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Apple Releases MacBook Pro Firmware Update to Address SATA Interface Speeds

I was correct, it seems then. It was a firmware issue.

Wasn't relevant for me, since my Unibody always have had a 3Gbit/s bus. But I'm glad to see Apple fix this mishap. You may go on to complain about something else now. :)
 
BRLawyer said:
Now tell me: WHICH COMPANY IN THE WORLD provides such a quick feedback to customers' demands? Apple is SUPREME again in quality of service...it's just amazing!

PC pundits, have you eaten some crow already?

MS IS DEAD. DELL IS DEAD.
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Are you wearing your Apple cheerleading outfit with your Apple shaped pom-poms from your closet when you're writing this?
 
fredfnord said:
The reason nobody mentions this is because it's 100% wrong. With SATA, each device is on its own bus. You're assuming that SATA worked the same way as PATA (master/slave) or SCSI (multiple drives, one bus) but it doesn't.

-fred
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The independent links are not the most material to bottlenecking. If have a single rooted tree topology network you will get capped. For example:

http://www.siliconimage.com/products/product.aspx?pid=26

[ and yes I know that this is a port multiplier and that its function is slightly different. But it is much more illustrative of the roll topology plays.]


The ports on the other side of the port replicator can get bottlenecked. So it boils down to what the switch looks like inside the 9400's controler. In some later SATA standard set-ups can have a control that understands that drives may be in different states and can do command interleaving. However, all 2-6 drives all concurrently blasting back data at full speed. Probably not happening.

SATA II being at 3.0 Gbps is mainly for "fat tree network"-like effect. Give an overallocation of bandwidth to each individual connection farther "up" in the tree so that get fewer overall network slowdowns when individual nodes "at the bottom" in the tree are going full blast (have their own internal limitations).

Look at the RAID 0 set up not getting anyway close to 2x speed ups. That will surface when really don't have two fully independent channels.

What matters is not the connection to the controller as far as peak bandwidth what matters is the connection from the controller to the rest of the computer. Looking at the wrong end if looking at the port of the individual drives.
 
Power Tested yet?

Has anyone run any tests regarding changes in power demands of the SATA 3.0Gbps vs. the SATA 1.5Gbps? This could be one reason (I can't think of any others) that they made the 1.5Gbps choice in the first place. I mean, it was addressed over a firmware update meaning the choice was deliberate in a platform/drive that were made for SATA 3.0Gbps. Anyone seeing anything different after the firmware update? I know perception might be tough but if any hardware sites have done this, forward the link.

Thanks.
 
B4 and After benchmark on 15" 3.06ghz 256GB Apple SSD

Hate to be the one to ruin the party, but either my QuickBench before run was faulty, or something is quarky with the Apple SSD. Seq Read Write improved, but Random Read Write went the opposite direction... :mad:

But these numbers are actually consistent with what others have posted, except it's slower than the X-25...

This is on a brand spanking new 15" MBP 3.06GHZ, 4GB Memory and 256GB Apple SSD.
 

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vitaeergo said:
Anyone else have an issues with the Macbook Pro 15" being able to see an Intel X25 80GB and after the firmware, no-see-ee.

Brand new X25 that worked in my new MBP 15 (2 days old) prior to the firmware update.

Post firmware, the unit can't see the drive. Boot off of the DVD and cannot see it in Disk Utility nor System Profiler.

Took the X25 out and put it in a Windows machine without problem. Ran Intel's firmware update and it states its already up-to-date.

PRAM flash and still no drive.

Boot off of original MBP HDD and it states the firmware is up-to-date. Profiler shows 3.0 GBS flag now.

Intel support says to call Apple. Before I do, anyone have a similar issue?
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If you call apple, i'm sure they will ask you call Intel back. Most of the people here successfully updated their firmware without a issue include me. After run the flash tool, restart take a while. You sure the firmware update go through without issue?

Since you can see the drive in windows, try remove the partition and reformat it
 
MacRumorsReader said:
The SATA drive in my new 17" is 3 Gb/s
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No, it's not. The interface is 3Gbps, but the drive isn't. The fastest consumer hard drives on the market are still under 130MBps, or around 1.1Gbps with overhead. There's no need for the 3Gb interface except for SSDs, and only then on those that break 180MBps sustained speeds.
Am I confused?
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Yeah, a bit, but it's an honest question.
nyzwerewolf said:
I wish Apple released a firmware update for Late 2007 MacBook Pros to bump from 1.5Gbps to 3.0Gbps...
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That would require them to ship you a replacement logic board first that could physically support that transfer mode.
 
