Considering getting one of these, they cost roughly the same in the UK. Is the performance of the Vertex 3 really that noticeable? Or put another way is the Apple SSD really bad? Your thoughts please?
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240GB Vertex 3 vs. 512GB Apple SSD?
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daneoni
macrumors G5
One is SATA II (Apple) and has a max read write of around 170 240mb/s on average. The OCZ is one of the two fastest SATA III drives out there with read/write speeds between 460-500mb/s.
That said 3rd party SSDs aren't as supported as the Apple ones and might require more TLC (firmware updates using Win 7 for example) than the Apple drives which are guaranteed to work 100% with OSX.
That said 3rd party SSDs aren't as supported as the Apple ones and might require more TLC (firmware updates using Win 7 for example) than the Apple drives which are guaranteed to work 100% with OSX.
Go with Apple for compatibility reasons first and then size as well.
You're already in the SSD realm of speed and access. The real life noticeable differences at this stage are insignificant and not worth giving up compatability and space.
Speed increase of HDD to SSD: super significant
Speed increase of one SSD to another SSD: insignificant.
Unfortunately not all other SSD drives behave properly with all aspects of the OS.
You're already in the SSD realm of speed and access. The real life noticeable differences at this stage are insignificant and not worth giving up compatability and space.
Speed increase of HDD to SSD: super significant
Speed increase of one SSD to another SSD: insignificant.
Unfortunately not all other SSD drives behave properly with all aspects of the OS.
phpmaven
macrumors 68040
While I won't argue that the difference between a fast SATA 3 drive and a mediocre SATA 2 drive like the ones Apple uses are not as significant and the difference between a HDD and and SSD, it's silly to say the difference is not significant. My own experience is that it makes quite a big difference in overall performance.
You are saying you have experienced a difference between a sata II and a sata III SSD in the same system, and the difference in performance was compelling? This I would like to understand, if you have some stats etc etc... because that wouldsignificantly change the planning of when I would purchase a 2011 (or even 2012) laptop.
I have no experience with the Apple SSD or the one you have described however I would go with double the storage over faster speeds. From what I have seen in videos the Apple SSD loads apps in seconds and look blazing fast. Once you are at that kind of performance is faster read speeds going to be more important than all that extra space?
absolute total waste to put a SATA3 series disk if your macbook only supports SATA2, so it depends on your model
Test results don't show much difference in normal usage. See this test from Anandtech. Granted it is a Windows test, but the point is in actual usage, not benchmarks, there is just not much difference.
From the linked article.
I say insignificant in comparison to the primary element one needs to consider in this landscape wrought with compatability issues. The MacBook Pro community has had plenty of known issues with third party SSD behavior and this is not an instance where all elements are equal and all you need to consider is numbers. You don't want to have to worry about such problems. So compared to that, I would consider the speed difference as such. Insignificant, unnoticeable, not worth it; whatever you want to call it.