2016 tMBP SSD slow? Owners' input pls

[kbk75]

So I just checked out a 15" 2.6 i7 tMBP at a local Mac store and was comparing it to my mid-2012 2.6 i7 rMBP with 1TB SSD (after-market) upgrade. I should mention that my machine's SSD only had 30GB available of the 960GB it has, the rest is used.

One thing I noticed was that the 2016 tMBP seemed to be launching apps noticeably slower than my older rMBP. I did a few shutdown / restart tests on both machines to see if I was imagining things and my 2012 rMBP significantly out-performed the 2016 model in both shutdown and restart times.

I then ran Blackmagic Disk Speed Test to verify what I observed and, once again, I found that my 2012 rMBP was showing better read and write speeds than the 2016 tMBP. My 2012 showed around 505 MB/s read and 425 MB/s write speeds vs the 2016 scoring around 10-15% slower in both tests. This surprised me because every review I've read / watched on the new tMBPs said how blazing fast the new SSDs are, and part of my reason for wanting a newer 2016 tMBP is to get a 2TB unit, both for the added space and supposed performance improvement.

Thinking it may have been a bad unit, I tried the test on a 13" 2016 MBP without the touch bar and the disk speeds were a little slower even than the 15" 2016 tMBP. Unfortunately the store only had 256GB SSD models on demo, none with the bigger SSDs.

I don't know if this is a problem specific to the 256GB SSDs or whether all the 2016 SSDs are really not all that they're made out to be. Could owners with the 2016 MBPs please share what speeds they're seeing on Blackmagic Disk Speed Test, just for comparison? Don't forget to mention machine specs when you do. Thanks.

I'm attaching a screenshot of Blackmagic Disk Speed Test taken on my 2012 rMBP.

TL;DR 2012 retina MacBook Pro upgraded SSD is faster than supposedly super fast 2016 MacBook Pro SSD.

 

[Fancuku]

How were you able to install Black Magic on the store's demo MBP? I am pretty sure they are setup to not allow installation of apps fromt he customers.

 

[kbk75]

How were you able to install Black Magic on the store's demo MBP? I am pretty sure they are setup to not allow installation of apps fromt he customers.

Downloaded and installed off the website. I'm in India and they have no problem with you "trying" software on the demo machines here.

 

[WhiteWhaleHolyGrail]

There is no way the 2016 has slower speeds than the 2012 given the SSDs in the former. Not even sure how you ran Blackmagic on demo units.

Please explain...

 

[keysofanxiety]

Downloaded and installed off the website. I'm in India and they have no problem with you "trying" software on the demo machines here.

Just out of interest, which website did you download it from? All of the ones I've tried in the past redirect to the Apple App Store.

The only way I've been able to run BlackMagic on demo machines is by plugging in a drive with it and copying the application off. Or copying from our server at work through USB-C/Ethernet if we're setting up a 2016.

Also if you're running BM, I'd suggest changing the file testing size to 5GB, rather than the default (1 or 2GB if memory serves). That should give the read/write speeds ample time to ramp up and the speeds will hit the quota around the 2nd/3rd run.

Finally in all of the machines I've tested BM on, the speeds are consistent. Tried 13" and 15" nMBPs, including the one without Touchbar, all with 256GB SSDs (one with 512) and they're mighty quick. So not sure what may have happened. Did you try turn it off and on with reopen windows unticked, then run the tests again? A quick restart can do the world of good.

 

[kbk75]

There is no way the 2016 has slower speeds than the 2012 given the SSDs in the former. Not even sure how you ran Blackmagic on demo units.

Please explain...

Which is precisely why I'm asking people who own the 2016 MBPs to post their SSD benchmarks. This should not be happening, because every review I've seen has raved about how fast the new SSDs were and, yet, I noticed how much slower things were opening when I was comparing my machine to the store demo machine.

I know for a fact that smaller SSDs are often slower than larger ones, even within the same product family, but I was very surprised to see just how slow the 256GB SSD was on the 2016 MBP. This, despite the fact that my system's SSD is damn near full so, if anything, it should be running slower than it's meant to, not be out-performing something that's supposed to be the new speed king.

