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2011 17" MBP supports 6Gbps SATA
- Thread starter darwin022
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Just to be clear, ports 2-5 are actually SATA II (3 Gbit/s), and are the ports that are unusable in the affected chips.
Ports 0 and 1 are SATA III (6 Gbit/s) and are not affected at all.
I asked the guys at MCE http://www.mcetech.com, manufacturer of OptiBay about SATA3 and the ODD because I want to use the OCZ Vertex3 in RAID0. The reply:
"We noticed in our testing of the new machines that, while the chipset Apple uses supports SATA III, they limited the throughput of the optical bay side of it to SATA II. We believe this is modifiable through firmware and we are researching a solution to this. Assuming the Vertex 3 drives are as fast as they spec out to, a RAID 0 installed in the new MacBook Pro would still give an effective throughput of 750MB/sec (both drives linking at SATA II) however the main drive would link at SATA III and the overall throughput of the two buses would be 1.125GB/sec (9Gbit/sec). It would be interesting to see what the real-world throughput would be."
So I'll definitely buy tow Vertex3s + Optibay to get 750MB/s and hopefully they find a solution to enable SATA3 for the full 1000MB/s.
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Point 1: Thanks for reaching out to MCE -- that was a good idea.
Point 2: Thanks to MCE -- I know that this is their business, but nice to know people are doing their jobs.
Point 3: Dear Apple, Are you ***** kidding me?!?
What kind of jackass-ery is this where you actually put extra effort into hobbling a SATA III port? If this turns out to be real, then it's an absolute outrage.
Don't forget the 8b/10b encoding overhead. Eight bits are encoded as ten bits so one byte is equal to ten bits. Even though the theoretical maximum of SATA 3Gb/s is 375MB/s (if 1B=8b) you will only get 300MB/s due to the encoding. Minus ~15MB/s due to latency and stuff and the real world maximum of SATA 3Gb/s is ~285MB/s. That should give you around 550MB/s if you put two SSDs in RAID 0.
This applies to SATA 6Gb/s as well so its maximum is 600MB/s minus latencies and stuff (maybe around 580MB/s in real world).
Another thing is that I haven't seen how the Intel's SATA 6Gb/s controller performs. Intel's ICH10 provides up to six SATA 3Gb/s ports which should translate to up to ~1700MB/s bandwidth but it can only provide up to ~660MB/s in real world. The SATA 6Gb/s controller in 6-series chipsets should in theory provide up to ~1150MB/s or so but I haven't seen any benchmarks with two OCZ Vertex 3s for example. I saw one benchmarks with two Crucial C300s in RAID 0 and it provided around 700MB/s which is the maximum of those SSDs.
True, but it's a bit moot if the ODD connection is somehow limited to SATA II, right?
I mean, until we understand exactly what Apple did with this second SATA channel, it's not clear what the options actually are.
And frankly, given that they could have simply plugged the SATA II SuperDrive into the SATA III link and left it at that, I'm rather perplexed that the early reports from people connecting, e.g., a C300 are so mixed.
I have to ask what on earth one could need that sort of data bandwidth for in a MacBook Pro?
Personally I think I'm going to move the 750GB drive to the optibay and put a 256GB SSD in the drive bay... or maybe I'll move my 500GB Momentus XT (Hybrid) into the optibay... not sure yet, just glad there is a solution to jettison the freaking ODD.
Guys, just wanted to quickly ask if anyone knows more about the SATA problem that was present on the Sandy Bridge platform. Earlier, some people were mentioning that the first batch of MacBook Pros might be the ones that were affected, is this really the case?
Yeah, that is true. I don't know how RAID 0 would work if one drive is SATA 6Gb/s and other is 3Gb/s. I guess we will have to wait and see.
No. Intel only allowed the shipments of defective chipsets to OEMs who guaranteed they will only use the unaffected SATA 6Gb/s ports. Either Apple uses the fixed ones and the ODD is really SATA 3Gb/s or Apple uses the defective ones and both ports are SATA 6Gb/s with possible firmware limitations.
HD Video editing and audio production can use this.
Other things that would improve: open/close large images and layouts, system start-up, application start-up, RAM page-out, sleep, hibernate.
Someone from Apple stated that they did not use any flawed chipsets, so no effect at all.
Day to day usage mainly consists of random reads and writes which do not scale up when RAIDed like sustained speeds do. I can't think of many tasks where such high bandwidth would help, maybe video editing but most people wouldn't notice the difference.
Thanks for the info from MCE.
I've probably said it once before in this thread already but the original 2008 Unibody suffered from the exact same flaw. The ODD port was limited to SATA I handshaking even though it was supposed to be SATA II. Enough bitching and Apple corrected it in firmware.
What is the most direct way to get this fixed? Since we all have new machines discussing this, should we call it in? I guess it would only be appropriate when you have two 6 Gb/s devices in front of you that aren't working correctly.
