and Spell - one of Depeche Mode's better albums :D

hahaha

[robinp]

OK, I'm worried.

My C2D 2.0GHz MB with 1GB RAM only managed 99.84 - nearly same as 1.8GHz SSD MBA

Is that seriously right?

I have an XP partition and 44GB free (53 if i remove unnecessary components like GarageBand). Should I have defragged in Onyx too?

It's just people say the MBA is slow and my MB doesn't seem much faster!!

I wouldn't worry. Look at the specs: You have a slightly faster CPU, slower HD, less RAM, better GPU.

So some components are quicker, some are slower. I honestly don't think the MBA is that slow, it's just slower than anything else apple make and is not their cheapest machine by quite some distance. Hence the comments about it being underpowered. For me it is perfect - I just want something that has a decent display and keyboard that is as light as possible. Bingo.

[manu chao]

I wouldn't worry. Look at the specs: You have a slightly faster CPU, slower HD, less RAM, better GPU.

Maybe we should redefine the meaning of HD to include SSDs?:D

[gnasher729]

Why doesn't someone build a notebook with a big, slow, crappy HDD and maybe 16GB of RAM? You load everything you need into RAM when you boot up. Any kind of smart software can keep track of which files you access frequently and automatically load them. This part is slow.

After that, you have the fastest "disk" in the world. You can shut down the HDD right after booting, so there's no power drain use at all until you shut down.

The problem is threefold: First, you don't know what is going to be needed (although with 16 GB you could just keep reading things in the background and even if you get half of it wrong, you should still be fine). But the problem is what happens when you write. You could easily do all the writes when the computer is shut down or put to sleep, but that means you have to do a lot of writes, possibly when you run out of battery power, and if the Mac doesn't manage to finish all the writes, you are in serious trouble! And the last problem is, RAM uses power permanently. 16 GB RAM would affect your battery life. Flash doesn't use any power at all when it is not in use.

[peterjeter26]

amazing speeds for tthe SSD might pick one up myself

[peterjeter26]

amazing speeds for the SSD might pick one up myself

[OS X Dude]

I wouldn't worry. Look at the specs: You have a slightly faster CPU, slower HD, less RAM, better GPU.

So some components are quicker, some are slower. I honestly don't think the MBA is that slow, it's just slower than anything else apple make and is not their cheapest machine by quite some distance. Hence the comments about it being underpowered. For me it is perfect - I just want something that has a decent display and keyboard that is as light as possible. Bingo.

Slightly worse GPU :( - i'm on GMA950 chipset (doesn't matter, for the primitive video work I do it's ample, and because the X3100 still can't run blockbuster games - which I use a PS3 for anyway - the fact MBA has better grfx card is a moot point.

So... a 7200 rpm drive and 2 GB RAM should raise this figure.... I wonder what stock 2GHz MB's clock at, to give me a rough figure of what I SHOULD be getting.... I will go check, and report back in case anyone else wanted to know or use it to compare MBA benchmarks with.

EDIT - Xbench.com says that 2GHz C2D MBs come in at an average of 97.40, so mine should hopefully reach 100 after my mods. BTW, Apple TV comes in at 101.20!!!!

[Tensakun]

I'm going for the 1.8 GHz because you can't upgrade that later. But I'll pass on the SSD until they get cheaper (and my warranty is out) at which time I plan to self-install a 64 or 128. (And SSD may even keep getting faster.)

Several others in the various threads have expressed this intention. In theory, sounds like a savvy plan. But has anyone confirmed that it's actually possible to replace the HD with SSD? Would Apple offer that option thru their stores? I suppose that if you did it yourself you could kiss your AppleCare goodbye, right?

[Maxintech]

100 Mb/s would be quite pathetic. Fortunately, Ultra DMA mode 5 runs at 100 MB/s, that is eight times as fast as you say. (Mb = Megabit, MB = Megabyte).

I known the difference. It's was a typewrite mistake. Thanks for the correction. :)

[ncbill]

Ouch!

That means in 3 years, we're still paying the same $999 for the SSD upgrade, though we'll get 128GB instead of 64GB.

And those new, fast Samsung SSDs have the SATA interface - sure we'll be able to drop them in the current MBA?

My guess would be $10/GB for large capacity SSDs in 3 years or so.

[AidenShaw]

...but this is true for any laptop, and even if you had a spare battery then what do you do after 6 hrs prey tell me?

On my 8 hour flight, I'd simply swap in the second spare battery that I brought along.

And, by the way, my solution is scalable. If I had a 10 hour flight (or conference), I'd bring a third spare. It isn't hard to figure out how many spare batteries that you need to go "n" hours without a power strip.

Unless I had a MacBook Cube Air - then I'd be [expletive not typed, insert you own crude gerund].


I would use my iPhone for movie watch on the long flight.

Movies? Typically on the flight to the meeting I'm merging two to five Powerpoint presentations and editing to get the right message for the customer that I'll be meeting at 08:00 in the morning.

Watch a movie? LOL, I wish that I had the free time.


...and at conferences there's always a power strip there's always a power strip so no worry there either. switched out for another. This is simply a non-issue for me.

In small meetings, power usually isn't a problem. Put a couple of thousand people at a keynote, though - I've never seen a power strip at every chair in the auditorium. Same for the conferences where you have a couple of hundred people at tables.

Which conferences have you been at where "there's always a power strip"? We obviously have not met.

[MathiasMag]

All of this seems to be mainly concerned with single stream processing. In the real world, you're likely to not use one app at a time.

How about playing music from MP3s on the disk, while email is downloading and a very large picture is being saved.

I'd like to see a comparison of say five parallel jobs doing parallel I/O. Seeing each category (reads/writes/sequential/random) and then one where it is a complete mix of all would be very interesting. This is probably where the SSD would show it's true value.

Another interesting test would be to have a lot going on and the machine being out of memory so the swap area gets used a lot. If the memory pressure is enough, a disk based system would be thrashing. I wonder if the SSD would survive better and as a result you could have less memory and still have acceptable performance.

The real interesting thing here is not what we pay today, it is the fact that this is where disk technology is going and HD will not be part of computing for that much longer. No introduction of new technology has ever been done at budget prices. However, the cost of SSD will eventually be lower than HD and the speed higher. This is clearly the future of high speed I/O, especially when you have multiple accesses in parallel for the same device.

[Rocketman]

Apple, it seems, is using one of the slowest SSD's out there. There are SSD's with transfer rates that could saturate the PATA bus available, or soon to be. That's where we're headed, and that's exciting. Standard hard drives are only going to get faster as the density of the platters increases, and the prospects of that aren't all that great, are they?

Apple for the longest time stayed at USB 1.1 to give 1394-A Firewire a better adoption rate among Mac users. Many of those legacy system owners now sure wish Apple went to USB 2.0 much sooner, simply because they could have.

I suspect the slower SSD is a supplier issue. Existing contracts for components, rather than go to the newest stuff and pay full price. Apple has a new profit margin emphasis (very good for stock and future business prospects). Steve was somewhat dragged kicking and screaming into releasing a product with SSD. To me this indicates he has a longer term plan that involves a device with a cost/performance/package sweet spot.

What I find amusing is still to this day, the OS and applications I ran on my old Macintosh Plus in ram disc (saving to a SCSI drive externally) were practically much faster than the bloatware running on todays much faster computers. Notably modern stuff we do also pushes millions more pixels per minute too.

Rocketman

[Manic Mouse]

2.2ghz MacBook w/ Hitachi 200GB vs. 1.8ghz MacBook Air w/ 64GB SSD

I'll let the numbers speak for themselves. MBA figures in parentheses.

CPU Test 113.26 (99.61)
Thread Test 185.00 (134.99)
Memory Test 157.54 (148.00)
Quartz Graphics Test 171.20 (107.74)
User Interface Test 235.54 (113.53)
Disk Test 41.40 (47.26)
Sequential 71.63 (40.82)
Uncached Write 107.36 65.92 MB/sec [4K blocks] (20.83MB/s)
Uncached Write 105.57 59.73 MB/sec [256K blocks] (26.32MB/s)
Uncached Read 34.26 10.03 MB/sec [4K blocks] (7.97MB/s)
Uncached Read 127.12 63.89 MB/sec [256K blocks] (48.75MB/s)
Random 29.11 (56.13)
Uncached Write 9.57 1.01 MB/sec [4K blocks] (2.23MB/s)
Uncached Write 90.98 29.13 MB/sec [256K blocks] (16.92MB/s)
Uncached Read 72.73 0.52 MB/sec [4K blocks] (7.02MB/s)
Uncached Read 123.05 22.83 MB/sec [256K blocks] (48.24MB/s)


Price as tested: $1446.00 ($2868.00) <-- Academic pricing, both systems. Did the Air a favor and didn't include tax.


