Mac OS X 10.6.8 Brings TRIM Support for Apple SSDs, Graphics Improvements

[MacRumors]

One item of interest regarding last week's Mac OS X 10.6.8 update reveals that Apple has enabled TRIM support for solid state hard drives shipped in Apple-produced configurations. TRIM is a feature that allows solid state drives (SSDs) to automatically handle garbage collection, cleaning up unused blocks of data and preparing them for rewriting, thereby preventing slowdowns that would otherwise occur over time as garbage data accumulates.

Support for TRIM has been included in OS X Lion since its early developer builds, but Apple has apparently decided to push the feature out to Snow Leopard users as well. The new native TRIM support does appear to limited to stock Apple drives, as users who have installed third-party SSDs into their machines have reported that TRIM is not enabled by the update.

Mac OS X 10.6.8 also appears to have brought graphics improvements that have been most apparent to gamers. According to one set of benchmarks, Mac OS X 10.6.8 outperforms Mac OS X 10.6.7 in many measure of graphics performance, sometimes by a significant margin.

User reports in the MacRumors forums and the Steam forums similarly point to significant improvements in graphics performance under real-world conditions. A number of users has actually reported significant declines in graphics performance with Mac OS X 10.6.7, so improvements with the new Mac OS X 10.6.8 are certainly to be welcome.

Article Link: Mac OS X 10.6.8 Brings TRIM Support for Apple SSDs, Graphics Improvements

 

[mungler]

ummm

im pretty sure they shipped TRIM in 10.6.7

i havent upgraded to 10.6.8 yet and I have TRIM enabled...

 

[Dicx]

TRIM was in my MBP 15, early 2011 running a special build of 10.6.7 right out of the box.

 

[orfeas0]

graphics improvement, good news for sandy bridge macbooks limited to the hd3000! and ofc for everyone else ;P

 

[Piggie]

Only for official Apple drives?

Ouch!

 

[Northgrove]

Nice and unexpected updates to me. I thought it was mostly about minor security and bug fixes. And Lion upgrade support.

So I guess I'll switch to an SSD drive now, and play Halo 'til my fingers bleed! Yaaay!

 

[wikus]

Don't care for TRIM support unless its for Intel, OCZ and other superior third party SSD drives. Apple's toshiba rebranded drives are a joke.

What is their excuse for not supporting other drives?

 

[GustavPicora]

Sc2

Tell me whats the SC2 improvement and I will believe.

 

[MJedi]

My MBA 11 with stock 128GB SSD on OS X 10.6.7 shows "TRIM Support: No" in System Profiler.

Waiting to install 10.6.8 in case there were bugs in the build. So far, I have not read anything bad about it.

 

[drewyboy]

With the TRIM I'm curious to as whether or not OSX says TRIM enabled if the user is sporting a SSD with a SandFore (trim handled by controller). Because "as users who have installed third-party SSDs into their machines have reported that TRIM is not enabled by the update" might not matter because how many of them are having the controller do the TRIM already?

 

[Northgrove]

Don't care for TRIM support unless its for Intel, OCZ and other superior third party SSD drives. Apple's toshiba rebranded drives suck.

What is their excuse for not support other drives?

Yes, that sucks for those who've gone through that trouble. I hope a whitelist can be found in the OS and somehow hacked, in case this lack of support is "artificial" (it sure sounds like it because TRIM support is simply about issuing a command to the controller, right?). Not something I'd do, but something I suppose those with balls big enough to hack their hardware might be interested in.

 

[finalcut]

Did anyone try the trim enabler application on 10.6.8 with third party SSD?

edit: nevermind, a new version was released by the author
edit2: just applied the trim enabler and it is working now on 10.6.8

 

[joesuburb]

10.6.8 still has no love for my TS256A


APPLE SSD TS256A:

Capacity: 251 GB (251,000,193,024 bytes)
Model: APPLE SSD TS256A
Revision: AGAB0202
Serial Number: 799S106GT0SZ
Native Command Queuing: No
Removable Media: No
Detachable Drive: No
BSD Name: disk0
Medium Type: Solid State
TRIM Support: No
Partition Map Type: GPT (GUID Partition Table)
S.M.A.R.T. status: Verified
Volumes:
Capacity: 209.7 MB (209,715,200 bytes)
Writable: Yes
BSD Name: disk0s1
Macintosh HD:
Capacity: 250.39 GB (250,387,783,680 bytes)
Available: 72.08 GB (72,084,054,016 bytes)
Writable: Yes
File System: Journaled HFS+
BSD Name: disk0s2
Mount Point: /

 

[zin]

The graphics improvements are very welcome.

 

[Bafflefish]

Because "as users who have installed third-party SSDs into their machines have reported that TRIM is not enabled by the update" might not matter because how many of them are having the controller do the TRIM already?

TRIM is an OS-related feature. It's not available for use unless the OS (or in some cases another application within the OS) supports it.

You're probably thinking of how some SSDs implement their own garbage collection, which doesn't require OS support. The benefit of TRIM is that the OS is able to essentially handle the logistics of garbage collection, which results in better long-term write performance.

 

[dwwd]

I'm thinking about adding an optibay (with a 750gb 7200rpm drive) and a 250gb SSD for the os in my MBP.... Is this TRIM something i should worry about?

 

[Helghast]

Support for only Apple SSD's? That sucks! Does anyone know if third party drives have trim support in Lion?

 

[macnisse]

TRIM support is possible to enable for most SSDs, just go for it!

 

[CubusX]

Laughable

Thanks to TRIM enabler I have TRIM support on my MacBook Pro late 2008 model on a 512 GB Kingston SSD.

Any running a non Apple SSD should get this on their Mac fast.

 

[arn]

Update: To clarify Apple's TRIM support, the new MacBook Pros released in February shipped with a special build of Mac OS X 10.6.6 that included TRIM support for Apple SSDs. But that TRIM support had not been extended to all SSD-configurable Macs until the release of Mac OS X 10.6.8 last week.

 

[mrfoof82]

Only for official Apple drives?

Ouch!

Apple is not in the business of writing firmware for every storage vendor's devices. Apple has created support for TRIM in the operating system. Get on your device's manufacturer's case for adding support for it in OS X.

 

[stridemat]

How easy (or hard) does anyone think this would be to 'hack' to work with third party drives?

 

[KPOM]

Apple is not in the business of writing firmware for every storage vendor's devices. Apple has created support for TRIM in the operating system. Get on your device's manufacturer's case for adding support for it in OS X.

Windows 7 supports TRIM on a wide range of SSDs, and there are third party hacks that enable TRIM on any SSD where the firmware supports it (which is almost every drive shipped now). It wouldn't be difficult for Apple to do the same.

 

[mungler]

http://www.groths.org/?p=308 - enabler for 10.6.7 (not sure if it needs to be updated for the 10.6.8 build)

 

[tigres]

There she blows