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Which connector is your new unibody Macbook pro

  • Sata I - 1.5Gbit

    Votes: 218 69.6%
  • Sata II - 3.0Gbit

    Votes: 95 30.4%

  • Total voters
    313
If you were copying large files from the SSD in your MacBook to a similarly fast device, the transfers could take longer.

Unfortunately, there is no way to connect a "similarly fast device" to your notebook, as even gigabit ethernet is about half the speed necessary to saturate a SATA150 bus.
 
Sure, but we shouldn't forget this either:

"All three of the SSDs in the table above would be interface limited on the new MBP because of their high sequential read speeds. If you were copying large files from the SSD in your MacBook to a similarly fast device, the transfers could take longer. I doubt the performance difference would be significant or noticeable in real world notebook usage, but it doesn’t change that there’s no reason to take a step backwards like that. In the coming years we’ll see more drives that can consistently break 150MB/s; Apple artificially limiting performance today would just hinder progress."
 
Sorry if someone just posted this. Too lazy to to skim through the past pages, but Anandtech has finally caught up on the issue:

http://www.anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=3582&p=2

Yeah, and more misinformation (or at least unfounded gossip). This from a poster there:

Apparently someone (MacRumours, I believe) is reporting that Macs shipped with the built-to-order SSD option are seeing 3.0 Gbps on the SATA interface.
 
Sure, but we shouldn't forget this either:

"it doesn’t change that there’s no reason to take a step backwards like that. In the coming years we’ll see more drives that can consistently break 150MB/s; Apple artificially limiting performance today would just hinder progress."

But my point is, what is "artificially limited" if there's no way to actually achieve these read speeds with any real world device you can connect to your MBP now or at any point in the future? The advent of faster SSDs down the road is not going to change the external connection options available to you on this particular piece of hardware - and all of them are many times slower than even the SATA150 interface available now.

The internal disk could be capable of 300 gigabits/sec, and you're still only gonna get 750Mbit out of the gigabit ethernet controller on a good day. It's not like we're dealing with desktop systems here that can be expanded down the road with new faster interface technologies like 10gb ethernet, infiniband, etc.
 
Sure, but we shouldn't forget this either:

"All three of the SSDs in the table above would be interface limited on the new MBP because of their high sequential read speeds. If you were copying large files from the SSD in your MacBook to a similarly fast device, the transfers could take longer. I doubt the performance difference would be significant or noticeable in real world notebook usage, but it doesn’t change that there’s no reason to take a step backwards like that. In the coming years we’ll see more drives that can consistently break 150MB/s; Apple artificially limiting performance today would just hinder progress."

Fully in agreement. To me, that statement you marked bold is what I feel is more important to me than the sentence before it. Its essentially future proofing.

I just don't know how people can continue to defend Apple in this?
 
I just don't know how people can continue to defend Apple in this?

They made a change which positively affects battery life that has almost zero impact on real-world work - now or at any point in the future.

Sounds like a win to me.
 
But my point is, what is "artificially limited" if there's no way to actually achieve these read speeds with any real world device you can connect to your MBP now or at any point in the future? The advent of faster SSDs down the road is not going to change the external connection options available to you on this particular piece of hardware - and all of them are many times slower than even the SATA150 interface available now.

The internal disk could be capable of 300 gigabits/sec, and you're still only gonna get 750Mbit out of the gigabit ethernet controller on a good day. It's not like we're dealing with desktop systems here that can be expanded down the road with new faster interface technologies like 10gb ethernet, infiniband, etc.

It isn't going to change connection options, but it may bring small random reads to and above ~120 MB/s (which seems to be a real-world limit of SATA 1.5 Gb/s, from results posted earlier), which would mean actually limiting everyday benefits of using such drive.
 
It isn't going to change connection options, but it may bring small random reads to and above ~120 MB/s (which seems to be a real-world limit of SATA 1.5 Gb/s, from results posted earlier), which would mean actually limiting everyday benefits of using such drive.

Fair enough.
 
