Crucial M4 SSD and 2011 MBP 13" i5

[The Critic]

I just purchased a 2011 MBP 13" i5 and I have been researching the various SSD options. It appears that the main concern with the SSD drives is with the unpredictable compatibility issues that seem to arise.

Regardless, I am strongly considering the Crucial M4 64GB SSD due to its SATA-III interface, Marvell Controller and the current low price of $115 on NewEgg.

Has anyone used the M4 successfully in a 2011 MBP 13" i5? Similarly, if anyone has successfully installed any aftermarket SSD in this particular unit, I am interested in hearing the brand/model you used.

Thanks.

 

[NickZac]

SATAIII is a waste of money if you are going for a SSD that small. You won't get a huge difference between SATAII and SATAIII with a 64GB SSD, as they almost all have poor write speeds compared to larger sizes. Even your max read speed will barely be over what SATAII supports. Furthermore, it seems SATAII SSDs are having fewer issues with the 2011 MBPs than SataIII. IIRC the Crucial and Intel SSDs are both well under 100 MB/s (write) for drives that size. The exception to the almost all are some of the SandForce driven ones, which will still max out SATAII with even smaller size drives (Vertex2, Mercury Extreme Pro, etc.). Personally, I would get an Intel drive, but that's just me.

 

[p1ngputts]

i just picked up the vertex 3 for my 13". If I can figure out how to get some benchmarks, I'll gladly post them. (new mac user). This laptop runs amazing!

 

[zwodubber]

i just picked up the vertex 3 for my 13". If I can figure out how to get some benchmarks, I'll gladly post them. (new mac user). This laptop runs amazing!

Geekbench?

 

[The Critic]

SATAIII is a waste of money if you are going for a SSD that small. You won't get a huge difference between SATAII and SATAIII with a 64GB SSD, as they almost all have poor write speeds compared to larger sizes. Even your max read speed will barely be over what SATAII supports. Furthermore, it seems SATAII SSDs are having fewer issues with the 2011 MBPs than SataIII. IIRC the Crucial and Intel SSDs are both well under 100 MB/s (write) for drives that size. The exception to the almost all are some of the SandForce driven ones, which will still max out SATAII with even smaller size drives (Vertex2, Mercury Extreme Pro, etc.). Personally, I would get an Intel drive, but that's just me.

Thanks. I just want something that works, and I doubt I would notice any minute differences in speed between the various SSD models.

If SATA II is a better choice, then what are your thoughts on the OCZ Vertex 2? I am looking for value, and I see a 64gb Vertex 2 onsale at Newegg for $90. Do you think that will be a better choice than the Crucial M4? Although I am looking for value and stability, I'd prefer to future-proof if possible (as much as possible).

Thanks.

 

[NickZac]

Thanks. I just want something that works, and I doubt I would notice any minute differences in speed between the various SSD models.

If SATA II is a better choice, then what are your thoughts on the OCZ Vertex 2? I am looking for value, and I see a 64gb Vertex 2 onsale at Newegg for $90. Do you think that will be a better choice than the Crucial M4? Although I am looking for value and stability, I'd prefer to future-proof if possible (as much as possible).

Thanks.

Personally? You couldn't pay me to run a Vertex. The reviews on the Vertex and Vertex 2 speak for themselves.

 

[daneoni]

If i was getting a SATA II drive it would definitely be the Intel 320 or X25-M series.

 

[The Critic]

If i was getting a SATA II drive it would definitely be the Intel 320 or X25-M series.

Is there any proof that certain SATAII drives are completely immune to compatibility issues?

Also, do we have any data on which 2011 MacBook model is most prone to SSD compatibility issues?

 

[daneoni]

Is there any proof that certain SATAII drives are completely immune to compatibility issues?

Also, do we have any data on which 2011 MacBook model is most prone to SSD compatibility issues?

No because SATA III drives are very much new and so everything is still mosty experimental/time will tell. A study suggests Intel drives are the most reliable based on history so far. Another blog write up suggests that write performance degrades significantly with time in Crucial drives...when run in a setup without TRIM (OS X).

Intel and any Sandforce controller based drive seems to cause less hassle overall with Macs. But the firmwares for OCZ and OWC drives can only be updated via windows or Linux whilst Intel and Crucial support OS X firmware updating. so bear that in mind.

 

[The Critic]

If SATA III connections were the issue, could one force the drive to one at SATA II speeds? If so, would that resolve the compatibility problem?

Intel and any Sandforce controller based drive seems to cause less hassle overall with Macs.

Are Sandforce controlled SSDs also exempt from needing the assistance of TRIM?

Do all Sandforce drives, SATAII or SATAIII, experience fewer compatibility issues overall?

 

[daneoni]

If SATA III connections were the issue, could one force the drive to one at SATA II speeds? If so, would that resolve the compatibility problem?


