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Best SSD for early 2008 MBP 17"

K

kga1978

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 26, 2009
4
0
Hi,
I'm considering purchasing a SSD drive for some performance boost of my MBP 17" (early 2008). I have been considering four different disks and would like any input that people might have. All drives are SATA II standard and my MBP is SATA I, so I'm a little concerned about how well I can utilize the top spec drives (theoretically 150mb/s - most of the drives below are capable of better speeds). Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Disks I'm considering:
Crucial 128GB
I like Crucial memory and have read good reviews of this drive - but it is quite pricey
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148319&cm_re=20-148-_-20-148-319-_-Product

Patriot KOI 128GB
'Specifically made for Apple' (whatever that means?), but high power consumption
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820220428

Corsair P128 128GB
Looks like an overall good drive, but some reports that it works badly with Apple
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233087

Intel X-25M 80GB
The king for a long time, but pricey and lower capacity.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820167023

Kingston V-series 128GB
Specs are not as good as the other disks, but the drive is super cheap and has (some) good reviews. Since my MBP is SATA I, maybe this would be the best deal.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820139005

Specs:
MacBook Pro 17" (Early 2008 - MacBookPro4,1), 2.5GHz C2D, 4gb ram, 200gb 7200RPM drive.
 
When buying SSD's my primary concern would not be max read/write speeds, as these are sequentiel read/writes, which is not what is gonna make your computer boot faster, or applications load faster, and therefore the Sata-1 cap won't be that big of a deal, yes if you copy large files around your drive you may notice it, but thats not really what you do most with an SSD
What you should look for is random read/write, as this is what's being done when booting, loading apps and such. And in that category there's no doubt who's the winner, the Intel X25-M.
Many people critizise this drive for its's low sequintel write speed (70 MB/s) but as i said, they dont matter, execpt for when moving large files (and installing apps) but installing is really only done once, and how many large files are you gonna move around on a SSD? Nothing beats the Intel in random read/write, and therefore it is the one i would recommend, even though it has a price premium..

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3667&p=6 this shows you just how much better intel is at random read/write, you can see a regular Seagate Momentus doing 0.3 MB/s in random read, whereas the intel SSD does 60 MB/s, and considering random read/writes is the main portion of boot/app load, that is really an improvement worth paying for!
just my 2 cents.
 
Dr-Ludvig said:
When buying SSD's my primary concern would not be max read/write speeds, as these are sequentiel read/writes, which is not what is gonna make your computer boot faster, or applications load faster, and therefore the Sata-1 cap won't be that big of a deal, yes if you copy large files around your drive you may notice it, but thats not really what you do most with an SSD (snip)
.
Click to expand...

If I do sometimes monkey around with large files (2-4GB movie files) is the SSD counter productive? Would I be better off performance wise with a 7200RPM drive or perhaps the combo of SSD plus external firewire....

Advice thoughts appreciated
 
Sirmausalot said:
If I do sometimes monkey around with large files (2-4GB movie files) is the SSD counter productive? Would I be better off performance wise with a 7200RPM drive or perhaps the combo of SSD plus external firewire....

Advice thoughts appreciated
Click to expand...
I wouldn't say it's counter productive, 70 MB/s isn't slow, that's about what you'll get with a regular HDD aswell.. And 2-4 GB isn't that much, on the intel drive you have the 170 MB/s read, so loading those files will be super fast, whereas you have 70 MB/s write, so saving the files will be more like on a regular HDD..
Depends on how much you work with large files, i would not recommend moving large files around on any SSD, due to the way SSD's work, they will lose performance faster. But if you want your computer to feel faster, and apps loading faster and such, then intel is the way to go..
So yeah maybe a combo is the best way, maybe even consider the optibay thing, removing the optical drive and putting another HDD in there instead, i'm putting a 80 GB Intel SSD + 500 GB WD Blue in my 13", and then the optical drive in an USB case..
 
Hey guys,
Thanks for all your help. I decided to go for the 160gb Intel drive - it is more expensive, but most people have this as their first choice.
 
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