Results 109.44
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.5.1 (9B18)
Physical RAM 4096 MB
Model MacBook3,1
Drive Type Hitachi HTS722020K9SA00
CPU Test 113.26
GCD Loop 259.62 13.69 Mops/sec
Floating Point Basic 123.36 2.93 Gflop/sec
vecLib FFT 73.91 2.44 Gflop/sec
Floating Point Library 101.76 17.72 Mops/sec
Thread Test 185.00
Computation 197.26 4.00 Mops/sec, 4 threads
Lock Contention 174.18 7.49 Mlocks/sec, 4 threads
Memory Test 157.54
System 163.50
Allocate 249.85 917.55 Kalloc/sec
Fill 134.78 6553.18 MB/sec
Copy 144.36 2981.74 MB/sec
Stream 152.00
Copy 142.54 2944.15 MB/sec
Scale 142.73 2948.80 MB/sec
Add 163.20 3476.48 MB/sec
Triad 162.18 3469.47 MB/sec
Quartz Graphics Test 171.20
Line 161.96 10.78 Klines/sec [50% alpha]
Rectangle 210.23 62.76 Krects/sec [50% alpha]
Circle 166.54 13.57 Kcircles/sec [50% alpha]
Bezier 165.61 4.18 Kbeziers/sec [50% alpha]
Text 160.48 10.04 Kchars/sec
User Interface Test 235.54
Elements 235.54 1.08 Krefresh/sec
Disk Test 41.40
Sequential 71.63
Uncached Write 107.36 65.92 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 105.57 59.73 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 34.26 10.03 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 127.12 63.89 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 29.11
Uncached Write 9.57 1.01 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 90.98 29.13 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 72.73 0.52 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 123.05 22.83 MB/sec [256K blocks]


Ouch, the MBA got it's ass kicked by a computer that cost half as much. But hey, it's .5" thinner and has the "feature" of no disc drive!

So if it doesn't make a good portable/business computer (so-so battery life, non-replaceable battery), is really expensive and isn't all that powerful just what is the point of the MBA? Is it just for people with more money than sense?

[uNext]

Ouch, the MBA got it's ass kicked by a computer that cost half as much. But hey, it's .5" thinner and has the "feature" of no disc drive!

So if it doesn't make a good portable/business computer (so-so battery life, non-replaceable battery), is really expensive and isn't all that powerful just what is the point of the MBA? Is it just for people with more money than sense?

I think it is aimed at people with more money then sense.
There is just no point to it. Benchmarks all over the internet
are proving what we all know that the computer just sucks. But what is amazing is how people try to justify the purchase by saying "if you dont like it it was not meant to be for you" but some of those people are quick to bash windows vista wouldn't the same rule apply?

The macbook topped it and is way cheaper with more features. The MBair is the razr of laptops. style over function.

[BRLawyer]

And you never are away from an electrical outlet for more than 3 hours (or you don't care if the battery goes dead on you until you can find an outlet)....

A real weak point, though, is the lack of a user-swappable battery so that one could carry a spare battery or two for the long flight or all-day meeting at a conference.

It's a shame when your laptop dies before lunch, and you can't simply swap a spare battery in and keep on going.

Aiden, two simple facts for pretty much EVERY professional meeting out there:

1 - People use notebooks CONNECTED TO power outlets in meetings, not the opposite;

2 - There is NO need at all for Ethernet or any other physical connection; it's all about Wi-Fi.

You probably don't attend that many meetings, otherwise you would know that. Battery time is useful for airplanes or in transit...nothing else.

And no, nobody carries spare batteries, this has been a bogus argument from the outset.

[uNext]

Aiden, two simple facts for pretty much EVERY professional meeting out there:

1 - People use notebooks CONNECTED TO power outlets in meetings, not the opposite;

2 - There is NO need at all for Ethernet or any other physical connection; it's all about Wi-Fi.

You probably don't attend that many meetings, otherwise you would know that. Battery time is useful for airplanes or in transit...nothing else.

And no, nobody carries spare batteries, this has been a bogus argument from the outset.

You feel comfortable with having a wifi connection during an important presentation?

[DeathChill]

I'm sure it's already been said but XBench is extremely unreliable. You can get vastly different scores on the same machine with no changes made to the test circumstances.

[arn]

Ouch, the MBA got it's ass kicked by a computer that cost half as much. But hey, it's .5" thinner and has the "feature" of no disc drive!

I don't come to that conclusion at all. Of course CPU speed of a 2.2GHz vs a 1.8GHz is going to be faster in the MacBook, but the key benchmark here is of disk access, and the MBA was faster by a large margin for the key metric that it's supposed to be faster in. non-sequential reads.

Uncached Write 1.01 MB/sec [4K blocks] (2.23MB/s)
Uncached Write 29.13 MB/sec [256K blocks] (16.92MB/s)
Uncached Read 0.52 MB/sec [4K blocks] (7.02MB/s)
Uncached Read 22.83 MB/sec [256K blocks] (48.24MB/s)

Bold is faster. Parens are MBA.

So for random reads, the MBA is anywhere from 2x to 13.5x faster. It is also faster for random writes for small 4k blocks.

arn

[ViveLeLivre]

Ouch, the MBA got it's ass kicked by a computer that cost half as much. But hey, it's .5" thinner and has the "feature" of no disc drive!

So if it doesn't make a good portable/business computer (so-so battery life, non-replaceable battery), is really expensive and isn't all that powerful just what is the point of the MBA? Is it just for people with more money than sense?

Of course, the greatest irony is that the MBA actually has a larger footprint than the MacBook. Also, MBA advocates conveniently forget that hard drives in the MacBook can be upgraded very easily -- there is nothing to prevent MB (or MBP) owners from upgrading to 2.5" SSD drives when they become available.

I honestly thought the MBA's SSD performance would trounce anything the MacBook could throw at it. After seeing these numbers I am very pleased with my purchase.

[ViveLeLivre]

I don't come to that conclusion at all. Of course CPU speed of a 2.2GHz vs a 1.8GHz is going to be faster in the MacBook, but the key benchmark here is of disk access, and the MBA was faster by a large margin for the key metric that it's supposed to be faster in. non-sequential reads.

Uncached Write 1.01 MB/sec [4K blocks] (2.23MB/s)
Uncached Write 29.13 MB/sec [256K blocks] (16.92MB/s)
Uncached Read 0.52 MB/sec [4K blocks] (7.02MB/s)
Uncached Read 22.83 MB/sec [256K blocks] (48.24MB/s)

Bold is faster. Parens are MBA.

So for random reads, the MBA is anywhere from 2x to 13.5x faster. It is also faster for random writes for small 4k blocks.

arn

Sure, for RANDOM reads... and the Hitachi is up to 3x as fast for everything else (except 4k random writes).

For $2900+, it ought to wipe the floor with my MacBook in every category.

[OS X Dude]

I'm sure it's already been said but XBench is extremely unreliable. You can get vastly different scores on the same machine with no changes made to the test circumstances.

I hear that - under the same circumstances my MacBook scored 3 points lower than it did on the first test :S

I suppose it's there for a ballpark figure only - do like 5 or more tests and take an average from those results.

"Of course, the greatest irony is that the MBA actually has a larger footprint than the MacBook. Also, MBA advocates conveniently forget that hard drives in the MacBook can be upgraded very easily -- there is nothing to prevent MB (or MBP) owners from upgrading to 2.5" SSD drives when they become available."

Nice - now I dunno whether to plump for a 7200rpm HDD now or wait 4/5 years till my next mac haha.

[JGowan]

Question is... "Would you really like to pay $1,000 for it?" :D

I wonder how many would. :rolleyes:

Cheers! :apple:$1000 is relative. To a beggar, it's a fortune. To a businessman, it's a paltry sum. (Consider M$ bid of $44.6B --> they think Yahoo! is worth it. Amazing.)

…

Some people look at computer purchases differently than others. Many buying a computer know that they will be buying a new one every 2-3 years so they don't bother with the absolute best. Others would like to make their purchase last for 5-6 years so they buy the top of the line. I tend to be in the later category. My desktop (Feb '02) and laptop (Feb '03) are due for an upgrade. I plan on dropping about $15K on hardware/software at that time so another thousand would not be a big deal. I make my living on this stuff so I want (and feel I deserve) the best. That being said, my next laptop will be a 15" MBP not a MBA.

Also,… for me, I would have a hard time knowing that the hard drive I use for my iPod Classic is the same one in the laptop I plan on getting. It just seems too slow to run a machine a lot bigger and more complicated than an iPod.

[JonnyMac]

I think it is aimed at people with more money then sense.
There is just no point to it. Benchmarks all over the internet
are proving what we all know that the computer just sucks. But what is amazing is how people try to justify the purchase by saying "if you dont like it it was not meant to be for you" but some of those people are quick to bash windows vista wouldn't the same rule apply?

The macbook topped it and is way cheaper with more features. The MBair is the razr of laptops. style over function.

I'm not one of the MBA advocates saying "if you don't like it it was not meant to be for you." I don't like Vista and I prefer OS X over it but I don't bash Vista, I simply don't buy it. I migrated from a MacBook and I am enjoying the smaller size of the MBA. Granted, I am not a power user by any means and I only use it to watch movies, surf the Internet, email, travel with, etc. It all comes down to if you're happy with your purchase and if it's worth it to YOU, the owner. SSD isn't worth it to me, but it could very well be for other users. If the MBA is not worth it to you, don't buy it. Buy a MB or MBP or a PC laptop, if those computers match your needs more...