I've probably said it once before in this thread already but the original 2008 Unibody suffered from the exact same flaw. The ODD port was limited to SATA I handshaking even though it was supposed to be SATA II. Enough bitching and Apple corrected it in firmware.
What is the most direct way to get this fixed? Since we all have new machines discussing this, should we call it in? I guess it would only be appropriate when you have two 6 Gb/s devices in front of you that aren't working correctly.
Right -- I tried to limit my list to large-size sequential reads and writes. I'm thinking that when I launch InDesign and then open a 250+-page layout, these times will improve -- maybe not linearly, but still improve.
And if you're dealing with more than one stream of HD video in a time line, things can bog down quickly.
Also, I haven't ever done significant audio production (I can't carry a tune in a bucket!) but I've always understood that this was one of the most bandwidth-intensive tasks.
And, you know, Facebook should seems snappier....
well... I think I can make the macbook more portable with this setup by removing one of the ram blocks. I save some weight and paging shouldn't be too painful
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well... I think I can make the macbook more portable with this setup by removing one of the ram blocks. I save some weight and paging shouldn't be too painful
...and you could rip the screen off too, I guess -- just make sure you never make any typing mistakes!
BTW, zimt, please share any further feedback from MCE, even if it's just confirmation of what we now believe (i.e., that the ODD is connected to a SATA III port that has been bandwidth limited to 3 Gb/s).
It's always good to have a definitive answer to point people to, and this question will be floating around for many months.
I hate to crosspost, but there are two active threads talking about this 6Gbps ODD port. The optical bay drive is connected to port 2. See post linked below:
https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/12021209/
https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/12021209/
Yes -- I just saw that.
I'm seriously considering taking my CTO MBP into my local Apple store and demanding that they take it back.
I would love -- love -- to hear a reasonable explanation for this. I simply cannot construct a rational basis for using a II port and leaving a III port empty.
This is an unmitigated outrage.
I'm seriously considering taking my CTO MBP into my local Apple store and demanding that they take it back.
I would love -- love -- to hear a reasonable explanation for this. I simply cannot construct a rational basis for using a II port and leaving a III port empty.
This is an unmitigated outrage.
Informative thread, thanks. I've been considering a new 15" MBP as my first Mac (if I can overcome sticker shock - $1950 for base model + not-crappy-screen...before adding SSD). Still a bit disappointed that the MBP doesn't have SSD and HDD and optical internal all at the same time...that possibility was nice before reality came....but that is another topic.
Given the old "heat kills hard drives" and figuring Apple designed the hard drive area (and not necessarily the optical drive area) to deal with heat of a spinning hard drive...the plan would be to replace the optical drive with an SSD (OS/apps) and the main drive with a higher-capacity spinning drive (data).
Apple's port usage means little to me now (SATA 2 for cost means either port will be fine), but in the future (cheaper SATA 3 SSDs) it would make ideal location selections for drive reliability (of spinning) and performance (of SSD) at odds with each other.
Editing to add: Just realized (from other thread) that besides the heat issue with locating spinning drive in the optical bay is the loss of the feature that parks HDD head when motion is sensed...so double the above statement about reliability vs. performance.
Given the old "heat kills hard drives" and figuring Apple designed the hard drive area (and not necessarily the optical drive area) to deal with heat of a spinning hard drive...the plan would be to replace the optical drive with an SSD (OS/apps) and the main drive with a higher-capacity spinning drive (data).
Apple's port usage means little to me now (SATA 2 for cost means either port will be fine), but in the future (cheaper SATA 3 SSDs) it would make ideal location selections for drive reliability (of spinning) and performance (of SSD) at odds with each other.
Editing to add: Just realized (from other thread) that besides the heat issue with locating spinning drive in the optical bay is the loss of the feature that parks HDD head when motion is sensed...so double the above statement about reliability vs. performance.
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but isnt thunderbolt connected via SATA? Meaning 3 ports are in use.
Also, as this technology was co-developed by intel and apple, wouldn't it make sense that apple got priority on the fixed sandy bridge chips, esp. seeing as this is the debut of intels new tech?
Also, as this technology was co-developed by intel and apple, wouldn't it make sense that apple got priority on the fixed sandy bridge chips, esp. seeing as this is the debut of intels new tech?
Thunderbolt is connected directly to the system bus, PCI Express. SATA III is 6 Gb/s. Thunderbolt is way faster.
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I think you can solve this issue by buying a hard drive with a built in motion sensor such as the WD Scorpio Blacks and put those in the Optibay, and then put the SATA 3 SSD in the main bay.
I am pretty pissed about this -.-'... ㅗ Apple. Grrr.
I am pretty pissed about this -.-'... ㅗ Apple. Grrr.