This update SLOWED my XBench results with my Hitachi 5K500.B :( It also has caused my new 13" MacBook Pro to randomly freeze up for a few seconds at a time. Boo Apple... but since I know it's firmware issues, I trust they'll be fixed. For now I just wish Apple could get me the old firmware back...
 
matticus008 said:
To be accurate, it's about a 33% performance penalty, worst-case with the modern crop of SSDs (typically peaking in the 220MB range), and there's no evidence that it was a planned, permanent crippling. It was an issue; it's been corrected.
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Actually, to be correct, the data I saw dropped the OCZ Vertex 128GB drive from ~220MB/sec read and ~160MB/sec write down to ~120MB/sec read and 90MB/sec write. The benchmarks are floating around on the related threads on Macrumors.com somewhere, I couldn't find them in the short time I looked, but I'm sure if you can track them down if you are interested.
Despite the main 8B/10B encoding overhead already taken out of SATA/1.5Gbps and thus giving us the 150MB/sec number, it appears there are more sources of overhead and limitations involved, and thus the very low numbers seen with the Vertex drive running on an unpatched MB Pro 13".
 
winterspan said:
Actually, to be correct, the data I saw dropped the OCZ Vertex 128GB drive from ~220MB/sec read and ~160MB/sec write down to ~120MB/sec read and 90MB/sec write.
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It's not impossible for that to be the case for that particular drive.
Despite the main 8B/10B encoding overhead already taken out of SATA/1.5Gbps and thus giving us the 150MB/sec number, it appears there are more sources of overhead and limitations involved, and thus the very low numbers seen with the Vertex drive running on an unpatched MB Pro 13".
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Well we already know from previous SSD benchmarks that there are drives achieving upwards of 140MBps on a standard 1.5Gbps interface, so a lot of that has to do with consistency of data collected and usage factors. We also know that 220MBps is the upper limit, so only outliers could achieve a differential in excess of 75MBps (33%).

In any case, I think we can all agree that very few drives were adversely affected to that extent, and in most cases by far, speeds would be clipped at no more than 50-75MBps, if at all. Still, I admit I assumed in my calculation a reasonably high-performing transfer rate at 1.5Gbps and did not consider drives with more serious overhead issues.

I'll take you at your word for those particular benchmarks and the 45% speed drop on that unit, and I certainly agree that it would have been a serious issue had it gone uncorrected.
 
markie said:
This update SLOWED my XBench results with my Hitachi 5K500.B :( It also has caused my new 13" MacBook Pro to randomly freeze up for a few seconds at a time. Boo Apple... but since I know it's firmware issues, I trust they'll be fixed. For now I just wish Apple could get me the old firmware back...
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I had the same. could you check if you're fan doesn't get any higher than 2001 or 1999 rpm? Even if the temp gets up to 85 celsius?
My MBP 13" is now in for some TLC and a new logicboard... :(
Just 3 days old and now already in repair.
But at least the service is really, really good.
 
Oh the fan still speeds up and cools down the system at around 90C processor core temp. The system is starting to run better again now...
 
alecgold said:
Just 3 days old and now already in repair.
But at least the service is really, really good.
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The infamous Apple quality - in the 21st century! :D

How can a company like Apple not be able to write a proper firmware for such a basic thing as SATA. One that would just work? Oh yes, that's right. It's not present on the iPhone... :rolleyes:
 
AboveTheChaos said:
Too funny. If you post anything without links, screenshots and proof, you get dismissed. Then you post with proof and you get snarky comments like did you buy your computer just to run test and it's about how it feels. :rolleyes:
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I'm not asking "how it feels". You can run proper tests without resorting to artificial benchmarks. take a stopwatch and measure the difference in application startup-time for example. Or run apps that hit the HD hard, and measure if there's any difference. Xbench and the like are just artificial benchmarks, what matters is performance in real-life apps.

It's like when people argued that "my vid-card is faster than your vid-card because it gets more 3DMarks!", when at the same time they got worse performance in actual games....
 
This may be a coincidence, but I was watching movies via frontrow last night and the computer (13" MBP) locked up twice. It came back to life after 5 seconds or so but I was a bit perturbed. Hadn't happened prior to the firmware update.
 
uv23 said:
This may be a coincidence, but I was watching movies via frontrow last night and the computer (13" MBP) locked up twice. It came back to life after 5 seconds or so but I was a bit perturbed. Hadn't happened prior to the firmware update.
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Hmm, more and more I get the idea the EFI update was rushed out, but the didn't test it really good.
I wonder if we are going to se EFI update 1.7.1 in a few days/weeks.
Are there any other people considering to send in their new MBP's?
 
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