[arn]

For $2900+, it ought to wipe the floor with my MacBook in every category.

Only if you value processing power over all else. And place no value in added portability.

I know this is a tired argument, but one last time.

1. 8Core Mac Pro. $2799.
2. 17" MacBook Pro. $2799.

The Mac Pro beats the MacBook Pro across the board on benchmarks. Therefore, by your logic, no one should buy a MacBook Pro. And if you are going to attach the computer to your desk, then the MacPro is more bang-for-your-buck. If you ever want to leave your desk with your computer. You'll gladly pay the $XXX premium for a MacBook Pro rather than try to lug around the Mac Pro where you want.

Similarly, for some people the extra 2 pounds of savings is worth the $XXX-$XXXX premium of the MacBook Air. Especially if they don't use their computer for heavy duty processing applications.

So while a 2 pound difference makes no difference to you if all you are doing is carrying around you MacBook from home to your parents christmas, if you are carrying it around every day with you, the 2 pounds is a big enough difference that it's worth $XXX.

arn

[Silentwave]

I'm sure it's already been said but XBench is extremely unreliable. You can get vastly different scores on the same machine with no changes made to the test circumstances.

I agree. At least on Leopard, I'm almost never able to get the same score more than once. I've had variabilities of over 20 points on the overall, and several dozen points on individual tests. I think the worst was when I had something similar to the MBAir SSD tested earlier in the thread, where the UI test managed to *double* with the next run.

Then, when comparing with a friend who has the previous generation 2.16 C2D MBP and 3GB RAM, plus a slower hard drive and older GPU, running Tiger, my current generation MBP 2.4/4GB system with a 7200RPM HDD, the new faster GPU with double the VRAM running Leopard never once beat his XBench score...only tied it once. If the benchmark were accurate, I'd be seeing at least some benefit from the faster FSB, additional RAM, and better graphics, and the slightly higher clock speed (it wouldn't be much, but it would be something).

XBench needs an update badly. 1.3 came out back in August 2006. It's now February 2008. In that time we've gone to 8 cores, several new GPUs, and needless to say a new OS. Other apps such as Geekbench have updated numerous times and are more consistent.

[arn]

http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=4881470&postcount=66

posted by ciparis
More tests, MBP vs MBA this time:

Launch 4 apps after booting (iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, GarageBand).

MacBook Pro (about 1:30)
http://qik.com/video/14849

MacBook Air (11 seconds):
http://qik.com/video/14862

[ViveLeLivre]

Only if you value processing power over all else. And place no value in added portability.

I know this is a tired argument, but one last time.

1. 8Core Mac Pro. $2799.
2. 17" MacBook Pro. $2799.

The Mac Pro beats the MacBook Pro across the board on benchmarks. Therefore, by your logic, no one should buy a MacBook Pro. And if you are going to attach the computer to your desk, then the MacPro is more bang-for-your-buck. If you ever want to leave your desk with your computer. You'll gladly pay the $XXX premium for a MacBook Pro rather than try to lug around the Mac Pro where you want.

Similarly, for some people the extra 2 pounds of savings is worth the $XXX-$XXXX premium of the MacBook Air. Especially if they don't use their computer for heavy duty processing applications.

So while a 2 pound difference makes no difference to you if all you are doing is carrying around you MacBook from home to your parents christmas, if you are carrying it around every day with you, the 2 pounds is a big enough difference that it's worth $XXX.

arn

You're right, that strawman is tired.

You can't compare the .5" difference in width between the MB and MBA with the difference in volume and weight between a desktop tower and a laptop. The MB and MBA literally compete in the same space. The MBP and Mac Pro do not.

If width and weight are all that matters to you, fine. But by any other objective measure, the MacBook still kicks the crap out of the MBA.

[arn]

You can't compare the .5" difference in width between the MB and MBA with the difference in volume and weight between a desktop tower and a laptop. The MB and MBA literally compete in the same space. The MBP and Mac Pro do not.

all I can do is quote this

http://www.macworld.com/article/131864/2008/01/macbookair.html

One reason I loved the 12-inch PowerBook G4 was that it crossed some hard-to-define weight barrier, one I hadn’t even been aware of until I started using a laptop that crossed it. The 12-inch PowerBook was so small and light that carrying my laptop around with me became an afterthought. Instead of lugging a 15-inch PowerBook from place to place, I could idly hold the 12-inch model in one hand. The MacBook Air takes that easy feeling to an extreme

[ViveLeLivre]

http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=4881470&postcount=66

posted by ciparis

Just ran this test on my MacBook on 5% battery power: took 9.2 seconds.

[ViveLeLivre]

One reason I loved the 12-inch PowerBook G4 was that it crossed some hard-to-define weight barrier, one I hadn’t even been aware of until I started using a laptop that crossed it. The 12-inch PowerBook was so small and light that carrying my laptop around with me became an afterthought. Instead of lugging a 15-inch PowerBook from place to place, I could idly hold the 12-inch model in one hand. The MacBook Air takes that easy feeling to an extreme

It was also 12", which is what the MBA should have been. Apple could have stuck a Celeron in a 12" laptop and I wouldn't be criticizing it's performance. Instead they had to make the thinnest 13.3" notebook evah! with little thought to or total disregard for the actual functionality and performance of such of a device. 2lbs. and half an inch doesn't save it when it fits in the exact same slot in my backpack! I might as well spend half as much, get 1.5x the same computer and learn to deal with the extra weight.

A 12" would have been light, useable, insanely portable, and still very thin if they can shove even that gimpy computer into the MBA's chassis. Instead we get a metal MacBook wannabe with a crew cut, no optical disk -- and light-up keys. Brilliant.

[elmo151]

If width and weight are all that matters to you, fine. But by any other objective measure, the MacBook still kicks the crap out of the MBA.


there is no reason to buy an MBA if you don't want one. so why spend so much time bitching about it.

It fits some peoples needs(mine) and I bought one. If it doesn't fit yours; don't buy it..

[Gunga Din]

there is no reason to buy an MBA if you don't want one. so why spend so much time bitching about it.

It fits some peoples needs(mine) and I bought one. If it doesn't fit yours; don't buy it..

i think most people are just upset because this product took time and development away from the Macbook Pro Update.

I'm looking into picking up my first Mac ever and during that keynote speech when Jobs intrduced the MacAir, I honestly thought it was some kind of joke lol. I was looking behind him for the real computer he was gonna introduce. This was the first time i've watched a keynote so i wasnt sure how he did things.

But anyway, yea when he introduced the MacAir, i swear i heard crickets in the crowd and i said to myself.....ehh?

Maybe if I owned a MacPro or something already , I could somehow consider it but the SSD thing is too new for release and incorporation into a notebook as far as i'm concerned. Maybe a yr or 2 from now, but this timing seemed off to me. 3k? No.

[jameskohn]

It was also 12", which is what the MBA should have been. Apple could have stuck a Celeron in a 12" laptop and I wouldn't be criticizing it's performance. Instead they had to make the thinnest 13.3" notebook evah! with little thought to or total disregard for the actual functionality and performance of such of a device. 2lbs. and half an inch doesn't save it when it fits in the exact same slot in my backpack! I might as well spend half as much, get 1.5x the same computer and learn to deal with the extra weight.

A 12" would have been light, useable, insanely portable, and still very thin if they can shove even that gimpy computer into the MBA's chassis. Instead we get a metal MacBook wannabe with a crew cut, no optical disk -- and light-up keys. Brilliant.

Well, it sure works for me. My 12" PowerBook was a wonderful machine, but time marches on. The ability to gain another much needed inch of screen real estate while actually shedding a pound and a half is terrific. Whatever the MBA does not have, I have on my MacPro and never used on my laptop anyway. The external optical drive, by the way, is approximately the size of 2 cd jewel cases; perfect for loading software, etc. and easily taken along if the need arises. For me, the MBA is "brilliant", but I wouldn't attempt to force that opinion on anybody else.

[peterlobl]

It was also 12", which is what the MBA should have been. Apple could have stuck a Celeron in a 12" laptop and I wouldn't be criticizing it's performance.

so for a 1" diag smaller footprint and the real disaster of celeron... for THAT you wouldn't be complaining...?

Instead they had to make the thinnest 13.3" notebook evah! with little thought to or total disregard for the actual functionality and performance of such of a device.

"Total disregard" ??? I think mine works rather well and the lighter weight is really nice and appreciated. I love it. Apps I am using for page layouts, spreadsheets and writing, for example, are great. What apps did you want to run with it that you are finding sluggishness with?

2lbs. and half an inch doesn't save it when it fits in the exact same slot in my backpack! I might as well spend half as much, get 1.5x the same computer and learn to deal with the extra weight.

so, if I understand you correctly, you wanted a smaller form factor - 12" screen - so it could fit better in your backpack... or an upgraded smaller backpack or??

seems like Apple concentrated on thin - not just width but weight - svelte even - managed a larger screen with full keyboard - and i think that was really wise for travelers who prefer (and yearned) for those functions within OS X.

