512GB SSD: Apple vs 3rd Party?

P

psingh01

macrumors 68000
Never had an SSD before and I'm thinking of getting one when I upgrade my MBP. I can't deal with the smaller capacities so I'll have to go for one of the big expensive ones. My MBP is my main machine and I like to take as much with me when I'm on the go.

Question is do I upgrade with Apple or get a 3rd party SSD?

I get a discount on Apple stuff through my employer so upgrading to a 512GB SSD is around ~$1100 instead of the regular $1300 Apple charges.

Given that, what would you do? Is the Apple SSD worth it? I read lots of people saying it's "reliable but not fast". Do I get the base unit and upgrade my drive separately?

I'd love to hear your opinions.

Quick list of general uses:

Safari, Elgato EyeTV, VMWare, XCode, Eclipse, iLife, occasionally Photoshop and eventually Starcraft 2.
 
From what i read the disk is not "that bad" and is worth a look.

I do not think you will find a better deal with 512gb drives.

Unless maybe you take of the main drive + superdrive and replace it with two 256g SSD.
 
I have the apple SSD in my MBP, and to me coming from nothing but platter drives it's way way faster. That being said, if you are gonna run benches and want better numbers, go with a 3rd party SSD. Someone may have better technical details than this, but my opinion of my experience so far.

I haven't shopped around for a drive that big, so can't really help you there. Good luck.
 
You will find speed demons in the 256gb range (OWC Mercury Extreme, Crucial RealSSD C300) that will blow anything from Apple but you won't find the same "WTF my hair is on fire" performance from a 3rd party SSD 512gb drive.
 
maverick72 said:
You will find speed demons in the 256gb range (OWC Mercury Extreme, Crucial RealSSD C300) that will blow anything from Apple but you won't find the same "WTF my hair is on fire" performance from a 3rd party SSD 512gb drive.
Click to expand...


Everything is relative...

I bought the Apple 512 GB SSD with a company discount for about $1100 and have felt that "WTF my hair is on fire" feeling every moment I am using the machine. There may be measurable differences between SSDs - but the change from normal hard drive performance is so radical that I really don't care that another drive might be 10% faster...

I measured the "total boot up time" on my machine from the moment you press the button until you can perform work on the desktop. 22 seconds. That is deeply into "hair on fire" territory. I don't think an iPhone boots up that fast....

I have loaded a Win 7 Bootcamp partition for necessary Windows programs and my massive iTunes database of 200 GB or more on the OSX side - and I still have tons of room...

Its nice to have massive speed and good capacity at the same time...:D
 
The OWC drive is not bad and there are a few other players in the market as well.

For example:

MX Technology features a 480GB SSD with SF1200 controller
Runcore features the Kylin II series with SF1500 (if I am not mistaken)
Photofast SFV1 also has a SF controller
OCZ Vertex 2 SF1200
OCZ Vertex 2 SF1500

SO there are quite a few players in the market.

From personal experience I do like the Photofast SSDs since they tended to be fairly close to the performance they promoted...

Their last product Gmonster V5 boosted my Macbook to 265 MB/s read and write speed with 512GB capacity.

Hope this helps...
 
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