2018 MacBook Pro Features 'Fastest SSD Ever' in a Laptop According to Benchmarks

[Michael Goff]

Please read it again, Michael. We’re talking about write speeds.

Yeah. I ****ed that up hardcore .

 

[Feenician]

Yeah. I ****ed that up hardcore .

It happens. I never thought for a second you were being disingenuous.

 

[Michael Goff]

Not a big deal. I’ve had many a brain fart around here. I’m not kidding when I say I genuinely stop at your posts and consider them a bit more than others.

I’m also not trying to make others look worse than they are if you go a few posts back. I also think these figures from laptopmag aren’t very good and do look forward to more credible, reliable figures.

I know you're not, but Laptopmag is. And they're likely raining in clicks from this.

 

[torana355]

Yeah, Apple is doing good work there. I have to wonder, though, if the gains were more because of the disk or the connector. And I don't mean this sarcastically. I honestly wonder.

Its the the disk itself because the Samsung 970 Pro has the exact same write speeds.

 

[Feenician]

I know you're not, but Laptopmag is. And they're likely raining in clicks from this.

Yep. That’s “tech journalism” for you. A guy that thinks cow is being used in disk benchmark. It only serves to muddy the waters.

When you look at it, there’s technological strength and weaknesses, ecosystem strength and weaknesses, social strengths and weaknesses and others to consider and you can’t sum it up by saying “1997 guys, that’s the number. nyaaa nyaaa” in the end.

 

[Radon87000]

Not a big deal. I’ve had many a brain fart around here. I’m not kidding when I say I genuinely stop at your posts and consider them a bit more than others.

I’m also not trying to make others look worse than they are if you go a few posts back. I also think these figures from laptopmag aren’t very good and do look forward to more credible, reliable figures.

So the speed should be lower or higher in your opinion?

 

[Feenician]

Its the the disk itself because the Samsung 970 Pro has the exact same write speeds.

I’d put money it on being the 970 technology, or something very close to it, in the underlying storage technology too. Where the controller gets interesting is in sustained numbers. Apple might be up, they might be down but when we find out it will be juicy either way, won’t it? Isn’t that the fun of this?

 

[torana355]

I’d put money it on being the 970 technology, or something very close to it, in the underlying storage technology too. Where the controller gets interesting is in sustained numbers. Apple might be up, they might be down but when we find out it will be juicy either way, won’t it? Isn’t that the fun of this?

All I will say is I give Apple credit for using top of the line components where the PC counterparts are not. Im excited to upgrade my 2011 MBA now if the new keyboard with the silicon seal solves the reliability issues.

 

[Feenician]

So the speed should be lower or higher in your opinion?

I researched a few of these, just to be sure. The XPS looked right but the Spectre looked way under for the figures quoted here. I genuinely don’t remember and it’s getting to bed time but I think it looked looked around twice the speed for read, for what I found. Of course I might have looked at the wrong SKU, the article quoted an old figure etc. For what it’s worth I think the figures presented for the PCs and the Mac would be better presented by people who know the hell they’re doing.

Edit: leaving the above grammatical mess unchanged but what I meant was the Spectre looked faster, twice as fast as the figures in the OP

 

[torana355]

I researched a few of these, just to be sure. The XPS looked right but the Spectre looked way under for the figures quoted here. I genuinely don’t remember and it’s getting to bed time but I think it looked looked around twice the speed for read, for what I found. Of course I might have looked at the wrong SKU, the article quoted an old figure etc. For what it’s worth I think the figures presented for the PCs and the Mac would be better presented by people who know the hell they’re doing.

Edit: leaving the above grammatical mess unchanged but what I meant was the Spectre looked faster, twice as fast as the figures in the OP

The regular Samsung 970 has 1500MB's write speed which makes me think the 400MB/s on the Dell review is underrated, i've actually had a quick look at most of the NVME SSD's from all brands and none have write speeds under 1000MB/s, even the cheap ones. Very interesting.

 

[MacZach94]

Those SSD differential looks way too large. I can see 1.5X or so, but 10X against systems like the Dell that Samsung SSDs seems way too large. I wonder if BlackMagic is not accurate with the new system or the file system is playing some games and not really copying data but changing file header pointers

So good old apple fan boys thinking that this is sooooooo cool.... hate to burst their bubble but um that is traditional ssd speed such as a samsung evo850 try using a damn samsung 960 evo pro NVMe ssd...... *gasp* its the same speed!!!!!

