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2011 mbp 3gb/s or 6gb/s sata?
- Thread starter cinek
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The 2011 can have both. The main drive connection will be SATA 6GB/S but it can be hit or miss what the second bay for the DVD can be. I got one of the first ones and mine is a SATA3GB/s connection. Some of the newer ones are running both at SATA 6GB/s and some are like mine. Haven't seen postings lately to verify that the newer ones have gone all SATA 6GB/s or not (hence the hit or miss statement). This only makes a difference if you want to remove the DVD and replace with a second drive (if not it is a moot point as the DVD drive performance can't max out SATA 3GB/s so nothing gained in this scenario).
+1
I thought I got screwed by buying an earlier MBP, but apparently some are being still plagued. I'm not sure what to do about SSD now ... I guess I'll just wait and sell mine on ebay and upgrade when the 2013 MBP comes out and figure it out from there. I don't have spare cash to run an SSD setup anyways.
If we bring our MBP to Apple, will they entertain us if we request a logic board swap for the dual Sata III ports?
I would highly doubt it unless your LB is acting up. The configuration as shipped is tested and functional and by design. The swap of the DVD is not an authorized procedure, so the secondary port speed increase would do nothing to boost the system as configured and designed (as said before DVD will not saturate the pipeline). This would be enough to be denied the swap. There is nothing in the specs that guarantees a SATA III second port, so your system meets the advertised specs and is functioning normally, thus swap is denied. I would love to have it as del, but the only way we are going to get it is if our LB fails or on the off chance you find a friendly Genius willing to go out of his way to do you a major favor (as these swaps cost Apple money, they have to replace the board and then spend time to "test and refurb" the replaced board.
You're not being "plagued" at all. 3 or 6Gbit SATA makes almost zero real-world difference, even on a SSD. Only if you sit and copy huge amounts of data will it make any discernible difference whatsoever, and I can't imagine most people doing that often enough for this to even be a concern...
A SSD's real strength comes from its incredibly low access time (typically around 0.01ms, as compared to ~15+ ms for a 2.5" laptop HDD, and strong performance with high numbers of outstanding I/O requests. While HDD performance goes down with increasing I/O activity, a well-designed SSD can actually improve in performance.
High I/O activity doesn't mean high data transfer rates though - vast majority of I/O requests are in the 512 byte to 4k bracket, so 6gbit/s SATA makes virtually zero difference there. Chances are it'll just draw more power when you're in battery mode.
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How do you tell if you have 3 or 6 in the DVD slot? Can it be done without opening the machine?
A bit of a topic jump, but does replacing the drive bay w an ssd void the warranty? I've done Mac surgery before so feel comfortable doing that. What I want to avoid though is if I do need to take my MBP in having to put back in the optical drive each time I go.
How do you tell if you have 3 or 6 in the DVD slot? Can it be done without opening the machine?
A bit of a topic jump, but does replacing the drive bay w an ssd void the warranty? I've done Mac surgery before so feel comfortable doing that. What I want to avoid though is if I do need to take my MBP in having to put back in the optical drive each time I go.
Trust me, you really don't want a newly built MBP with a SATA III 6Gbps DVD port because they simply don't function (at all) with SATA III drives. I know because I bought one to test and then returned it, instead keeping my March 2011 build with it's usable SATA III 3Gbps DVD port.
The general consensus is that they underpowered the optical bay interface for better battery life as the dvd drive only needs a lower power 1.5Gbps link and they don't sanction upgrades to that bay anyway. The 17" seems to have shielding issues in the main bay but again Apple don't care much because they only ship SATA II SSDs.
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I had to exchange a 15" mbp with a build date of late 06/2011 and it had both Sata ports at 6gbps, but the superdrive port wouldn't recognize an ocz vertex 3 at all. However it did work with a sata ii ssd.
My "new" replacement (original had a line of 9 dead pixels) has only 3gbps on the SuperDrive port and a much older build date of 03/2011.
I have not checked to see if the SuperDrive port will recognize the vertex 3.
I had to exchange a 15" mbp with a build date of late 06/2011 and it had both Sata ports at 6gbps, but the superdrive port wouldn't recognize an ocz vertex 3 at all. However it did work with a sata ii ssd.
My "new" replacement (original had a line of 9 dead pixels) has only 3gbps on the SuperDrive port and a much older build date of 03/2011.
I have not checked to see if the SuperDrive port will recognize the vertex 3.
How do you tell if you have 3 or 6 in the DVD slot? Can it be done without opening the machine? [/QUOTE said:
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The truth. I put an OCZ Vertex 3 in my old 2008 aluminum Macbook, and there was an issue (now resolved) where some weird incompatibility caused the connection speed to get set at only 1.5Gbps. Even with this issue, it seemed super fast for most all real world usage, because the access time on the SSD is so low and the I/O is so high.
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