I think it's a great computer!

[winterspan]

i think most people are just upset because this product took time and development away from the Macbook Pro Update.

Maybe if I owned a MacPro or something already , I could somehow consider it but the SSD thing is too new for release and incorporation into a notebook as far as i'm concerned. Maybe a yr or 2 from now, but this timing seemed off to me. 3k? No.

"too new"... hhahaha.. solid state drives have been in use for military and aerospace applications for 5-10 years. But go ahead.. stay with 4200RPM hdds.

[winterspan]

Okay, the SSD is *much* faster than the HDD for most reads, that's good. But it costs maybe 5-10 times as much as the HDD. Can't we do better?

Why doesn't someone build a notebook with a big, slow, crappy HDD and maybe 16GB of RAM? You load everything you need into RAM when you boot up. Any kind of smart software can keep track of which files you access frequently and automatically load them. This part is slow.

After that, you have the fastest "disk" in the world. You can shut down the HDD right after booting, so there's no power drain use at all until you shut down.

Tigerdirect will sell you 2GB of Macbook RAM for $80 US. x8 =
$640. I'm sure you can find cheaper RAM which will work fine. Plus a big, crappy HDD for permanent storage, maybe $150. Total cost < $800 US.

The speed increase is maybe 2000x faster than an SSD. It's more expensive per GB, but you don't need 64GB of chips because the big, crappy HDD is carrying the bulk load at bootup and shutdown (and maybe a few times in-between).

Are we ready for the Revenge of the RAM Disk? Maybe someone has jammed their Mac Pro with RAM and can comment if they've tried this?


Actually, You can buy other laptops with a good solution to that. Dell is offering one. You get a 250GB 2.5" 5400RPM disk for storage and a fast 32GB SSD for your boot/cache/temp drive. Sounds pretty good, eh?

[winterspan]

There's an old adage among engineers: "Better, cheaper, faster-- choose two". Apple chose a performance/price/power tradeoff they felt they could live with.

Here's the only data I can find on the current PATA (http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/productInfo.do?fmly_id=161&partnum=MCCOE64GEMPP) drive in the Air:
Read: 57MBps
Write: 38MBps
Power: 0.17W active (write)

Here's what I find on the newfangled SATAII (http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/products/flash/Products_FlashSSD.html) drives:
Read: 100MBps
Write: 80MBps
Power: 0.5W active

Since they don't publish datasheets, I can't see what those numbers actually mean. What I gather from this though is they're pumping more power through the system to gain performance. No magic. I'd almost wonder if they were running some sort of RAID under the hood with those numbers. If you're looking for performance, you'll be happier with the new drives, whenever you can get your hands on them, if you're juiced about the longer battery life you'd prefer the existing ones (not that half a Watt counts for much these days). SATA II wasn't chosen because it was necessary to handle the data rates.

It's not just the Samsung SATA II's... Nearly every SSD I've seen has a faster "advertised" rate than what were are seeing in the Air benchmarks. Now granted, I'm not naive enough to think that the published read/write rates are going to be the average or even attainable in regular circumstances, but I definitely think the Air drive could have done better. I was not aware that the Air SSD was a known drive that already had specs available. So I need to go look at that.

I agree that they probably had to take a good look at price/performance/power usage, and in such a small form factor laptop and with such a small battery, It becomes obvious what they choose. But that does not mean ALL SSD drives are slow and/or not worth expense. I need to go look at more benchmarks....

[subsonix]

Does anyone know what SSD is inside the air? From what I understand the performance difference between different models can be pretty big. AFAIK the mtron 7000 pro is among the fastest so far.

[MacsAttack]

Does anyone know what SSD is inside the air? From what I understand the performance difference between different models can be pretty big. AFAIK the mtron 7000 pro is among the fastest so far.

My guess is that they are using the SSD that entered mass production in June last year...

http://www.mydigitallife.info/2007/06/26/samsungs-18-inch-64gb-ssd-solid-state-drive-into-mass-production/

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9025685

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/solid-state-drives/samsungs-18-64gb-ssd-gets-mass+production-go+ahead-271800.php

http://www.letsgodigital.org/en/15098/samsung-64gb-ssd/

[MacsAttack]

Will be nice if Samsung can deliver on their promise...

http://laptoping.com/samsung-512gb-ssd-in-the-future.html

[MacsAttack]

And breaking news from Intel and Micron....

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=storage&articleId=9060581&taxonomyId=19&intsrc=kc_top

An exciting future ahead...

Incidentally, Micron are introducing their own range of SSDs soon under their Crucial brand...

http://www.crucial.com/promo/index.aspx?prog=ssd

While not using the new tech, it will be interesting to see how they stack up against Samsung - and if they will also produce a 1.8 inch form factor drive...

[Salty Pirate]

SSD has a controller for Bad Block Management and Wear Leveling Firmware, and those functions make it much different than a hard drive. The major issue is that any SSD drive larger than 256 Megs, the Sector Size it writes to the drive is much larger than it is on a hard drive. The Smallest Unit you can write on a real hard drive is 512bytes, but on a SSD the smallest Unit you can write is 2048 bytes. That makes a Sector 2k and is called a Page. However, you cannot erase a single sector when it is freed, it has to be erased in Blocks. A block is 64 x Sector. So when you move a file, change a file, etc you have to erase 128k and that is the smallest Erase Unit. On a hard drive the smallest erase unit is still 512bytes.

Once Data is written in the sector it cannot be changed AT ALL without an erase block occurring. So every single time you modify a file it is opened and written in to a new location. You cannot change a file in its own location like you can in a hard drive.

Once you start understanding 2+2 you can see why it is slow to write, fast to read. So when you shutdown if files have to be updated or you do a hibernation where it has to write out the whole 2 gigs of ram to the drive it will be very very slow.

Also since function on NAND are serial in control, you will see if you watch a movie, play a song, and copy new files to the same drive at the same time that you will start to see studdering (at least on all SSD's I have tried so far, but the MacAir has a new Samsung SSD), but I guess only time and testing will tell on this issue.

One other thing to take in to consideration is that wear leveling's purpose is to keep the erase cycles even across the entire drive, including the FAT tables. So the drive will move non-changing files around to more active locations. The drive then changes the the LBA pointer to the PBA location (meaning that you can not view the original sector because you have no idea where it is). This process is a slow process and can affect drive performance, but it has to move the fat table around even if it is a simple change like the access times on a file.

Well any ways, I hope that was informing and maybe would explain some of the numbers.

Scott Moulton

BTW: There is a speech at Shmoocon in DC on Feb 16th on this very topic and how SSD works.

I went to the apple store today and tried media on both systems, the SSD & HDD. I downloaded a large movie file and played tracks from itunes. No stuttering whatsoever. In fact, the SSD utterly and completely outperforms the HDD machine in everything I tried. I was also surprised that the 1.6 model with HDD was plenty fast for everyday use.

[Naimfan]

For me, the MBA is "brilliant", but I wouldn't attempt to force that opinion on anybody else.

Hey, now, stop trying to derail the thread by being reasonable! ;)

Very well said!

[Analog Kid]

The problem is threefold: First, you don't know what is going to be needed (although with 16 GB you could just keep reading things in the background and even if you get half of it wrong, you should still be fine). But the problem is what happens when you write. You could easily do all the writes when the computer is shut down or put to sleep, but that means you have to do a lot of writes, possibly when you run out of battery power, and if the Mac doesn't manage to finish all the writes, you are in serious trouble! And the last problem is, RAM uses power permanently. 16 GB RAM would affect your battery life. Flash doesn't use any power at all when it is not in use.
Everybody's usage patterns are different, but most people spend more time using applications than opening them, so most applications should read in the files they need at launch and keep them open. Closing files between reads wouldn't make sense.

Writes are handled in the background either by the application in a separate thread or by the system's drive controller or cache.

Flash retains storage without power, but it does use power when it's idle-- I posted links to what specs I could find at Samsung. Samsung also makes DRAM, so you can compare idle specs if you want to. I don't know off hand which pulls more.
Several others in the various threads have expressed this intention. In theory, sounds like a savvy plan. But has anyone confirmed that it's actually possible to replace the HD with SSD? Would Apple offer that option thru their stores? I suppose that if you did it yourself you could kiss your AppleCare goodbye, right?
Another hitch is that the MBA SSD is PATA. Looks like the newer ones are SATA. This might also help explain Apple's choice in drives-- they needed one electrically compatible with the 1.8" spinner.
Another interesting test would be to have a lot going on and the machine being out of memory so the swap area gets used a lot. If the memory pressure is enough, a disk based system would be thrashing. I wonder if the SSD would survive better and as a result you could have less memory and still have acceptable performance.

