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Apple Silicon M1 MacBook Air SSD Really Is Twice as Fast as Previous Model

leicaman said:
Pretty obvious it's the PCIe 4.0 specification, same as the Xbox Series X and Playstation 5. Just this September a whole new level of drives arrived that can do up to 7,000 MB/s.
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I agree, which is why I am wondering why the article didn’t just say so.
 
Those numbers look like a great improvement but I was hoping for over 3,000. The numbers though are quite good compared tp before
 
leicaman said:
Pretty obvious it's the PCIe 4.0 specification, same as the Xbox Series X and Playstation 5. Just this September a whole new level of drives arrived that can do up to 7,000 MB/s.
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Cant wait until we see speeds over 7,000 whole new performance specs there😃
 
When it comes to real-life work loads, Apple SSD are the slowest on the market. I'm really disapointed about my iMac's 2020 SSD performance, especially with random write speeds. Even my more than year old Dell OptiPlex 7770 4K with one generation older cpu outperforms my iMac 2-3 times. And all because of iMac's slow SSD. While having much faster sequential read/write speeds (that in 99,99% real life cases are useless), iMac has much slower small file random write/read speeds. I compared in real life scenario task, and it was like iMac 22K records per second vs Dell's 50K records per second written to SQL database. All soft the same.
iMac's disk speed:
iMac5K_2020.PNG
 
Fosdyke said:
While having much faster sequential read/write speeds (that in 99,99% real life cases are useless), iMac has much slower small file random write/read speeds.
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I think I read an article recently about how, in order to utilize the storage while avoiding writing to the same location multiple times as much as possible, SSD’s do FAR more sequential reading and writing than older disc HD’s. I’ll see if I can find that again (or if I just made it up in a COVID fueled fever dream!).
 
RedTomato said:
Remember this is a M1 256GB ssd that you are comparing to a 2TB Samsung 970. Small SSDs are extremely slow due to lack of channels. You only get full speed at about the 1TB mark. 256GB is about 1/2 to 1/4 the speed of 1TB.

This is absolutely the fastest speed I've seen a 256GB SSD do, it's phenomenal. Too early to say yet but M1 1TB could be 2 or 3x faster, meaning 4-6GB/s. Especially in the MBP.
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Well, seems I was wrong. Not easy to find SSD numbers, but seems the 1TB has the same numbers as the 256GB SSD.
 
mi7chy said:
Remember that Apple charges $800 for 2TB compared to 2TB Samsung 970 EVO+ for $250. Even the 250GB 970 EVO+ is faster overall with 3600/2400 MB/s seq read/write. The speed of smaller drives has nothing to do with "lack of channels".
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Well, seems I was wrong. Not easy to find SSD numbers, but seems the 1TB has the same numbers as the 256GB SSD.
 
JCCL said:
Modern SSDs are sick. Biggest upgrade in next gen consoles.
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It’s a must have! I agree but also have been using solid state gaming for 7+ years on the PC. That also includes anyone that gamed on Bootcamp on the Mac.

It is fun to watch my Series X transfer a game to the expansion card in seconds.
 
Abazigal said:
Apple has traditionally underpromised and overdelivered. For example, they are usually the most honest with their battery life estimates, unlike many other windows laptop OEMS where I usually just halve their battery life claims outright to get the "real" number.

So I don't know why you the Apple is being "unusually" honest. They have always been that way for me.
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Unusual compared to the industry, or compared to marketing in general. We’re in agreement.
 
scartart said:
For people with your requirements the higher end Intel Mac mini still exists. I assume that once a higher end M SoC is launched for the higher end MBP or iMac it will become an option for the Mini as well.
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That is my expectation, but I hope they will have revealed their plans for the Mac Mini Pro by that time (rumoured but seems like a reasonable option to plug a whole in the overall lineup IMHO). The Mac Pro (which I expect to continue after), is more of a new market altogether (i.e. large scale memory, more expandable than the old Mac Pro cheesegrater).
 
RedTomato said:
Remember this is a M1 256GB ssd that you are comparing to a 2TB Samsung 970. Small SSDs are extremely slow due to lack of channels. You only get full speed at about the 1TB mark. 256GB is about 1/2 to 1/4 the speed of 1TB.

This is absolutely the fastest speed I've seen a 256GB SSD do, it's phenomenal. Too early to say yet but M1 1TB could be 2 or 3x faster, meaning 4-6GB/s. Especially in the MBP.
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exactly! and the Macbook airs are going out the door at $899
 
mi7chy said:
Remember that Apple charges $800 for 2TB compared to 2TB Samsung 970 EVO+ for $250. Even the 250GB 970 EVO+ is faster overall with 3600/2400 MB/s seq read/write. The speed of smaller drives has nothing to do with "lack of channels".
Click to expand...
Sure but if you were going to want 2 TB you'd go external wouldn't you?
 
dmylrea said:
$900 is NOT entry level pricing for a laptop. For Apple, maybe...but Apple uses standard parts (in Intel model) and the SSD speeds in the MBA were just embarrassing. There isn't any magic tech or expensive parts needed to get decent SSD speed in a laptop under $900. They just used the cheapest, slowest SSD chips and charged the consumer a premium.

Now, the speeds in the M1 MBA are more "normal" but certainly not earth-shattering. A respected PCIe 4.0 speed would be OVER 3000 for reads and writes. Well OVER. So still being in the 2000's is nothing to write home about. Those are very middle-of-the-road PCIe 3.0 speeds.

Now, we will see if the 512GB or larger SSD sizes are faster. They should be. But will we see >4000 read/write speeds as we should with PCIe 4.0? Doubtful.
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well for $900 the whole package is pretty impressive. they may have faster SSDs but those pcs will also be hotter, have louder fans and not go 20 hours without being plugged in.
 
mi7chy said:
Remember that Apple charges $800 for 2TB compared to 2TB Samsung 970 EVO+ for $250. Even the 250GB 970 EVO+ is faster overall with 3600/2400 MB/s seq read/write. The speed of smaller drives has nothing to do with "lack of channels".
Click to expand...
Actually this is only an issue with the 256 gig M2 MacBook Air, specifically because of a lack of channels due to them only using 256 gig chips rather than two 128 gig chips, which would double the bandwidth of the memory. Plus small drives under 1TB tend to be slower than larger drives because of internal bandwidth.

And you're comparing Apples to Oranges with the Samsung 980 EVO drives (which aren't terribly fast, compared to the 980 Pros) because the SSDs in M1 and M2 computers aren't the same form factor. The SSD is actually a storage module, and the electronics that control it, and buffer and all the speedy parts are on the SOC that the storage modules plug into.

And even considering it's slower, how is that an issue when you can write the whole 256 gigs in what, 15 minutes? Less considering the operating system already is taking up a not inconsiderable amount of space.
 
leicaman said:
And even considering it's slower, how is that an issue when you can write the whole 256 gigs in what, 15 minutes?
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Because all disk access is 50% slower
That impacts everything, even just opening apps

And if you fill up the RAM, the swap performance/enjoyment will get hammered by the very much slower SSDs now.
 
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