 

[Feenician]

All I will say is I give Apple credit for using top of the line components where the PC counterparts are not. Im excited to upgrade my 2011 MBA now if the new keyboard with the silicon seal solves the reliability issues.

I sure hope it does. Unless there’s significant negative evidence on the keyboard, I’m waiting for the 32Gb refurbs to appear and buying. For my usage, multiple local VMs, it makes a real difference.

The regular Samsung 970 has 1500MB's write speed which makes me think the 400MB/s on the Dell review is underrated, i've actually had a quick look at most of the NVME SSD's from all brands and none have write speeds under 1000MB/s, even the cheap ones. Very interesting.

I think it was the 2016 where Apple went to 4 PCI express lanes. If Dell are doing the same and still underutilizing those drives, they are doing them a disservice.

 

[eulslix]

This test is just ridiculously stupid. A quick look over to notebookcheck will reveal two things:

-) The 2016/7 MBP already had a SSD within a similar speed class, which is impressive though
-) Competition like Dell XPS has SSDs in the same class. This is nothing specific to Apple, but rather to the premium segment.

Obviously on top of that the APFS uses a diff based approach, which by definition will be miles faster than an exact copy. At the same time, APFS only will help in cases of copying or modifying through APFS, not that much when exporting or actually creating stuff. Therefore, this test is heavily misleading. But it seems some people are happy to feed their fanboyism with such articles...

 

[Nozuka]

Many of you guys seem to ignore this:

So we also ran the BlackMagic Disk Speed test for macOS, and the system returned an average write speed of 2,682 MBps.

This is amazing. My 2012 MacBook Retina gets around 370MB/s write and 450MB/s read with this test.
Going to be a huge upgrade.

 

[Feenician]

Competition like Dell XPS has SSDs in the same class.

If, by the same class, you mean NVMe. You should probably read the thread first. NVMe is an interface, not a speed.

Obviously on top of that the APFS uses a diff based approach, which by definition will be miles faster than an exact copy

It’s not relevant to the test, which creates a new file, then reads it. Again, read the thread because it’s been covered.

I’m too tired to cover this for the bazillionth time. Thank you for the nice discussion tonight, MR contributors.

 

[torana355]

Many of you guys seem to ignore this:



This is amazing. My 2012 MacBook Retina gets around 370MB/s write and 450MB/s read with this test.
Going to be a huge upgrade.

Yes because your 2012 machine runs a Sata SSD compared to the NVME SSD's that run directly off the bus on the newer machines. Even the 2015 MBP had speeds of 1.5GB/s read and write.

 

[eulslix]

If, by the same class, you mean NVMe. You should probably read the thread first. NVMe is an interface, not a speed.

I meant speed class

And the test doesn't reference the Blackmagic test results, but rather copying a file per hand, which they even state in the test might be skewed by APFS​

 

[Nozuka]

Yes because your 2012 machine runs a Sata SSD compared to the NVME SSD's that run directly off the bus on the newer machines. Even the 2015 MBP had speeds of 1.5GB/s read and write.

should have clarified: i meant because people say this is just because of AFPS.
but clearly it's not.

 

[dilbert99]

These are the type of things Apple haters / Windows PC fanboys overlook when determining the true value of an Apple device.

Perhaps if they did a proper test, I feel a flaw in the tests they are doing. Cloning a file could be more to do with APFS.

Also question the results, when I do a test on my older XPS with a 100MB file it gives 1233MB/s Read and 390MB/s write, (Edit: actually that seems about right for write speed of the the dell)

While the Apple speeds are impressive, you do pay an Apple tax to get that speed.

 

[jm001]

WHY DONT THEY PUT A PROPER GPU IN THESE DAMN THINGS?!

I mean this is asinine the scores are so good and then the ****ing graphics one is so terrible come on egpus are great and whatever but just pack it with a radeon whatever and all the complaints about the mbp being overpriced can go shove it

You're only looking at the 13" models - I always consider these as the entry level MB. The 15" models have dedicated GPUs. They sport the Radeon 555x and 560x respectively. Both have 4GB of GDDR5. Not only do they have beefed up GPUs and the fast SSDs, but they both have 6-core 8th gen i7's.

