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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
Since I have a B.S.E.E. (do you?) I think I can understand the issues. As far as bemoaning the change, I can see the change in usage of my X25M. If I had known about this change before trading in a newly purchased 2.66GHz (non SD slot) I might not have made the exchange.

Dude I feel your pain, I've worked in many companies and just about had it with all these pseudo science whiners that spout equations and facts like they know it all yet contribute nothing to the discussion :)

Let's see if we can put some sense of perspective into them ...

Below is a table from Intel's ICH8 Thermal design guide. The 9400m uses a smaller process but what is of interest to us is the difference in power consumption between 4 and 6 SATA 3.0 Gbit devices. It's 3.3W - 3.7W ... :eek:

That's right. An additional 2 SATA 3.0 Gbit/s devices caused an additional draw of 0.4W. Now extrapolate that with knownikko's spouting of square law and everyone can draw their own conclusions for power consumption for 1.5 Gbit/s devices and the difference.

picture1xzo.png


Sometimes knownikko it is better to keep quiet and let people merely suspect that you're not the sharpest tool than flaunt your "knowledge" and remove all doubt of it

To everyone else: If an old hub like the ICH8 built on older process tech takes only 0.2W juice for powering a whole SATA port, I'd expect the 9400m to take much lesser than that since it is built with smaller and more advanced tech. Even if we keep 0.2Watts for argument's sake. And two SATA ports take 0.4Watts. Downclocking them to 1.5 Gbit/s would take the power consumption to what ... 0.125W ? 0.2W ? Is the sacrifice in performance really worth the 0.3W power saving ? You decide ...

Looks to me more like someone slipped up with the design. Or then its a firmware glitch. But power saving ? please ...
 
Has there anyone who used the 15 inch macbook pro with SSD getting 3.0Gpbs instead of 1.5? I am planning to buy the high-end 15 inch with 128GB SSD. (still not enough money)
 
Would this be even more of a problem for those that tweak their laptop further by replacing the optical drive with an SSD for a 2 SSD drive RAID0?

If you replace the optical drive with an Optibay, then you're limited to 150 mb/sec per SATA connection ie 300 mb/sec aggregated (SATA is point to point) . I've seen people achieve 400 mb/sec ~ 500 mb/sec with SSD RAID0 on their laptops - so that's quite a hit. But then you could buy two cheaper SSDs because they'd never be able to do more than 150 mb/sec individually anyway
 
Has there anyone who used the 15 inch macbook pro with SSD getting 3.0Gpbs instead of 1.5? I am planning to buy the high-end 15 inch with 128GB SSD. (still not enough money)

Nobody who has used the new 15" with a non-Apple SSD is getting anything other than 1.5GB. One 13" user with an Apple SSD stated he is getting 1.5Gb. No one with a 15" and Apple SSD has replied to this thread that I have seen. Only some who have reported what they have been told over the phone from a sales person. I would really like to know this answer also.
 
Dude I feel your pain, I've worked in many companies and just about had it with all these pseudo science whiners that spout equations and facts like they know it all yet contribute nothing to the discussion :)

Let's see if we can put some sense of perspective into them ...

Below is a table from Intel's ICH8 Thermal design guide. The 9400m uses a smaller process but what is of interest to us is the difference in power consumption between 4 and 6 SATA 3.0 Gbit devices. It's 3.3W - 3.7W ... :eek:

That's right. An additional 2 SATA 3.0 Gbit/s devices caused an additional draw of 0.4W. Now extrapolate that with knownikko's spouting of square law and everyone can draw their own conclusions for power consumption for 1.5 Gbit/s devices and the difference.

picture1xzo.png


Sometimes knownikko it is better to keep quiet and let people merely suspect that you're not the sharpest tool than flaunt your "knowledge" and remove all doubt of it

To everyone else: If an old hub like the ICH8 built on older process tech takes only 0.2W juice for powering a whole SATA port, I'd expect the 9400m to take much lesser than that since it is built with smaller and more advanced tech. Even if we keep 0.2Watts for argument's sake. And two SATA ports take 0.4Watts. Downclocking them to 1.5 Gbit/s would take the power consumption to what ... 0.125W ? 0.2W ? Is the sacrifice in performance really worth the 0.3W power saving ? You decide ...

Looks to me more like someone slipped up with the design. Or then its a firmware glitch. But power saving ? please ...


thats 2 times more than both my ssd's power consumption combined....so i would say thats significant.
 
:D

I can here the Apple statement now that would bring this thread to its knees:

Do you actually care that this is a problem for some users? We'll be happy for a fix

And funny S. Jobs responses are only from his email address, not official statements.
 
thats 2 times more than both my ssd's power consumption combined....so i would say thats significant.

Not exactly. SSDs use almost insignificant amount of power compared to HDDs (~5 W), and yet going from HDD to SSD doesn't improve battery life significantly. If this difference (>4W) gives ~15 minutes, then 0.2 W would give 20 times less, that is less than a minute. And during tests like movie playback the drive is used most of the time, so constant difference wouldn't probably change much.
 
thats 2 times more than both my ssd's power consumption combined....so i would say thats significant.

Hi MacModMachine.

What's your SSD's idle power draw and typical power draw when doing an activity ? Are you saying the typical power consumed is 2x lesser than 0.2W ?

These figures are for an old ICH8 hub based on process technology that's two generations behind. I would be very surprised if the 9400m had anywhere near that level of power draw per SATA device. Also remember idle power draw is a lot less. More like 0.02W per device.

And Intel's X25-m consumes around 0.7W - 0.8W in typical tasks (movie playback etc)

In the end, what I'm trying to get at is saying that the rationale for downclocking the SATA bus is power savings is flawed since the saving would be a few tenths of a watt to maybe a quarter of a watt. That is not going to give you any big difference in battery life, and I seriously doubt Apple would use this logic ...
 

