2011 MacBook Pro - SATA 6 Gigabit Link Speed

[johnsock]

Any updates on this johnsock?

hwall is correct about the stepping from the iFixit picture. The SSPEC from the chip package does indeed indicate B3 stepping. As for checking a machine without cracking it open, I've found where to look in IORegistryExplorer.

Here is a grab from my 2010 MacBook Pro. It shows where to look in IORegistryExplorer. The relevant data is in the revision-id field:



NOTE: This will not be exactly the same as the 2011 model since this is from my 2010 one. If you look at this field for the 2011 model, the revision-id will indicate <05 00 00 00> for the B3 stepping. My data source is the same 6 Series Chipset Specification Update that hwall used to look up the SSPEC.

Please post a capture if you are able to show what you have. I've requested this info from the same guy that got me the last capture from IORegistryExplorer. I'll post anything I get as soon as I have it.

 

[Baumtomate]

Yes, I've checked it on my 13" i5 and it has 05 00 00... So it's a B3 Stepping, right?

From where do you know that 05 indicates its a B3 ?

 

[thelosr]

B3 stepping confirmed on CTO 17" MacBook Pro

Per Johnsock's instructions

 

[johnsock]

Yes, it's confirmed that the new MacBook Pro computers have the B3 stepping chipset. I've had a few people send me captures from IORegistryExplorer that all show correct revision-id for B3 stepping. FYI, this information is available directly from Intel in the 6 Series Chipset Specification Update document where you can find a table showing chipset revision-id values for each stepping available.

 

[crellion]

Yes, it's confirmed that the new MacBook Pro computers have the B3 stepping chipset. I've had a few people send me captures from IORegistryExplorer that all show correct revision-id for B3 stepping. FYI, this information is available directly from Intel in the 6 Series Chipset Specification Update document where you can find a table showing chipset revision-id values for each stepping available.

Great work guys! Looks like the downer was that the Optibay port wasn't 6 Gigabit, but at least the laptop now uses the fixed Sandy Bridge!

This machine now has my stamp of approval!

 

[Kalach]

Check this out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfe4NNbNzps

 

[mitch969]

This is really bad news that the Superdrive use a SATA2 port.

I mean, you won't be able to connect two SATA3 SSD in RAID0. You also won't be able to benefit of the maximum bandwidth of Thunderbolt.

Just a question for experts, if the main drive use port 0 and the superdrive use port 2, is it possible to connect a cable to port 1 and link it to a SSD ?

 

[TheHoff]

This is really bad news that the Superdrive use a SATA2 port.

I mean, you won't be able to connect two SATA3 SSD in RAID0. You also won't be able to benefit of the maximum bandwidth of Thunderbolt.

Just a question for experts, if the main drive use port 0 and the superdrive use port 2, is it possible to connect a cable to port 1 and link it to a SSD ?

If you imagine opening up a MacBook is like opening up a PC tower where there are ports and cables going everywhere, you're sadly mistaken

I was considering a RAID 0 but in reality, I'd probably never notice the difference between that and just one of the new III drives. There is going to be a point of diminishing returns soon with SSD speed as it will no longer be the bottleneck. If everything opens in one bounce and the largest PSDs open in .5 seconds, what are most people waiting for? Sure some need huge sustained transfer rate but most don't.

And you raise the point of Thunderbolt -- what are you going to connect externally to a laptop that can keep up with your SSD RAID 0 but another SSD RAID 0? Awesome for music and video editors but, again, most people here just want it for the sake of having the fastest. Even as a professional photographer with terabytes of backups, I only need an external drive to go so fast. It isn't what is holding me up... and I need way more storage than external SSD can provide.

 

[mitch969]

And you raise the point of Thunderbolt -- what are you going to connect externally to a laptop that can keep up with your SSD RAID 0 but another SSD RAID 0?

Right, you need an external SSD RAID 0 like the one from Lacie : http://www.lacie.com/fr/technologies/technology.htm?id=10039

The problem is that Apple is telling us that we will be able to transfer data at 10Gbps using Thunderbolt but in reality the new MacBook Pro won't allow transfers higher of 6Gbps. And when you know that the Sandy Bridge architecture has two SATA3 ports it's a bit frustrating for people that really need this speed, isn't it ?

The idea to buy two Vertex3 SSD of 120GB instead of one of 240GB is tempting because you could reach speeds of more than 1000MB/S versus 500MB/S for the same price. Again, we will never be able to do this with this generation of MacBook Pro

 

[TheHoff]

Right, you need an external SSD RAID 0 like the one from Lacie : http://www.lacie.com/fr/technologies/technology.htm?id=10039

The problem is that Apple is telling us that we will be able to transfer data at 10Gbps using Thunderbolt but in reality the new MacBook Pro won't allow transfers higher of 6Gbps. And when you know that the Sandy Bridge architecture has two SATA3 ports it's a bit frustrating for people that really need this speed, isn't it ?