 

[laz232]

Just wondering, does this make a RAM upgrade (8gb to 16gb) less essential?

https://www.techspot.com/news/62129-ddr3-vs-ddr4-raw-bandwidth-numbers.html
No - 30 000 MB/s compared to this SSD measurement (if accurate) of < 3 000 MB/s.

If you use VMs (or plan to in next 3-5years): get 16GB.
If you do video / serious photo work: get 16GB

 

[vladi]

None of these laptops are true MBP13 competition. Surface Book 2? Are you kidding me?

MBP13 competition are gaming laptops such as Aorus, MSI GS, Razer, Gigabyte Aero and others who all have m.2 PCIe Gen 3 NVMe SSDs with speeds of at least 2000MB/s

 

[shplock]

WHY DONT THEY PUT A PROPER GPU IN THESE DAMN THINGS?!

I mean this is asinine the scores are so good and then the ****ing graphics one is so terrible come on egpus are great and whatever but just pack it with a radeon whatever and all the complaints about the mbp being overpriced can go shove it

A 13" laptop is not, i repeat NOT a hardcore ultra fast swanky pants gaming rig!
if you want gaming, then buy a PS4 or Xbox On etc.
[doublepost=1531567821][/doublepost]

With the file copy so much ridiculously faster, could that have something to do with the APFS file system? I kind of remember reading that it doesn't actually copy the file or something like that. Like there's just one file that appears to be in two places? Maybe someone knows more about it than I do.

if you read the article it does mention APFS and it is only partially responsible
[doublepost=1531567893][/doublepost]

Isn’t APFS the cause of these speeds?

Only slightly. it still is a fast SSD plus who cares if it is 100% the SSD or part due to the SSD and part due to something else. Like it says, a win is a win.
[doublepost=1531568010][/doublepost]

Are you serious?

Yes! for the last time...A 13" laptop is NOT a hardcore ultra swanky pants gaming rig. That is what PS4 or Xbox one etc are for. You could get away with 15" MacBook pro for some gaming if you wish, but real?? Next you will want to complain that a 1.6 litre small city car is not a fast as a Porsche 911 and whinge about it.

 

[alex0002]

I think the tester need to look into this issue.

If it was testing APFS's COW (copy on write), the MacBook Pro just wrote the metadata (maybe a few kb) to disk instead of 4.9GB actually data.

What a misleading article. So really LaptopMag is testing OS file copies and not true SSD copying.

A better comparison than what they have done here, might be to take a pc with a fast NVME SSD and then use OpenZFS, Linux BTRFS or perhaps BSD HAMMER file system which also supports the copy on write features.

APFS still might have some advantages, as it appears that the APFS design prioritises user I/O over data integrity. APFS checksums its own metadata, but not user data.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/201...-good-and-bad-in-apples-new-apfs-file-system/

Perhaps this is the correct decision for a consumer device.

Of course a large percentage of pc operations are Read -> Modify -> Write.
Data deduplication only helps when data is identical.

 

[shplock]

Those SSD differential looks way too large. I can see 1.5X or so, but 10X against systems like the Dell that Samsung SSDs seems way too large. I wonder if BlackMagic is not accurate with the new system or the file system is playing some games and not really copying data but changing file header pointers

Nope...the difference really is that big and Dell etc are just not as good at innovation in many areas. enough said.
[doublepost=1531568145][/doublepost]

Looks like they are comparing regular ol SATA 3 SSD's to the Macbook's NVME SSD in that table? Or something? That is stupidly misleading if true. I've personally used and benchmarked an XPS 13 - they go much faster than 300 MB/s.

Not in the real wold they don't...I used one and it was slower than a dead sloth..plus with windows it crashed every time I blinked! lol
[doublepost=1531568238][/doublepost]

As others speculate these results are not really indicative of anything, due to how APFS influences these results.

When using APFS and duplicating a file, the file isn't actually stored twice on disk but only once, and both locations store a reference to the actual file on disk. Hence the high speed.

Changing even 1 byte in the duplicated file is what actually triggers a full copy of the file on disk. This is what they should've measured. Presenting it in the current way is deeply flawed.

Not really no!! It is like someone saying "Hey my wife just changed her hair colour and now she looks stupid and horrible because she artificially changed her hair colour and it is not natural"
[doublepost=1531568313][/doublepost]

I discovered that you can duplicate files beyond the limit of the disk with apfs...
I think it only changes references, therefore not a good test

That is not what was going on..so it was a great test! amazing, brilliant..if you think you can do better please go ahead.