The real interesting thing here is not what we pay today, it is the fact that this is where disk technology is going and HD will not be part of computing for that much longer. No introduction of new technology has ever been done at budget prices. However, the cost of SSD will eventually be lower than HD and the speed higher. This is clearly the future of high speed I/O, especially when you have multiple accesses in parallel for the same device.
The SSD would perform worse under "thrashing". Memory page outs are long sequential writes-- check the benchmarks on that one. If I'm running parallel accesses, I'd prefer to be writing to the buffer on a spinning disk than direct to flash. If you're writing enough that the buffer gets swamped, then you're doing long sequential writes and the SSD loses.

I've been working with Flash drives since SanDisk was SunDisk. We used them then because they were lower power and could survive getting bounced out of a truck. They were also lower capacity and much more expensive, but they were worth it to our customers. Here we are after all that time and the tradeoffs are the same. Who would have thought that mechanical technologies would still be used as our highest capacity storage? I'm amazed that spinning disks haven't hit the wall yet, but they're still the best price/performance choice for mass storage and there's still at least a couple generations in the pipe.

I won't say never, because I have to believe that mechanical disks have to have a limit somewhere, but I'm not holding my breath. As long as they're cheaper per bit, can hold more bits as a whole, and aren't the most fragile component in the system, they'll be the consumer choice. If I had to bet, I'd say it'll be yet another technology that unseats hard drives. Flash has physical limits too.
What I find amusing is still to this day, the OS and applications I ran on my old Macintosh Plus in ram disc (saving to a SCSI drive externally) were practically much faster than the bloatware running on todays much faster computers.
Mac Plus vs 2007 dual Athlon (http://hubpages.com/hub/_86_Mac_Plus_Vs_07_AMD_DualCore_You_Wont_Believe_Who_Wins)
I think it is aimed at people with more money then sense.
There is just no point to it. Benchmarks all over the internet
are proving what we all know that the computer just sucks. But what is amazing is how people try to justify the purchase by saying "if you dont like it it was not meant to be for you" but some of those people are quick to bash windows vista wouldn't the same rule apply?

The macbook topped it and is way cheaper with more features. The MBair is the razr of laptops. style over function.
If you don't like it, it wasn't meant for you. It's a great machine for certain usage models, and you appear to use yours differently. There is an equally valid argument that says "for most tasks, wouldn't people get more use out of their computer if it was more portable rather than more powerful?" Fortunately, Apple has more than one product, and you might find one that fits your needs too.
Aiden, two simple facts for pretty much EVERY professional meeting out there:

1 - People use notebooks CONNECTED TO power outlets in meetings, not the opposite;
2 - There is NO need at all for Ethernet or any other physical connection; it's all about Wi-Fi.

You probably don't attend that many meetings, otherwise you would know that. Battery time is useful for airplanes or in transit...nothing else.

And no, nobody carries spare batteries, this has been a bogus argument from the outset.
It's a little self centered to assume that everyone's life is just like yours... I don't use my computer connected to power in most of my meetings, and I attend many. I try to use WiFi when I can, but like to have a fall back, fortunately Apple provides one. I carry a spare battery with me every where I go. That makes at least two of us...
It's not just the Samsung SATA II's... Nearly every SSD I've seen has a faster "advertised" rate than what were are seeing in the Air benchmarks. Now granted, I'm not naive enough to think that the published read/write rates are going to be the average or even attainable in regular circumstances, but I definitely think the Air drive could have done better. I was not aware that the Air SSD was a known drive that already had specs available. So I need to go look at that.

I agree that they probably had to take a good look at price/performance/power usage, and in such a small form factor laptop and with such a small battery, It becomes obvious what they choose. But that does not mean ALL SSD drives are slow and/or not worth expense. I need to go look at more benchmarks....
Nope, they're not all slow. They are different though and will behave differently in the system. Like you, I haven't seen enough benchmarks to make a call. My gut feeling though is that there are cheaper ways to boost performance.

[John.B]

Flash stands tall in the random read test because there is no "seeking" of a moving drive head.
Seeking is the slowest operation in the slowest critical component in your computer. Anything that can be done to reduce or eliminate seek operations, even if only for "disk" reads, is going to feel faster to the user.

So, yes, an SSD may not make all I/O operations faster, but the parts that will be sped up (booting, program loading, opening files, "disk" reads from a database) will make the computer seem noticeably faster for most users.

Its not just smoke and mirrors. There is a real performance edge to SSD, regardless of whether many of the standard performance benchmarks are designed to pick up on it.

[AidenShaw]

While I prefer to ignore your fanboi rants, this time you are so far off the mark that I'll respond....

1 - People use notebooks CONNECTED TO power outlets in meetings, not the opposite;

As I've said repeatedly, if you have ten people in a small conference room - no problem with putting your tacky white plastic power brick into a socket.

If there are a hundred people in the room, maybe ten of them can find tables that are close to a power outlet.

If there are 500 to 1000 people in a big hotel ballroom, only a few people have a chance of connecting.

You make yourself look stupid if you claim that every conference has a power outlet at every seat.


2 - There is NO need at all for Ethernet or any other physical connection; it's all about Wi-Fi.

I'm not sure where this rant comes from, since I don't think that I've mentioned the Ethernet connection that much, certainly not in the context of meetings. I'm happy, however, that the docking stations on my Dell are connected to the Gigabit Ethernet networks at home and work.

I have mentioned the lack of 3G connectivity - I don't use WiFi that much on the road, since my Dell laptops have EVDO radios built in. Between the various "pay per byte" WiFi hotspots and the horrible performance of the "free" WiFi at conferences, it's nice to have another option.


And no, nobody carries spare batteries, this has been a bogus argument from the outset.

My friend with the MacBook Pro and his four spare batteries for international flights laughs at you.


You probably don't attend that many meetings, otherwise you would know that. Battery time is useful for airplanes or in transit...nothing else.

This statement is simply ignorant, no rebuttal is needed.

Or perhaps, the situation on your home planet isn't the same as it is on Earth...

[MacBuzz]

Spent about two hours playing with the MBA at the NY 5th Ave store. Plenty (16?) of display models there, but no more to sell. Anyway, here is my list of "will use MBA for if I get one" and "better to leave to my 2.16GHZ C2D iMac".

1. Will use MBA for
Safari, Mail, iTunes(including movies).
Browsing photos on iPhoto.
Office (Word/Excel/Powerpoint).
Garageband (as a MIDI sequencer): Surprisingly, there was no lag playing the instruments on the MBA keyboard.

Apart from the load up times, no noticeable (read "intolerable") difference between the 1.6GHZ HDD model and the 1.8GHZ SSD model with these apps.

2. Leave to my iMac
Photo editing via iPhoto:Sliding the edit sliders was so clunky on both the HDD and SSD models, as are the MacBooks. I didn't realize how much the iMac's dedicated graphic board was contributing to such basic uses.
iMovie, iDVD: Didn't try these, but given the iPhoto experience, outcome is obvious.
Painting with Corel Painter X
Music creation, sampling and hardware recording.

- After thoughts -
The 1.6GHZ MBA is more than enough for me. But will I get it to replace my 4 year-old Panasonic R3? The R3 Toughbook is 2.1lbs, has nearly 9 hours of battery and its rugged enough to withstand falls. For what I would use the MBA for, i.e. basically its a browser and word processor, it could have been better - much lighter with more battery life. Panasonic had it right 4 years ago.
http://www.kemplar.com/panasonic_r3.php
But just for the sake of not feeling obsolete at Starbucks, might get the 1.8GHZ HDD model, (for my wife:rolleyes:).

[John.B]

You can't compare the .5" difference in width between the MB and MBA with the difference in volume and weight between a desktop tower and a laptop. The MB and MBA literally compete in the same space. The MBP and Mac Pro do not.
You are kidding, right?

There are plenty of people who are making do with a MBP as a sort of combination desktop + portable, where a Mac Pro would be the superior choice for most of the work they are doing. We record sessions using FW-based A/D converters with Logic and a MBP (strictly for portability reasons), where clearly the new eight core MBP would be the better solution. The same applies for digital photography, video, etc.

But you don't see post after post in forum after forum of people complaining about the lack of eight cores in a MBP as some sort a personal affront...

Sooner or later, people need to realize that not every Apple product is going to suit every person. :shrug:

[tba03]

Digital recording is linear. You certainly don't want a fragmented audiofile. Besides, even if recording, say, four tracks at 24bit/192kHz, you're writing to the disk at 2,11 (2.11 for you americans) MB/s. That's not exactly much.
The disk-speed on that butt-slow iPod-drive doesn't matter when recording. It does matter in other circumstances, but not the recording in itself.

How many tracks do you record ("record"=real time audio-gathering), at what bitrate etc? And what do you use it for? Which programmes do you use?

