13" Mbp Only 1.5gb Sata ? - SOLVED!!!!!!!!!

[LillDrutten]

Is the display not only showing the actual speed? The disk that I have seen for new mbp are only 1.5 Gbit/s.

 

[goMac]

Would it be hard for someone like Netkas to do this themself? i.e. make a patch to allow 3.0gbps.

It's firmware, so likely yes, it would be hard.

also this can't be a mistake by apple, otherwise they wouldn't turn on 3.0gbps on the ones shipped with ssds.

I don't think this really has been confirmed... It wouldn't really make any sense. The HD is a user serviceable part, and this would add extra time at the factory which Apple hates hates hates. Seems like a lot of trouble to go through for no real benefit.

Edit: Also, an Apple engineer is never going to fess up to this being a bug. They'll say anything else. As soon as they say they messed up, it opens a whole liability issue and it'll hit every news site. I think likely someone screwed up the firmware, and there will be a fix soon. SATA2 is not a huge deal for battery life, at most it's going to save you like 5 minutes of power...

 

[Joruus]

SATA2 is not a huge deal for battery life, at most it's going to save you like 5 minutes of power...

For most HDD's and SSD's its 0.1W more, but seeing how you get the same Data faster it should increase Battery Life.

 

[DAMNiatx]

oh....this really sad.
1.5gbit ?, come on ....

 

[harshw]

Interesting thread ! I notice that most people are posting results with the X-25M. This is great for reads but somewhat limited in write speeds. Anyone with SSDs using Indilinx controllers ? ie OCZ Vertex etc ? If so, please post your Xbench results with the new MBP

For comparison here's what one can expect from the old 13" MB 2.0 GHz

Results 244.00

System Info​

Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.5.7 (9J61)
Physical RAM 4096 MB
Model MacBook5,1
Drive Type OCZ-VERTEX 1571​

Disk Test 244.00​

Sequential 207.48​

Uncached Write 285.89 175.53 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 190.43 107.75 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 123.93 36.27 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 406.38 204.24 MB/sec [256K blocks]​

Random 296.12​

Uncached Write 112.62 11.92 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 349.63 111.93 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 1759.80 12.47 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 832.96 154.56 MB/sec [256K blocks]​

 

[DAMNiatx]

ouch...still no news from apple ?

 

[Ploki]

by the way, i thought SATA 1.5 limit was 150mbps, how come those test spit out more?

 

[rushmere]

ouch...still no news from apple ?

Errrrr.........no.

It's the middle of the night on a Sunday in California, and a small number of people who have chosen to upgrade their new MBP with a SSD (and this one is debatable) *may* be losing the occasional millisecond in response times.

I don't think Apple will be dragging Steve out of bed and asking him to cancel his leave of absence to sort this one out just yet.

 

[LedCop]

As some people have reasoned, mechanical hard disks have average transfer speeds that do not saturate a 1.5Gb SATA I connection.

BUT

The read burst speed that comes from a hard drive's cache can go beyond SATA 1: http://techreport.com/articles.x/17010/12

How important this burst speed is for boot times, application launching, etc, I don't know. But if your application is partially cached by the hard disk, it should load faster.

 

[clyde2801]

Typical of recent apple upgrades, apple giveth, and apple taketh away (without telling you).

Not including video adapters, apple remotes, briefly firewire, etc. All I can say is 'wow'.

I'm about ready to adopt what I call the 'one month after' rule: I'm not going to buy a new apple product until at least one month after its release to see what the early adopters have to say about it. Period.

 

[Philflow]

Basically:

1.) It appears nearly certain that the new 13" and 15" MacBook Pros are all reporting a SATA interface running at 1.5Gb and not the faster 3.0Gb rate that has been in pretty common use for the last few years. These new models have the Secure Digital (SD) slot and also appear to have redesigned motherboards.

2.) Those who are using standard hard disk drives will probably see no difference in performance. If that is you, you can stop reading now.

3.) Benchmarks on FAST solid-state drives (SSDs) are showing a decrease in RAW disk i/o transfer rates on these same systems (in comparison to the previous generation MacBook Pros and MacBooks).

4.) The largest differences in the benchmark results seem to be in large, sequential disk READS (one of the traditional strengths with SSDs).

5.) To the best of my knowledge, no one has done any test with REAL-WORLD operations to show that the user experience (i.e. "performance") will be decreased with the 1.5Gb SATA interface. That is to say that thus far we've only seen benchmarks done with RAW disk i/o benchmarking tools.

6.) No one really knows why this has been done and no one knows whether it can be fixed with a software/firmware update (it may or may not be able to be fixed).

Very good post.

To add to 5): No one has shown any real world tests that the user experience will not be decreased with the 1.5Gb SATA interface when using the fastest SSDs.

 

[rushmere]

Typical of recent apple upgrades, apple giveth, and apple taketh away (without telling you).

Not including video adapters, apple remotes, briefly firewire, etc. All I can say is 'wow'.

I'm about ready to adopt what I call the 'one month after' rule: I'm not going to buy a new apple product until at least one month after its release to see what the early adopters have to say about it. Period.

Personally, I prefer to make my own mind up as to whether a product is suitable for me.

No product can be all things to all people, and there will always be some who want something else. If you make a purchase decision based on whether some people in the forums are unhappy, you're not likely to ever buy another computer product again!

Does the product fulfil your needs? That's the most important consideration. If you're likely to want to upgrade the HD to a SSD at some point in the future, I could understand it if you might want to hang on a few days to see what other information emerges, and what reviewers say about real-world performance. Otherwise, this issue is largely irrelevant.