As I mentioned in my previous post, here in India, the store folks will let you install software to try on the demo units.
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Just out of interest, which website did you download it from? All of the ones I've tried in the past redirect to the Apple App Store.

The only way I've been able to run BlackMagic on demo machines is by plugging in a drive with it and copying the application off. Or copying from our server at work through USB-C/Ethernet if we're setting up a 2016.

Also if you're running BM, I'd suggest changing the file testing size to 5GB, rather than the default (1 or 2GB if memory serves). That should give the read/write speeds ample time to ramp up and the speeds will hit the quota around the 2nd/3rd run.

Finally in all of the machines I've tested BM on, the speeds are consistent. Tried 13" and 15" nMBPs, including the one without Touchbar, all with 256GB SSDs (one with 512) and they're mighty quick. So not sure what may have happened. Did you try turn it off and on with reopen windows unticked, then run the tests again? A quick restart can do the world of good.

If I recall it was a cnet site and it took us to the App Store, we hit 'Get' and then one of the sales guys keyed in the password. In the past, I've airdropped files onto machines when sales people have been too busy to help, so I know that's possible too, in addition to plugging-in a drive.

The setting in BM defaulted to 5GB, I did check on both systems.

 

[leman]

Either the machine you were testing was defective or there was some other problem with your test. The Blackmagic test can't even properly test my 2016 512GB MBP because the speeds are off the charts (>2000 for both reads and writes).

 

[keysofanxiety]

If I recall it was a cnet site and it took us to the App Store, we hit 'Get' and then one of the sales guys keyed in the password. In the past, I've airdropped files onto machines when sales people have been too busy to help, so I know that's possible too, in addition to plugging-in a drive.

OK. In which case I can say with absolute certainty that there was an issue with the MBP you tested that on. Either hardware or something simple that could have been solved with a quick restart/OS update. At an absolute push, some really bad volume corruptions.

Regardless what's causing the issue, what you encountered definitely isn't right. The new MBP SSDs are ludicrously fast.

 

[kbk75]

OK. In which case I can say with absolute certainty that there was an issue with the MBP you tested that on. Either hardware or something simple that could have been solved with a quick restart/OS update. At an absolute push, some really bad volume corruptions.

Regardless what's causing the issue, what you encountered definitely isn't right. The new MBP SSDs are ludicrously fast.

I ran the test on a 13" as well and that was even slower than the 15" 2016 model. I even reset the SMC on the 15" model, to see if that would help, but no difference. When I did multiple restart tests (with reopen windows unchecked) the 2016 MBPs, both 15" and 13" weren't even shutting down before my machine was already restarting MacOS, and that's after I entered my user password on my system. That's what really surprised me and led me to even try a disk benchmark.

I did wonder if, maybe, the store models had some sorta setting where they cleaned everything up before rebooting or something, I dunno, restore to factory default type setting, if you get what I mean.

Either the machine you were testing was defective or there was some other problem with your test. The Blackmagic test can't even properly test my 2016 512GB MBP because the speeds are off the charts (>2000 for both reads and writes).

Yeah, that's more in line with what I would have expected. I asked the store if they had any 512GB or larger demo machines available, but all they had for demo were the bottom of the line 256GB models. I'd love to get confirmation from a 256GB model owner on what scores they are seeing on theirs. I would imagine even those should be doing well over 1GB/s not down in the 400MB/s category.

 

[leman]

Yeah, that's more in line with what I would have expected. I asked the store if they had any 512GB or larger demo machines available, but all they had for demo were the bottom of the line 256GB models. I'd love to get confirmation from a 256GB model owner on what scores they are seeing on theirs. I would imagine even those should be doing well over 1GB/s not down in the 400MB/s category.

Well, you can always refer to benchmarks by independent reviewers, which confirm that all of the MBPs have ridiculously fast SSD speeds.

 

[Brian Y]

Some points to note:

- Other things can affect disk I/O performance... was anything else using the disk at the same time, etc...
- Encryption - although the hit these days is smaller than it was, there is still a hit if file vault is enabled
- The demo machines don't just run a regular install of OS X. They use Deep Freeze (http://www.faronics.com/en-uk/products/deep-freeze/mac/), which could affect performance.