[Okay, this might actually be better in another thread, but it's all related to whether that iPod drive will live up to his(?) needs]

usually records between 24 and 36 tracks at 24/44.1 or 96 (if project requires it) in Logic 8 with 2 Motu soundcards

I was more asking about the SSD drive because of the real fast non sequential reads and writes (as the sequentials are even slower than the ipod drive)

i used to use a soft on windows that refragmented all my 24 tracks so sample 1 of every file was contiguous and so on, easing the read head movements (not having to skip to 24 different points to get the 1st sample and so on (it was used when using backups as the original recordings were made fragmented together (ie when you record 24 tracks they are all interleaved (for the lack of a better word) together)))

i'm really looking at SSD performances for audio recordings and soft samlers as the load from dis ktime will be so short

[mig]

I love the MBA for its looks and its mobility, but it is a mere american toy. Free Wi-Fi no CD/DVD hardly any secure connections (no ethernet) makes it sth. for a few only. The majority of business nowadays is done in countries, which have none of this.

Unfortunately the world ticks different from the US and its last allies more and more every day (you might like it or not).

The latest releases of Apple indicate (software as well as hardware), that their favorite tune is "California ueber alles" and that is how they do business. And I always thought, that Steve had gained a broader picture, when he travelled to India, to know better...

[OS X Dude]

It really is laptop designed for those with desktop-bound Macs - MB users (like me) and MBP users (like me one day lol) just don't need it.

It's for Mr.Mac who needs to work with Mac files on the go and not break his back in the process.

But, the macbook isn't even heavy - 2 pounds heaver (1kg) is nowt. I go to school with a bag that must weigh about 3 times my macbook. If you have a quality backpack (i'm a satchel man) you shouldn't be knackered after carrying a Macbook around for a bit.

GET SOME EXERCISE!! NO PAIN NO GAIN!! :D

[Manic Mouse]

I don't come to that conclusion at all. Of course CPU speed of a 2.2GHz vs a 1.8GHz is going to be faster in the MacBook, but the key benchmark here is of disk access, and the MBA was faster by a large margin for the key metric that it's supposed to be faster in. non-sequential reads.

The MacBook beat the MBA in five out of the six benchmarks. Even in disk speed the MBA only beats the MB in some tests like the ones you mentioned and, as has been mentioned by others, gets trounced in others.

Don't forget that this computer cost TWICE as much as the MB. I don't care how much .5" and two pounds means to you, that kind of price/performance ratio is piss-poor in comparison to the MB. Not to mention the lack of an optical drive.

Only if you value processing power over all else. And place no value in added portability.


What added portability? The MBA has a bigger footprint than the MB. It has the same battery life (in the real world), but you can't replace the battery so the MB is actually better for taking on the road for a long journey or conference.

I love all the MBA fans trying to make the MacBook out to be some hulking behemoth and that the MBA is just so much more portable. Let's face facts, the MB is small and isn't all that heavy. The MBA is slightly thinner and is lighter. Spend the extra $1,000 on the gym if carrying a MB is too much for you.

The difference (in terms of size and portability) between the MB and MBA is nothing like the difference between a MP and MBP. Such a comparison is complete tosh.

@John B - way to miss the point. Entirely. Maybe think about what's being said again. The MB and MBA are both laptops, they both have the same footprint.

Now is this true of the MP and MBP? No, not at all. And this was the comparison being made. The MP is immobile, the MBP is portable. Both the MB and MBA are portable, with the MBA being slightly thinner and lighter. Can you spot the problem with the comparison now?

[j26]

Aiden, two simple facts for pretty much EVERY professional meeting out there:

1 - People use notebooks CONNECTED TO power outlets in meetings, not the opposite;

2 - There is NO need at all for Ethernet or any other physical connection; it's all about Wi-Fi.


I've had to give several presentations in a room with no available sockets, as the Windows machine and projector were taking up all the available sockets, with a long phone cable run from a room upstairs for dial-up speeds (out the window of the room upstairs, and in the window of my room).

Unfortunately when giving a presentation, you have to work with what you have.

[netdog]

This thread is to discuss performance differences between the 1.6/80 and the 1.8/SSD, not to discuss the merits (or lack thereof) of the MBA.

Thanks.

[BRLawyer]

You feel comfortable with having a wifi connection during an important presentation?

Wi-Fi works perfectly in any good corporate environment. Besides, presentations would be saved on my HD or on a USB stick, simple as that.

[BRLawyer]

While I prefer to ignore your fanboi rants, this time you are so far off the mark that I'll respond....

As I've said repeatedly, if you have ten people in a small conference room - no problem with putting your tacky white plastic power brick into a socket.

If there are a hundred people in the room, maybe ten of them can find tables that are close to a power outlet.

If there are 500 to 1000 people in a big hotel ballroom, only a few people have a chance of connecting.

You make yourself look stupid if you claim that every conference has a power outlet at every seat.

And honestly, you look stupid with such a glib reply. Most meetings are in small rooms, and those where you are supposed to present to 1000 people will absolutely have an outlet dedicated for YOUR presentation. Obviously it's not about giving an outlet to all attendants...

Such a childish answer is unnecessary, Aiden; admit when you're wrong.

My friend with the MacBook Pro and his four spare batteries for international flights laughs at you.

The 80% answering on MR that they never had a spare battery are surely laughing at you guys, then. Not to mention ALL the meetings that I've attended, where NO ONE uses spare batteries.

And your ignorant reply surely forgets my OWN remark that long-haul flights ARE among the FEW exceptions. So pay better attention to what you read before answering in such a stupid way.

Or perhaps, the situation on your home planet isn't the same as it is on Earth...

Unless you live in Africa or a remote island, my situation is the same as yours...Europe, U.S. and Latin America included.

[Music_Producer]

My friend with the MacBook Pro and his four spare batteries for international flights laughs at you.


The rules have changed now though.. you can't lug extra batteries anymore (packed separately) for flights. How come your friend can't plug in his laptop in the power port? :confused: 4 batteries.. that's crazy!

[Tosser]

The rules have changed now though.. you can't lug extra batteries anymore (packed separately) for flights. How come your friend can't plug in his laptop in the power port? :confused: 4 batteries.. that's crazy!

Yes you can. If it's normal laptop batteries (size wise), you just have to carry-on.

[AidenShaw]

The rules have changed now though.. you can't lug extra batteries anymore (packed separately) for flights. How come your friend can't plug in his laptop in the power port? :confused: 4 batteries.. that's crazy!

The rules are at http://safetravel.dot.gov/whats_new_batteries.html, and they don't put a limit on the number of spare laptop computer batteries that you can have in your carry-on. (It's basically based on the WHr capacity of the battery, and even an MBP battery is much smaller than the limit.)

As has been discussed in other threads, many airplanes don't have power ports at every seat. In international business class, you have a pretty good chance of having one, but even there you can't be sure. (For example, JAL is upgrading their cabins with new business class seating. If you get a new cabin, you have a port. The older cabins don't.)

[AidenShaw]

Aiden; admit when you're wrong.

I was wrong to have missed that you were only talking about the presenter, even though you didn't say so.


Wi-Fi works perfectly in any good corporate environment.

You wouldn't be able to use it at my company. The WiFi has no connectivity until you go through the VPN using two-factor authentication. Then you need to log into the AD domain. Only then you can send/receive packets to the wider net. Any company that has direct wireless access to their internal network, even with WiFi passwords, might as well shut off their firewalls. That's why many companies forbid WiFi completely because of security issues.

So, I also assume that you're discounting the large number of complaints about wireless problems with 10.5.1?

Even if your Powerpoints are on your hard drive, what about demos or other times where you need access to the net? (If I can't connect the GbE wire, and I can't get WiFi, then I use the 3G EVDO cellular modem built into the Dell.)

Mr. Lawyer, you're taking an extreme stand that the world is exactly like you see it, and that anyone whose situation is different is wrong or on the far fringe. I have no doubt that the majority of laptop users don't carry spare batteries, but for those of us who do it is an important feature that will influence our purchases.

[ViveLeLivre]

Hey kids! Compare this to your $3000 solid-state computer!

Startup: 27.7 seconds.
Shutdown: 5.3 seconds.
Launch of iLife: 7.3 seconds

MMM, tasty! Thanks for taking the MacBook challenge!

Remember, every MacBook comes with better performance, and a $1500 check inside!


Notes:
Tested on MacBook 2.2ghz w/ 4GB RAM and Hitachi 200GB 7200rpm drive (total cost $1520 -- $1440 + shipping and tax)
Startup: from press of power button to desktop + dock's appearance. (MB averages just a little more than 4 rotations of the startup spinner)
Shutdown: from confirm shutdown to complete power down.
iLife launch: launches iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, GarageBand in order as shown in the 11 second MBA benchmark video.

[netdog]

Remember, every MacBook comes with better performance, and a $1500 check inside!



Well bully for you. Again, this thread is about comparing performance the 1.6 80 to that of the 1.8 SSD.

This thread is not for gloating MacBook owners.

This thread is not for slamming it for having a fixed battery.

Duh!

[ViveLeLivre]

Well bully for you. Again, this thread is about comparing performance the 1.6 80 to that of the 1.8 SSD.

Duh!

I heard you the first time, and I still don't care.

1.6 w/ 4200rpm VS. 1.8 w/ a SSD: is this comparison even necessary? Stop the presses! SSD is faster than a 4200rpm notebook drive! Duh, yourself.

