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13" and 15" MacBook Pros Have a Slower SATA Interface
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Capping the SATA connection has nothing to do with those. They're completely unrelated.
Yes I am... did you understand my post?
How? They had to make room on the logic board to put those components in there. Things get shifted around. I'm pretty sure it's not software capped, it's hardware capped.
The only downside for Hard Disk Drive users is that burst speed e.g. from the cache, will be capped. But seeing as most 2.5" Hard Drives only have a 8 MB cache, that would only be microseconds slower. Everything else will be fine.
nevertheless, IF it is just controlled by software, why would apple do this? it doesn't save them any money as far as i can see...
Yes I will what. Reach the speeds it is capable of and hit a bottleneck? Have you noticed a large difference in speeds or no?
If it's the same hardware between the two revisions, I'm just going to keep my purchase, and pray that Apple releases a firmware update.
I don't think it's controlled by software or else it doesn't make any sense. It's most likely hardware restrictions.
Put what components there? This has nothing to do with physical space. It supports a 3 Gbit/s SATA connection and it's being artificially capped at 1.5 Gbit/s.
How much does that SATA downgrade affects the performance?
Not at all if you're not using an SSD rather than an HDD, and by a debatable amount in real world applications if you are. IMO, the biggest effect will be psychological - i.e. people see that it's a slower interface and perceive a bigger performance difference than there really is.
I'm as big a "sucker" for specs as anyone else (which is why I went for the 2.93Ghz MBP which is probably not noticeably faster than a 2.6 in real world applications) so I can understand people's frustration and anger, but it probably isn't going to make a whole heap of difference in the day to day use of their machines. Having said that, I do have a 3GB SATA II interface in my machine so I'm not affected.
Human nature being what it is, if I was one of these people who bought a machine expecting a 3GB SATA-II interface but got a 1.5GB SATA-I, I'd be pretty fed up too...
it's both funny and sad to see people basically whining that "OMG, SSD is going to be slow on these new laptops!", when fact remains that ssd's will still be ludicrously fast when compared to HD's. So fastest ssd's out there might be able to saturate the sata-bus on the laptops. So what? Even if you had bus that was ten times faster than the one it has now and the ssd was the fastest model available, the difference would be minor when compared to the current situation. Sure, some synthetic benchmarks might be able to show the difference, but in real life things would be more or less the same.
And how much would faster sata be worth to you? Apple just lowered their prices while increased specs (and I mean specs that are tangible to just about everyone). Would you rather have higher prices so you could have a feature that wouldn't be noticeable in real-life use?
When compared to HDs, ssd's are fast because they increase transfer-rate by about 300% while lowering access-times by about 95%. And those benefits are there even if you had slower sata-bus. If you had twice as fast bus you might get additional 10% in bandwidth, but the difference in actual performance would be neglible. +10% is peanuts when you compare it to +300% in bandwidth and -95% in latency.
Rest assured, your ssd will be fast on these laptops. This is a storm in a teacup. .
And how much would faster sata be worth to you? Apple just lowered their prices while increased specs (and I mean specs that are tangible to just about everyone). Would you rather have higher prices so you could have a feature that wouldn't be noticeable in real-life use?
When compared to HDs, ssd's are fast because they increase transfer-rate by about 300% while lowering access-times by about 95%. And those benefits are there even if you had slower sata-bus. If you had twice as fast bus you might get additional 10% in bandwidth, but the difference in actual performance would be neglible. +10% is peanuts when you compare it to +300% in bandwidth and -95% in latency.
Rest assured, your ssd will be fast on these laptops. This is a storm in a teacup. .
I think to say the SATA bus is being artifically capped is jumping to the conclusion that this is intentional on Apple's part. We don't know that yet. This is new hardware so there are bound to be bugs. This could just be that and not something sinister on Apple's part.
Let's make noise about this issue so it gets Apple's attention, but lets also give them the benefit of the doubt and see if they come up with a firmware fix in the next few weeks before damning it.
Intel's chipset supports SATA I-1.5 whilst Nvidia's chipset is SATA II-3.0
HDDs yes...high-end SSDs however can
I can't believe all the panic I'm reading.
Did anyone ever use the brain they were given and think that the drivers may change the speed of the interface when a SSD drive is used?
The increase power usage running at 3gb/s would be offset by the lower power used by the SSD. Since hard drives can't take advantage of the extra speed there is no reason to go above 1.5gb/s.
I'd suggest that everyone take a chill pill and wait till some official word comes out.
Did anyone ever use the brain they were given and think that the drivers may change the speed of the interface when a SSD drive is used?
The increase power usage running at 3gb/s would be offset by the lower power used by the SSD. Since hard drives can't take advantage of the extra speed there is no reason to go above 1.5gb/s.
I'd suggest that everyone take a chill pill and wait till some official word comes out.
Well I didn't mean to imply that Apple did it on purpose. However, the chipset supports 3 Gbit/s, it's reporting 1.5 Gbit/s, and benchmarks are backing that up. It has definitely been capped.
Its the SAME chipset. Translation: It costs Apple NOTHING extra to have 3.0Gb bus speed.
That is a fallacious argument since there is no additional cost to Apple to set the bus to run at 3.0 vs 1.5. The hardware is already in the box. This is a firmware issue. Moreover, 3.0 isn't even available in the top-of-the-line models of each size, so it's not a marketing gimmick either. Whether you pay $1200 or $2200 you still don't get 3.0 speeds on a "pro" computer. That is not a storm in a teacup, it's ridiculous.
SATA II is a relatively old standard anyway so logically it makes no sense why Apple cut it except that is was an overlooked mistake on it's part as it rushed them out the door in time for WWDC.
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