 

[OllyW]

I'm currently in the Bullring Apple Store, UK and while I was waiting for a Genius appointment I checked all the SATA speeds in System Profiler for the MacBooks on display.

13" MBP = 1.5
15" MBP = 1.5
17" MBP = 3.0
13" MB (White) = 3.0
13" MBA = 3.0

They are all the latest models.

 

[foranor]

I'm currently in the Bullring Apple Store, UK and while I was waiting for a Genius appointment I checked all the SATA speeds in System Profiler for the MacBooks on display.

13" MBP = 1.5
15" MBP = 1.5
17" MBP = 3.0
13" MB (White) = 3.0
13" MBA = 3.0

They are all the latest models.

And is one of them pre-equipped with an SSD?
Someone suggested (way back) that SSD-pre-equipped models will have 3.0, while user-upgraded only get the 1.5...

 

[LERsince1991]

Shouldn't their be an option to run it in 1.5 or 3 depending on what you want to do and if its plugged in?

 

[MacModMachine]

Shouldn't their be an option to run it in 1.5 or 3 depending on what you want to do and if its plugged in?

unfortunately im trying to test 1.5 vs 3.0, slowing the drive is not possible as far as i know, i may have to go to a pc to run these tests.

 

[maxb]

Interesting thread ! I notice that most people are posting results with the X-25M. This is great for reads but somewhat limited in write speeds. Anyone with SSDs using Indilinx controllers ? ie OCZ Vertex etc ? If so, please post your Xbench results with the new MBP

For comparison here's what one can expect from the old 13" MB 2.0 GHz

I would like to post result for the Vertex but the main problem is that I can't successfully install OSX on my new MBP 13 inch... I tried to look at OCZ forums and it seems to be a compatibility issue with the Vertex and uMBP.

 

[iMacmatician]

Subscribing to this thread. Very useful information.

Agreed. Although I haven't subscribed because I've kept this thread on a tab in Safari.

Uhh.. when do you think the unibodys were announced, oct-nov last year. That's exactly 5 months from now a year ago. So yes they will be announced then.

Past cycles do not necessarily predict future updates. And if we do go by past updates, then the next update (barring tiny ones like the November 2007 one) would be in early 2010. Arrandale will be in production in Q4 2009 and most likely released in early 2010, hence predictions of a Q1 2010 update.

 

[fehhkk]

From what I've been reading, the NVIDIA MCP79 chipset (which handles the SATA bus) supports SATA II, which is 3.0Gbps.

I would think that if System Profiler reads 1.5Gbps speed, that means it's limited by the hard drive.

I wouldn't worry muhc about a 1.5Gbps SATA disk in a mobile computer, unless you're thrashing the disk a lot, you'll never see a measurable difference with 3 or 1.5Gbps.

 

[mikethebigo]

From what I've been reading, the NVIDIA MCP79 chipset (which handles the SATA bus) supports SATA II, which is 3.0Gbps.

I would think that if System Profiler reads 1.5Gbps speed, that means it's limited by the hard drive.

I wouldn't worry muhc about a 1.5Gbps SATA disk in a mobile computer, unless you're thrashing the disk a lot, you'll never see a measurable difference with 3 or 1.5Gbps.

People are putting in 3.0 hard drives and getting 1.5 speeds. It's not the hard drive.

 

[cu2010]

Many have suggested that this would be solved by a firmware update, but how does it work? I mean, is capable of changing things like this remotely?

 

[fuziwuzi]

From what I've been reading, the NVIDIA MCP79 chipset (which handles the SATA bus) supports SATA II, which is 3.0Gbps.

I would think that if System Profiler reads 1.5Gbps speed, that means it's limited by the hard drive.

I wouldn't worry muhc about a 1.5Gbps SATA disk in a mobile computer, unless you're thrashing the disk a lot, you'll never see a measurable difference with 3 or 1.5Gbps.

nah, the 1.5gb does not match the potential of the drives i have seen the profiler screen shot for.

nividia have been notorious for sata issues in the past (nforce4). maybe they still have some work to do.

 

[panzer06]

Want me to enlarge it for you?

That's not the point, the image is scrolled down past the chipset info that shows the speed.

Cheers,

 

[Richard1028]

I have an idea! Let's all ASK THEM: http://www.apple.com/feedback/macbookpro.html

--

I wonder if it would do any good to use the backdoor approach as well...

Contact some of these SSD makers like Intel and Vertex. One would think they have more interest in determining if Apple is crippling their products than a lowly consumer.

 

[zsnow]

XBench hard drive test on my Falcon 128G. it's Indilink chip like OCZ Vertex
Results 188.80
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.5.7 (9J3032)
Physical RAM 2048 MB
Model MacBookPro5,5
Drive Type G.SKILL FALCON 128GB SSD
Memory Test 181.40
System 208.60
Allocate 259.32 952.31 Kalloc/sec
Fill 174.13 8466.58 MB/sec
Copy 209.09 4318.64 MB/sec
Stream 160.48
Copy 153.50 3170.52 MB/sec
Scale 151.51 3130.15 MB/sec
Add 170.01 3621.57 MB/sec
Triad 168.69 3608.71 MB/sec
Disk Test 196.82
Sequential 154.64
Uncached Write 186.83 114.71 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 169.69 96.01 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 95.85 28.05 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 238.81 120.02 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 270.62
Uncached Write 106.04 11.23 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 311.34 99.67 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 1939.53 13.74 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 616.24 114.35 MB/sec [256K blocks]