No, this thread posted the first real-world xBench numbers for both models of the MacBook Air, and it is rightly being criticized for them using real world numbers to back up the claims. If you want sunshine blown up your skirt, I suggest you try the MacBook Air forum. This is "news discussion".

[asdavis10]

Those benchmark scores don't mean anything until you've actually used one of the SSD models (at your local Apple Store of course). When the application icon bounces only once, you'll realize the difference. Didn't know this when I pre-ordered after the Keynote, but I'm glad I didn't opt for that 80GB model. 4200rpm? Seriously people. No brainer...if you have the extra cash to fork up for the $999 (who comes up with these figures?! LOL) upgrade.

[shadowfax]

Those benchmark scores don't mean anything until you've actually used one of the SSD models (at your local Apple Store of course). When the application icon bounces only once, you'll realize the difference. Didn't know this when I pre-ordered after the Keynote, but I'm glad I didn't opt for that 80GB model. 4200rpm? Seriously people. No brainer...if you have the extra cash to fork up for the $999 (who comes up with these figures?! LOL) upgrade.


If I followed you around, might I catch the money that appears to be flowing out your ears?

[gnasher729]

1.6 w/ 4200rpm VS. 1.8 w/ a SSD: is this comparison even necessary? Stop the presses! SSD is faster than a 4200rpm notebook drive! Duh, yourself.

Of course that comparison is necessary. Before the MBA was released to the public, there were claims that the 1.8 inch hard drive would be anywhere between much to slow and just fine, and claims that the SSD drive would run somewhere between like lightning and not much faster at all. For the price difference, we don't want to know _that_ SSD is faster, we want to know _how much_.

[gnasher729]

I don't come to that conclusion at all. Of course CPU speed of a 2.2GHz vs a 1.8GHz is going to be faster in the MacBook, but the key benchmark here is of disk access, and the MBA was faster by a large margin for the key metric that it's supposed to be faster in. non-sequential reads.

Uncached Write 1.01 MB/sec [4K blocks] (2.23MB/s)
Uncached Write 29.13 MB/sec [256K blocks] (16.92MB/s)
Uncached Read 0.52 MB/sec [4K blocks] (7.02MB/s)
Uncached Read 22.83 MB/sec [256K blocks] (48.24MB/s)

Bold is faster. Parens are MBA.

So for random reads, the MBA is anywhere from 2x to 13.5x faster. It is also faster for random writes for small 4k blocks.

arn

What this benchmark doesn't give you is the effect that on a hard drive read and write speed depends on how full the hard drive is - the outer tracks carry more data per track and are therefore faster for sequential operations (the 4K operations might also slow down, because on the average the read head will have to skip over more tracks when the disk is full). On the SSD drive, this shouldn't make any difference at all. So it would be interesting to fill the hard drive and repeat the test.

[AidenShaw]

Well bully for you. Again, this thread is about comparing performance the 1.6 80 to that of the 1.8 SSD.

Actually, I find it quite interesting that the MacBook clearly outperforms the MacBook Cube Air in so many ways.

Especially since the MacBook is virtually the same size as the MBA, just a bit thicker and heavier.


This thread is not for slamming it for having a fixed battery.

Or broken battery, depending on your needs.

[shigzeo]

Speak and Spell - one of Depeche Mode's better albums :D

hahaha

indeed, i always come back to that album... have for years. strangely though the cd is still in wonderful shiny shape!

actually i am more interested in the ssd express cards for macbook pro - not the rubbish transcend ones that are slower than an etch a sketch but proper ones, anyone heard of a good one lately?

[kuwisdelu]

Actually, I find it quite interesting that the MacBook clearly outperforms the MacBook Cube Air in so many ways.

Especially since the MacBook is virtually the same size as the MBA, just a bit thicker and heavier.

Virtually the same size? Volume-wise, the MacBook is almost twice as big as the MacBook Air, and when you're talking about the kinds of electronics in these things, every cubic inch makes a massive difference. When you compare the MacBook Air's specs to those of other equally-sized subnotebooks by other companys (Dell's, Sony's, IBM's...) it's really quite impressive how much power they packed into that tiny thing. They had to have Intel custom shrink the MacBook's processor chip to fit. It's a wonder that the MacBook Air manages to perform as close behind the MacBook as it does... I was impressed, anyway.

[changb]

Question is... "Would you really like to pay $1,000 for it?" :D

I wonder how many would. :rolleyes:

Cheers! :apple:

I probably would. Why, basically computers are so cheap these days and we gets lots of value from them. The contents in my computer are worth much more than my computer so I think it is OK. Not sure how many others will buy but if the world is going to wireless and the MBA become the standard tool then the numbers will grow.
never sure of the future but it is a bit of fun to speculate
Changb

[AidenShaw]

Virtually the same size?

Yes.

It's thin, not small.

Thin isn't bad, but thin *and* small would be better.


They had to have Intel custom shrink the MacBook's processor chip to fit.

This is not true. The CPU is a standard 65nm Merom chip.

It's been placed in a carrier that Intel was developing for a Penryn mobile platform.

Get it straight - Intel didn't make custom silicon for Apple, they took existing silicon and put it in a carrier that was already under development for a pin-compatible Penryn system.

And, it looks like Intel's selling the smaller form factor Meroms to other laptop makers....

The most interesting part of this is that in a few months the Rev A MBA will be out with the 45nm Penryn CPU that was intended for that package. The Penryn will use less power (typically), and by then SSDs will probably drop in price.

Put your MBAs on eBay now while you can get your money back....

[amacisbetter]

I'm actually very disappointed with the results. I thought the new Solid State drive would have been much faster in every instance. The random writes do appear to be much quicker, but not worth the hefty premium price. :eek:

[Cybergypsy]

I'm actually very disappointed with the results. I thought the new Solid State drive would have been much faster in every instance. The random writes do appear to be much quicker, but not worth the hefty premium price. :eek:

I have read that also I will be happy with the HHD one...till next year :)

[winterspan]

For everyone unsure about the speed of SSDs, you need to know that they definitely very depending on Manufacturer and model, just like regular HDDs. There are many different components and even flash types that affect the speed of an SSD.
With the Macbook Air's SSD, Apple probably had to compromise on speed for cost, weight, and probably most important, power consumption. It's understandable, but I am still disappointed by the performance somewhat. (especially for $999... a 32GB drive should be $500 or less)

If I were to purchase an Air, I'd definitely get the HDD, and swap in a SSD myself. For the $999, you can get a faster SSD, and for a little more money, a 64GB SSD.

There have been many recent announcements from different companies about very fast upcoming SSDs. I just read the other week that Samsung has a new line of SATAII SSDs with claimed sequential read and write speeds above ~100MB/s including in 1.8" SSD drives.

Here are some test results from tomshardware.com on some SSDs they have reviewed. Now when you compare these to the Macbook Air sequential read/write speeds, you'll see that the Air test results have a breakdown for block size. I am not sure how the tomshardware.com results are calculated, e.g., if they are an average of block sizes, or what not. But it should give you a good idea of their respective performance.

MTron SSD 32GB
95 MB/s sequential read
75 MB/s sequential write

Sandisk SSD6000 32GB
68MB/s sequential read
47MB/s sequential write

Samsung FlashSSD 64GB
55MB/s sequential read
30MB/s sequential Write

RiData TurboSSD 32GB
55MB/sec sequential read
26MB/sec sequential write

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/12/17/solid_state_drives/page7.html

[Tensakun]

What this benchmark doesn't give you is the effect that on a hard drive read and write speed depends on how full the hard drive is...So it would be interesting to fill the hard drive and repeat the test.

And you can bet that a huge portion of users are going to be running with near-full drives, especially the 64 GB. Someone asked, but I didn't notice the answer, about how much space was left on the store models after Leopard, iStuff, etc. was installed. Look forward to getting my hands on this baby Weds night at the Osaka Applestore.

[Analog Kid]

If I were to purchase an Air, I'd definitely get the HDD, and swap in a SSD myself. For the $999, you can get a faster SSD, and for a little more money, a 64GB SSD.

Make sure you find an SSD with the same interface. The MBA is a PATA interface. The drives you describe here are all SATA except for the Samsung, which I believe is the drive the Air uses.

[Manic Mouse]

A less than enthusiastic MBA review by Arstechnica (http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/macbook-air-review.ars/1)

[AidenShaw]

A less than enthusiastic MBA review by Arstechnica (http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/macbook-air-review.ars/1)

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/macbook-air-review.ars/4

I'll cut to the chase here: the MacBook Air's battery life sucks. A lot. I found it to be a pretty big disappointment, holding it to my admittedly-high standards. I ran down the battery from full charge four times and came out with an average of two hours and 33 minutes.
...What I'm getting for my average battery life is abysmal, though, and I am sorely disappointed by it.