The idea to buy two Vertex3 SSD of 120GB instead of one of 240GB is tempting because you could reach speeds of more than 1000MB/S versus 500MB/S for the same price. Again, we will never be able to do this with this generation of MacBook Pro

I agree with everything you said. It does seem silly to not use the III if it is available but maybe it was done to get every last inch of battery life possible. I also wish the RAID 0 were a possibility, but again, what are you connecting it to?

The Lacie?

> the Little Big Disk features two 250GB Intel 510® Series Solid-State Drives (SSD).

So you've got 500 GB of external storage. Whoopee. And they are 510s! You can saturate their write speed with ONE of the SF-2000 drives. And the read speed of it will be just barely above the write speed of ONE SF-2000.

Again... nothing to connect your RAID 0 to unless you build your own with the same drives. And 500 GB isn't really enough for any media professional I know of. That will barely cover all of my Time Machine backups that exclude most of my data.

I'd love to have 1000 MB/s internally for the hell of it but Thunderbolt isn't a good argument to having it. Thunderbolt is a solution that doesn't solve anyone's problem yet (due to the limited storage of SSDs). I agree it sucks not to have it as an option but I think very few people would ever notice the difference between sustained reads of 500 MB/s, 750 MB/s and 1000 MB/s at this point. You'll get killer random read speed that isn't saturating either port if you still do the RAID 0.

 

[fabio467]

Right, you need an external SSD RAID 0 like the one from Lacie : http://www.lacie.com/fr/technologies/technology.htm?id=10039

The problem is that Apple is telling us that we will be able to transfer data at 10Gbps using Thunderbolt but in reality the new MacBook Pro won't allow transfers higher of 6Gbps. And when you know that the Sandy Bridge architecture has two SATA3 ports it's a bit frustrating for people that really need this speed, isn't it ?

The idea to buy two Vertex3 SSD of 120GB instead of one of 240GB is tempting because you could reach speeds of more than 1000MB/S versus 500MB/S for the same price. Again, we will never be able to do this with this generation of MacBook Pro

Sorry but I don't think so.
Thunderbolt (formerly ligth peak) envelope PCIe BUS directly and have no relation with SATA.
You can connect every kind of device (even a PCIe card if someone will develop the appropriate external bus adapter).
It's even true that Thunderbolt is a bus with devices connected in chain so you have a 10Gbs for all the devices (2 HDD, 5Gbs each).

Apologize me for English, I speak something else.

 

[dtpearson]

I was considering a RAID 0 but in reality, I'd probably never notice the difference between that and just one of the new III drives. There is going to be a point of diminishing returns soon with SSD speed as it will no longer be the bottleneck. If everything opens in one bounce and the largest PSDs open in .5 seconds, what are most people waiting for? Sure some need huge sustained transfer rate but most don’t.

I had a pair of the Crucial C300 256GB SSDs in my 2010 i7 17” Macbook Pro in a Raid 0 setup and while it bench tested very fast (about 500MB/sec) it was slower to boot than a single SSD and it still took 10 seconds to open iPhoto ?!??! Many things seemed like this, working on big files was super fast, but some things seemed slower than a single 250MB/sec single C300 (but still faster than a HDD of course). I also had problems with the machine not sleeping sometimes.

I now only have one 256GB C300 in the HDD space and a 750GB HDD in a OWC data doubler. The OS/applications/etc are on the boot SSD, and I have set up symbolic links for my music, photo and video libraries (no raid) to the HDD, and everything runs fine, sleep is fine and everything seems almost as fast as with the raid 0 SSDs.

There are other bottlenecks, i don’t know enough about all this to tell you what they are, but from my experience a pair of raid 0 SSDs with 1000MB/Sec read/write will definitely feel fast, but they will not make your Macbook do everything instantly, there are other things that slow things down.

 

[mitch969]

I agree with everything you said. It does seem silly to not use the III if it is available but maybe it was done to get every last inch of battery life possible. I also wish the RAID 0 were a possibility, but again, what are you connecting it to?

My idea was to think about expendability of this model for the next two years. A Vertex3 or Intel 510 series would be my first investment. Then I will wait for a six to ten bay NAS that support thunderbolt so I will have big capacity and speed (like this one : http://www.promise.com/storage/raid_series.aspx?m=192&region=en-global&rsn1=40&rsn3=47). When SSD prices will fall I could buy a second SSD. The last step would be to replace my Gigabit network by Thunderbolt optical wires.