Nobody who has used the new 15" with a non-Apple SSD is getting anything other than 1.5GB. One 13" user with an Apple SSD stated he is getting 1.5Gb. No one with a 15" and Apple SSD has replied to this thread that I have seen. Only some who have reported what they have been told over the phone from a sales person. I would really like to know this answer also.

Damn, if the high end uMBP comes back as 1.5GBPS, i would have to wait for two things, blu-ray and 3.0GBPS SATA II.
 
Does anyone else think it's weird that Apple hasn't commented on this yet? With the speed at which this story is spreading, every moment's delay will cost them significant amounts of money, especially if they can just announce that an upcoming firmware upgrade will fix the issue.
 
I know it's already been established, but I just received my 2.8Ghz 15" model and it has SATA I. I got a BTO w/320GB 7200RPM drive.
 
Do you actually care that this is a problem for some users?
Show me a single user who has been affected by this "problem" and I'll let you know. Go ahead... I'll wait here. :)

<crickets chirping>

<owls hooting>

<tumbleweeds blowing>

Yeah, that's what I thought.

The only thing that remains to be seen is whether Apple has this dark and mysterious room where they intentionally throttle macs up to 3.0 only with BTO SSD's to reward buyers. (Which of course is laughable).
 
If Windows recognizes the SATA drive as SATA II, then why are the SSD's still crippled, and their speed are reduced in half? Should the SSD's function as normally if Windows recognizes it as 3.0 Gig?
 
Show me a single user who has been affected by this "problem" and I'll let you know. Go ahead... I'll wait here. :)

<crickets chirping>

<owls hooting>

<tumbleweeds blowing>

Yeah, that's what I thought.

The only thing that remains to be seen is whether Apple has this dark and mysterious room where they intentionally throttle macs up to 3.0 only with BTO SSD's to reward buyers. (Which of course is laughable).

Wow, what a post.

How about reading the entire thread yourself and find these said affected users. I'll even give you a hint, you know, the ones that actually buy faster than 1.5 SATA capable SSDs and want to use them? Or perhaps the users who are thinking about tomorrow, rather than today, in terms of future proofing their macs for newer and more advanced SSDs. You can start by reading page 1. Anyway, you did say you had the time, so go on.

Oh, and never mind that this article has garnered nearly 1000 negatives, over 1000 posts in over 40 pages, about 10,000 views on the support discussion thread on Apple's site, and has also appeared on numerous major and influential tech site headlines, all in just a little over 24 hours alone. No affected users indeed.
 
Hi MacModMachine.

What's your SSD's idle power draw and typical power draw when doing an activity ? Are you saying the typical power consumed is 2x lesser than 0.2W ?

These figures are for an old ICH8 hub based on process technology that's two generations behind. I would be very surprised if the 9400m had anywhere near that level of power draw per SATA device. Also remember idle power draw is a lot less. More like 0.02W per device.

And Intel's X25-m consumes around 0.7W - 0.8W in typical tasks (movie playback etc)

In the end, what I'm trying to get at is saying that the rationale for downclocking the SATA bus is power savings is flawed since the saving would be a few tenths of a watt to maybe a quarter of a watt. That is not going to give you any big difference in battery life, and I seriously doubt Apple would use this logic ...

the intel ssd under full load consumes .15W not .7 - .8

idle it consumes .07

2 of theses ssd's replacing my hdd have made a substantial differenc ein battery, 35 mins more.
 
Show me a single user who has been affected by this "problem" and I'll let you know. Go ahead... I'll wait here. :)

<crickets chirping>

<owls hooting>

<tumbleweeds blowing>

Yeah, that's what I thought.

The only thing that remains to be seen is whether Apple has this dark and mysterious room where they intentionally throttle macs up to 3.0 only with BTO SSD's to reward buyers. (Which of course is laughable).

At last view, I count 1072 posts in this thread from people who have been affected by this problem.

--
 
I tried a couple of things, but they didn't work. I believe this is the drive in my new 13" uMBP.

http://www.hitachigst.com/portal/site/en/products/travelstar/5K500.B/

Hitachi claims the drives interface is SATA 3Gb/s so even though it might not attain those speeds it should report as a 3GB/s drive, I guess.

I tried moving /System/Library/Extensions/AppleAHCIPort.kext from an older MB Pro with OS X 10.5.7 installed. No luck.

I then tried to boot from a USB drive with 10.5.7 installed from an older Macbook Pro. Again no change in the reported interface speed.

I bet it is indeed firmware setting the limit.

:(
 
great for toms hardware, intel states .15 thats what it is

MacModMachine ... Intel states 150mW for " typical workstation load ". That is Intel stating a given consumption on a given pattern. Tom's and others have done tests and when you're using Spotlight, playing a movie from the disk, copying files to and fro - the consumption is much higher. Sure when you're surfing the web and playing music - I've no reason to doubt that the consumption is indeed 0.150W. But then you have to consider what I was saying earlier - the 0.2W figure for the SATA port is with LOAD. When it is IDLE, the power draw drops to around 0.02W. Read the ICH10 Thermal Design parameters if you wish. So in the end, just as the SSD draws much less power when idle or not at peak ( 0.07W to 0.15W ) the SATA port too will draw less power ( 0.02W to maybe 0.1W ? )

When you're pushing the SSD it will draw 0.7W to 1.5W and the SATA port will draw 0.2W ( ie still much less than the SSD )
 
I emailed sjobs@apple.com the other day and a representative just called me up and said they're aware of the problem and that Apple would probably be issuing an answer soon.

that's why Jobs got sick. Stop bother him.
Who announced the new uMBP at WWDC?
Philip Schiller, let's call him...:rolleyes:
 
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