Yes, Apple sacrificed some battery life for the bigger screen that I love so much, but it also advertises a battery life with wireless productivity that's more than double my actual average. It also takes me about twice as long to charge the battery back to 100 percent than it does for me to run it down. Something about this situation is wrong, and it's not how I'm using the computer. ... Since I named a best feature of the Air earlier, I'll go ahead and name battery life (and tangentially, the inability to swap out batteries) as the worst.

I can't even imagine what I'll do the next time I have to cover a keynote and have things like a USB EVDO modem sucking battery like no tomorrow. Maybe I'll buy one of those external car batteries with a three-prong plug built-in and keep it in my bag for extra juice. So much for three pounds of MacBook Air delight.


Waiting for Mr. Lawyer to explain why even though it looks like the Arstechnica review agrees with many of Aiden's arguments, obviously it doesn't.

[drditty]

And you can bet that a huge portion of users are going to be running with near-full drives, especially the 64 GB. Someone asked, but I didn't notice the answer, about how much space was left on the store models after Leopard, iStuff, etc. was installed. Look forward to getting my hands on this baby Weds night at the Osaka Applestore.

Just returned from the local apple store, this is a very nice machine. The machines I played with briefly were SSD, and were very fast. Impressively light and comfortable to work on, and great screen. The MBP and MB's seem very slow when resuming from case closed in comparison. Form factor comparison, the other mac laptops seem like large bricks in comparison. The air is instant on ready to go. The touchpad is nice. Memory out of the box that is available is 38 gig. My brain said overpriced and poor value, but the reality is a hit. Naysayers will want one too.

[netdog]

A less than enthusiastic MBA review by Arstechnica (http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/macbook-air-review.ars/1)

I think this post is misleading. The reviewer liked the Air very much despite its compromises. I think she put it very well when she called it an "extension of your computing life" rather than a primary computer.

If you are looking for a review to back up your opinion that the Air isn't so great, this isn't really the review for you.

Move on now.

[Manic Mouse]

I think this post is misleading. The reviewer liked the Air very much despite its compromises. I think she put it very well when she called it an "extension of your computing life" rather than a primary computer.

If you are looking for a review to back up your opinion that the Air isn't so great, this isn't really the review for you.

Move on now.

I think someone needs to re-read the review. It's the most negative review of a Mac Ars has ever posted. They say it's good for size and portability, bad for performance and battery life.
Despite all of the Air's (sometimes glaring) flaws, I plan to keep it and use it as my notebook from here on out

I wouldn't say the reviewer "likes the Air very much", more that he puts up with the compromises. Saying something has "glaring flaws" doesn't mean you love it.

He certainly isn't happy about a lot of things;

This sounds pretty cool, right? Well, it is, but it would be a lot cooler if it wasn't so limited... You can't watch DVDs or listen to CDs over Remote Disc, and forget trying to rip or burn them remotely. According to Apple, you shouldn't want to do any of that stuff anyway

I found the Air to be quite usable... most of the time...Put simply, the Air slows to a halfway-unusable crawl anytime there's a large amount of disk activity—running a browser that reads and writes a lot to the drive (*cough* Firefox), transferring files over the network in the background, anything. The cruel and unusual 4200rpm drive began burning me on my first evening using the Air, and has continued to burn me every evening since. I didn't experience the hard drive thrashing most of the time I used the Air, but I did experience it just enough to be peeved by it.

I'll cut to the chase here: the MacBook Air's battery life sucks... A lot. Maybe I'll buy one of those external car batteries with a three-prong plug built-in and keep it in my bag for extra juice. So much for three pounds of MacBook Air delight.

Performance isn't exactly the Air's strong point compared to other Macs

The reviewer does like the Air but there are plenty of negatives, moreso than in any other Mac review I've read on Ars. Interestingly he doesn't mention the price, presumably because they don't consider that in their reviews but purely the hardware.

The battery life of the Air is perhaps the most disconcerting thing of all, isn't this meant to be a portable computer? Doesn't matter how thin or light it is, if the battery's dead it isn't much use.

[netdog]

I think someone needs to re-read the review. It's the most negative review of a Mac Ars has ever posted. They say it's good for size and portability, bad for performance and battery life.

See my signature.

[Manic Mouse]

See my signature.

Funny thing is, I was initially going to write "I think you're seeing what you want to see in that review". :D

Like I said, it's a less than enthusiastic review. And it is. I would say it's an average review, and I don't see how anyone could argue it's a positive review as there is plenty of criticism in it.

[netdog]

Funny thing is, I was initially going to write "I think you're seeing what you want to see in that review". :D

Like I said, it's a less than enthusiastic review. And it is. I would say it's an average review, and I don't see how anyone could argue it's a positive review as there is plenty of criticism in it.

Look, the MacBook Air isn't for everyone, which is what she says. That isn't "less than positive", that's just what it is. She also obviously likes it a lot for what it is and sees it fitting in her life very well. So do I. If it doesn't fit your needs, she defines pretty well why. None of us who are buying the MBA care that it doesn't have ports-galore or performance like a MacBook Pro. We don't expect that, and neither did she.

[micimacibaf]

I've run xbench test for sxs card from sony on mbp , to compare numbers, see for yourself, note that this is very expensive flash card used in new sony cameras for example, which fits into expresscard slot. Now I'll want one as secondary fast drive for mbp , just if they were not so expensive :( , I don't know if they made 32 GB model yet, test was made on 8 GB model.

Sequential:
uncached write 27.94 MB/s 4k blocks
uncached write 38.39 MB/s 256k blocks
uncached read 7.74 MB/s 4k blocks
uncached read 73.36 MB/s 256k blocks

Random:
uncached write 0.07 MB/s 4k blocks *
uncached write 4.34 MB/s 256k blocks
uncached read 6.88 MB/s 4k blocks
unached read 72.21 MB/s 256k blocks

* Does this situation ever happen with good applications in real life ? :)
the screenshot is from the second run

[ViveLeLivre]

Funny thing is, I was initially going to write "I think you're seeing what you want to see in that review". :D

Like I said, it's a less than enthusiastic review. And it is. I would say it's an average review, and I don't see how anyone could argue it's a positive review as there is plenty of criticism in it.

Don't mind netdog, mild buyer's remorse is creeping in and he's clearly feeling the strain.

If only people could be happy with their impractical, foolish purchases, we'd all get along so much better.

[netdog]

Don't mind netdog, mild buyer's remorse is creeping in and he's clearly feeling the strain.

If only people could be happy with their impractical, foolish purchases, we'd all get along so much better.

Whatever.

The article concludes with...

Despite all of the Air's (sometimes glaring) flaws, I plan to keep it and use it as my notebook from here on out (maybe with a hard drive upgrade in the near future, and definitely with a battery upgrade when they become available).

I think her decision to keep it and use it as her notebook from here on out says it all.

[ViveLeLivre]

I think her decision to keep it and use it as her notebook from here on out says it all.

Yes, because as we all know, reviewers are never wrong.

[Russet]

Still plenty of discussion but perhaps many people have not yet worked out what the Macbook Air is all about.
;)

[AidenShaw]

* Does this situation ever happen with good applications in real life ? :)

yes, it does.

Transaction logging often uses small writes, and so do many other meta-data operations (updating last access time on a file, for example, or creating a file and adding it to a directory). Not only are these common and small, they're typically flushed to disk quickly rather than being cached.

Indices and databases use small updates (spotlight, or mail).

[John Sawyer]

The measurements, observations, opinions, etc. people have stated here regarding the speed of the SSD in the MBA, even though it's not top of the line, seem to show that overall, the speed is often faster than the speed of the MBA's hard drive option. Some operations are slower, like shutdown, possibly when a lot of stuff is getting flushed back to the hard drive, or whatever time-consuming stuff OS X does at shutdown. But we're not shutting down very often.

Point is, the overall speed of the MBA's SSD seems to be OK, and in many cases better than the hard drive option. So that issue is now established. No need to beat it into the ground.

So, though the original point of this thread was to compare the speed of the two drive options, we can now look at other comparisons between the two. The other main aspect is reliability: theoretically, an SSD will be more reliable than a mechanical hard drive. In 23 years of fixing Macs, I've personally replaced hundreds and hundreds of hard drives, and it's always a pain to see the user lose their data (though luckily most of the drive replacements I've done, are of drives that are still running well enough to recover the data).

Though manufacturers have improved their reliability greatly, mechanical hard drives are, generally, too often still pieces of junk, too delicate, subject to breaking when dropped, etc. I think manufacturers could make them even more reliable, but if so, they're not getting there fast enough. Either there's some sort of reliability limit with mechanical drive design (I doubt it, though the manufacturers would probably like us to believe that), or manufacturers don't care enough, or they deliberately aren't improving their reliability much further, since a broken drive means they get to sell another drive--even if you don't buy one of theirs again, someone else will, who bought some other manufacturer's drive.

We have yet to see how reliable SSDs will be over time, but if the manufacturers aren't slobs, then we may see far fewer SSDs fail than hard drives. At least, when you drop a portable that contains an SSD, it isn't likely the fall will break the SSD, which is saying a lot. I'd feel a lot more comfortable carrying around a MBA that contains an SSD, than a hard drive.