But now that I know the limitations, I prefer to stay with my iMac core i7 for the time being. My wish to replace the iMac for the new MBP was based on the facts that the new MBP is as powerful as the iMac i7, is easier to upgrade, use new technologies at full speed (Thunderbolt and SATA3) and can be upgraded to a RAID0. The last two points are obviously not fulfilled :-(

 

[odedia]

Guys, you can all relax, the new Macbook Pros use the updated sandy bridge revision without the defect. See link below from Anandtech:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4205/the-macbook-pro-review-13-and-15-inch-2011-brings-sandy-bridge/5

It still sucks though that we can't RAID0 a couple of SATA-III SSDs.

 

[kntgsp]

It still sucks though that we can't RAID0 a couple of SATA-III SSDs.

It's Sata 6Gb/s. SATA-III is not a thing.

 

[odedia]

It's Sata 6Gb/s. SATA-III is not a thing.

"The SATA 6 Gbit/s specification should be called Serial ATA International Organization: Serial ATA Revision 3.0."

Yes, it is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA#Terminology

 

[lilgto64]

So what is the true speed?

My new MacBook Pro 17" Quad core - shows 6 Gigabit on the disk but with Link speed of 3 - and shows 3 Gigabit to the optical with link speed of 1.5.

Does the link speed 3 refer to only one direction in a bi-directional link?

Also - it seems that aside from uncached write - the stock 750GB 5400 RPM is faster than the Momentus Hybrid 500GB 7200 RPM SSD with 4GB SSD and 32MB traditional cache - at least according to xBench - whereas on a website comparing drives the Hybrid had a higher overall score.

 

[Weaselboy]

My new MacBook Pro 17" Quad core - shows 6 Gigabit on the disk but with Link speed of 3 - and shows 3 Gigabit to the optical with link speed of 1.5.

Your HDD is showing a link speed of 3 because you do not have a SATAIII drive installed. If you installed a SATAIII drive it would show a link speed of 6. I installed a SATAIII Intel 510 SSD in my 2011 13" MBP and it shows a link speed of 6.

 

[Rod76]

I really don't want to start this can of worms up again. But it appears from this screen shot that Apple has made a change and my Data Doubler currently housing a WD Scorpio Black 750 GB drive could in fact be replaced by another Vertex 3 in my Drive slot and run at full Sata III speed. Unless I'm missing something here.

 

[Weaselboy]

That is what it looks like Rod. Why don't you try swapping the Vertex 3 you have now into the optical bay and see what link speed you get.

 

[tokyovigilante]

I really don't want to start this can of worms up again. But it appears from this screen shot that Apple has made a change and my Data Doubler currently housing a WD Scorpio Black 750 GB drive could in fact be replaced by another Vertex 3 in my Drive slot and run at full Sata III speed. Unless I'm missing something here.

Yeah, seems there's been a silent hardware revision. Both ports (HDD/ODD) are now 6GB/s capable. This is mine (CTO 13/4/11). SATA ports 0 and 1 (6GB/s) are attached rather than 0 and 2 (only 3GB/s).

 

[makahuhu]

How to check SATA port on OSX... correct?

All you have to do is figure out what Port the Main Drive maps to and the Superdrive Maps to.

On my Dell laptop - running Intel Rapid Storage Manager for example: it clearly shows my main HDD at Port 0 and my DVD-RW at Port 2.

Again this is on a Windows system using Intel's Rapid Storage Manager software, so I'm not sure how to find it on MacOS. That was why I was suggesting if anyone could try the Boot Camp method and just read it from Windows.

So bottom line: if the Main HDD and the Superdrive are actually on Port 0 and Port 1 - then we know for sure they are both NATIVE SATA 6 Gigabit (since that is what is specified for the Sandy Bridge chipset).

Can't someone here who already bought the new models just do a Boot Camp and report the info? It's not that hard to do people!

I think to figure out which Ports are mapped on OSX, you can open up Disk Utility and click Info for each drive. Here's what mine looks like on my 2009 MacBook Pro 13 (I replaced my SuperDrive with an SSD).

Port 0... Intel SSD X25M 160GB
Port 1... Crucial C300 256GB

 

[tngilmore]

Yeah, seems there's been a silent hardware revision. Both ports (HDD/ODD) are now 6GB/s capable. This is mine (CTO 13/4/11). SATA ports 0 and 1 (6GB/s) are attached rather than 0 and 2 (only 3GB/s).

Can anyone else confirm this hardware revision?
If it's consistent , I might just return and get a new one CTO.

 

[duffman9000]

Can anyone else confirm this hardware revision?
If it's consistent , I might just return and get a new one CTO.

My recently purchased MBP 15" has a 6Gb linkspeed for both the HD and DVD-RW. Of course, the negotiated linkspeeds are much lower due to platter technology.

 

[daneoni]

Typical. Screw over all the early adopters