 

[kbk75]

Well, you can always refer to benchmarks by independent reviewers, which confirm that all of the MBPs have ridiculously fast SSD speeds.

Out of interest and, if it's not too much trouble, could you tell me how long it takes your system to go from 'desktop to desktop', doing a restart without the 'reopen open windows option' checked? Thanks.
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Some points to note:

- Other things can affect disk I/O performance... was anything else using the disk at the same time, etc...
- Encryption - although the hit these days is smaller than it was, there is still a hit if file vault is enabled
- The demo machines don't just run a regular install of OS X. They use Deep Freeze (http://www.faronics.com/en-uk/products/deep-freeze/mac/), which could affect performance.

Good to know, I'm sure there's an explanation and I'd love to know what it is, because I was quite disappointed at how slow the demo systems 'felt' while using them. Of course this was anecdotal, not at all scientific until I ran the BM benchmark. When I ran the benchmarks on both my and the store machines, I checked that the only program running on both systems was Finder, everything else had been shut down.

Edit: My system has file vault enabled, I didn't check whether or not the store systems had it on, though I'd imagine not, because it's not enabled by default on the OS, is it?

Just read-up on that Deep Freeze, they must've had that on those demo machines, because the BM benchmark program disappeared after the reboot, which had me wondering. Does Deep Freeze not give any other indication that it's present and running? i.e. It doesn't show up in the list of running programs?

 

[Fzang]

I'd love to get confirmation from a 256GB model owner on what scores they are seeing on theirs. I would imagine even those should be doing well over 1GB/s not down in the 400MB/s category.

Just tested my 256 GB. I get 1400 MB/s write and it caps at 2000 MB/s read with Blackmagic's test.

 

[jetjaguar]

here is my 1tb ssd

 

[robvas]

Fraudulent store/machine?

 

[jerryk]

Just tested my 256 GB. I get 1400 MB/s write and it caps at 2000 MB/s read with Blackmagic's test.

I though there was a setting in Blackmagic to set the cap.

 

[kbk75]

Fraudulent store/machine?

Legit store / machine 100%. We don't have Apple-owned stores here yet, this is one of their better known resellers here, so definitely legit.

 

[Jefe's MacAir]

Just ran it on my 13" tb w/ 512GB.

1600+ on write and 2000 maxed out on read.
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[kbk75]

Thanks for the screenshots and numbers, guys! I'm sure the store machines should have given similar results. What's strange is that both the 13" and 15" demo machines at the store were posting way sub-optimal numbers.

Would something like Deep-Freeze affect disk IO performance to such an extent? Isn't there a way to get it *not* to have such an impact, so that prospective buyers get instantly wowed by the new machines being demo'd, rather than put-off by (wrongly?) assuming their nearly five year old system runs a faster SSD?

 

[Fancuku]

Fraudulent store/machine?

I was thinking the same. I wouldn't be surprised if the store employees took out the real Apple SSD and put it in a much slower cheap SSD. Chinese knockoff probably

 

[sidewinder]

Here is mine (see signature for configuration details):

 

[Sanpete]

I was thinking the same. I wouldn't be surprised if the store employees took out the real Apple SSD and put it in a much slower cheap SSD. Chinese knockoff probably

Can't be done on a 15". It's soldiered on (in more than one piece, as I recall).

 

[ihatetoregister]

TL;DR 2012 retina MacBook Pro upgraded SSD is faster than supposedly super fast 2016 MacBook Pro SSD.

I'm on the 13" TB, 1 TB SSD . I have much faster speed than you have. Like, 1700 in write and 2000 (maxed out!) in read.
Maybe the store machines are configured in a way that slows the tests ?
It's no secret I don't like those machines but there's one thing that's actually as good as advertised, and it's the SSD. On par with the top stuff like Samsung Pro 960

 

[fokmik]

Here is mine (see signature for configuration details):

YEAH BABY
3000!!!!

 

[mcomp112]

It appears from this thread that the 1TB (~2100MB/s write) is much faster than 512 (~1700MB/s write) and 256 (~1400MB/s write) :/

Worth it to upgrade for that speed boost?