I do quite a lot of medium-heavy work in Photoshop and software development suites, recently my iMacs internal HDD was growing faulty so I rushed it into a repair shop and told them to stick a 500gb drive in. I didn't even think about speed but they installed a Sata 1 drive - and I haven't noticed a difference. I probably wouldn't have known if not for the box the new drive came in.

But I'm used to backing up to external drives and I use them for scratch, so I suppose I'm just accustomed to slower drives.
 
They made a change which positively affects battery life that has almost zero impact on real-world work - now or at any point in the future.

Sounds like a win to me.

How do you know that it has an affect on battery life? Where is your proof? As far as I've read, no one has been able to confirm this.

And there is an easy rebuttal for that argument. If it was to save battery, then why does the 17" model still have the 3.0 SATA?
 
If this is hardware and not firmware related I am 100% going to boycott apple!
Let's hope it's not hardware then...
 
I do quite a lot of medium-heavy work in Photoshop and software development suites, recently my iMacs internal HDD was growing faulty so I rushed it into a repair shop and told them to stick a 500gb drive in. I didn't even think about speed but they installed a Sata 1 drive - and I haven't noticed a difference. I probably wouldn't have known if not for the box the new drive came in.

But I'm used to backing up to external drives and I use them for scratch, so I suppose I'm just accustomed to slower drives.

It makes no difference with HDD, they aren't limited by SATA 1.5.
 
I think we should start a pool as to when apple is going to respond.

I say no press release, no statement, just a firmware update in 2 weeks.

One could only hope. I'm contemplating returning my MBP 13". This is insane.
 
How do you know that it has an affect on battery life? Where is your proof? As far as I've read, no one has been able to confirm this.
The proof is simple engineering. If you have two otherwise identical integrated circuits, with one running at half the clock speed of the other, the slower chip will consume less power, every time. This is a fundamental of electrical engineering. It's the same reason your mobile CPU will clock itself down whenever possible. It saves power - and the same principles apply to a serial communications interface such as SATA.
And there is an easy rebuttal for that argument. If it was to save battery, then why does the 17" model still have the 3.0 SATA?
A couple thoughts come to mind:

1) The 17" is of course physically larger and can hold a physically larger battery, making the concession less of a priority

2) The 17" retains a 2.5gbps expresscard/34 slot, which could theoretically be used to provide a means of external expansion that could take advantage of a fast SSD on a 3.0 gigabit SATA bus
 
I think we should start a pool as to when apple is going to respond.

I say no press release, no statement, just a firmware update in 2 weeks.

I hope you are right, but personally I think there will be no press release, no statement, and no firmware upgrade ever. :(

But the next version of the MBP will tout a new "optimized bus architecture" for SSDs. :rolleyes:
 
well well well, apple just finds way to screw us over, give something good and then just snatch it right under us. Who ta hell still uses SATA I drives ? Why didnt they try to save money on the drives not controllers ?
 
We sure do have a lot of know-it-alls on MR...

:rolleyes:

I realize it's not as dramatic and incendiary as running around yelling that the sky is falling and bemoaning the loss of cherished hardware specs, but even the Apple world could stand a solid dose of reality every now and then.
 
The proof is simple engineering. If you have two otherwise identical integrated circuits, with one running at half the clock speed of the other, the slower chip will consume less power, every time. This is a fundamental of electrical engineering. It's the same reason your mobile CPU will clock itself down whenever possible. It saves power - and the same principles apply to a serial communications interface such as SATA.

A couple thoughts come to mind:

1) The 17" is of course physically larger and can hold a physically larger battery, making the concession less of a priority

2) The 17" retains an expresscard/34 slot, which could theoretically be used to provide a means of external expansion that could take advantage of a fast SSD on a 3.0 gigabit bus

You don't know, you are guessing. An earlier post noted that the SATA interface likely uses 0.1W while the CPU can use 35W max. The amount of battery saving while lowering the bus speed seems very small.

What bothers me the most isn't that they did this, it's that they did it without specifying it anyway. Since the two previous iterations of the UMP had 3Gb who in their right mind would have expected the latest and greatest to downgrade to 1.5Gb?
 
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