Are Sandforce controlled SSDs also exempt from needing the assistance of TRIM?

Do all Sandforce drives, SATAII or SATAIII, experience fewer compatibility issues overall?

No you can't force a downgrade connection. Sandforce drives tend to do a good job of garbage control and therefore can go without TRIM. People have been largely content with Sandforce drives thus far as far as i know and it's often the most recommended alongside Intel.

 

[NickZac]

I've ran a few OWC Mercury Pro Extreme SF1200 driven SSDs and I never used TRIM, but they had no issue in size decrease, speed decreases, or garbage. Even our original MBA with the 64GB SSD hasn't had those issues...although I do not know for sure if the First Gen Airs have TRIM or not although I believe they don't.

 

[The Critic]

Thanks guys, for all of the help.

Have the sleep/hibernate issues with the SandForce controlled drives been resolved?

Aside from OCZ, which other brands use the SandForce controller?

Since the general consensus is that SATAIII drives are unproven, it is also correct that a SandForce controlled SATAIII drive is more likely to work successfully than say, a Marvell controlled SATAIII drive?

 

[daneoni]

My drive isn't actually with me yet so i can't comment on sleep/hib problems.

OCZ and OWC are the only SATA III Sandforce drives i know. Crucial and Intel use Marvell. Although Intel's validation methods are supposedly much more stringent and so will perform differently to other drives with similar controllers apparently.

No one can say for sure everything is still new and experimental. Intel's Marvell drives could turn out to be very robust (maybe even Crucial's too) if not more than Sandforce drives and the reverse scenario could also happen...or both.

 

[p1ngputts]

Geekbench?

here are my scores, don't understand them tho. Hope they are decent...

Geekbench Summary

System Information
Platform: Mac OS X x86 (32-bit)
Compiler: GCC 4.0.1 (Apple Inc. build 5494)
Operating System: Mac OS X 10.6.7 (Build 10J4138)
Model: MacBook Pro (13-inch Early 2011)
Motherboard: Apple Inc. Mac-94245B3640C91C81 MacBookPro8,1
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-2415M CPU @ 2.30GHz
Processor ID: GenuineIntel Family 6 Model 42 Stepping 7
Logical Processors: 4
Physical Processors: 1
Processor Frequency: 2.30 GHz
L1 Instruction Cache: 32.0 KB
L1 Data Cache: 32.0 KB
L2 Cache: 256 KB
L3 Cache: 3.00 MB
Bus Frequency: 100.0 MHz
Memory: 4.00 GB
Memory Type: 1333 MHz DDR3
SIMD: 1
BIOS: Apple Inc. MBP81.88Z.0047.B04.1102071707
Processor Model: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-2415M CPU @ 2.30GHz
Processor Cores: 2

Geekbench 2 Score: 5960

Integer Performance (Score: 4399)
Blowfish
single-threaded scalar -- 1860, 81.7 MB/sec
multi-threaded scalar -- 6039, 247.5 MB/sec
Text Compress
single-threaded scalar -- 2426, 7.76 MB/sec
multi-threaded scalar -- 5925, 19.4 MB/sec
Text Decompress
single-threaded scalar -- 2650, 10.9 MB/sec
multi-threaded scalar -- 6694, 26.7 MB/sec
Image Compress
single-threaded scalar -- 2044, 16.9 Mpixels/sec
multi-threaded scalar -- 5279, 44.4 Mpixels/sec
Image Decompress
single-threaded scalar -- 2083, 35.0 Mpixels/sec
multi-threaded scalar -- 4604, 75.1 Mpixels/sec
Lua
single-threaded scalar -- 4057, 1.56 Mnodes/sec
multi-threaded scalar -- 9130, 3.51 Mnodes/sec

Floating Point Performance (Score: 8286)
Mandelbrot
single-threaded scalar -- 2426, 1.61 Gflops
multi-threaded scalar -- 8319, 5.44 Gflops
Dot Product
single-threaded scalar -- 3964, 1.92 Gflops
multi-threaded scalar -- 10757, 4.90 Gflops
single-threaded vector -- 4754, 5.70 Gflops
multi-threaded vector -- 12828, 13.3 Gflops
LU Decomposition
single-threaded scalar -- 1200, 1.07 Gflops
multi-threaded scalar -- 2560, 2.25 Gflops
Primality Test
single-threaded scalar -- 5890, 879.7 Mflops
multi-threaded scalar -- 11076, 2.06 Gflops
Sharpen Image
single-threaded scalar -- 5442, 12.7 Mpixels/sec
multi-threaded scalar -- 16891, 38.9 Mpixels/sec
Blur Image
single-threaded scalar -- 6906, 5.47 Mpixels/sec
multi-threaded scalar -- 22993, 18.1 Mpixels/sec

Memory Performance (Score: 5241)
Read Sequential
single-threaded scalar -- 5833, 7.14 GB/sec
Write Sequential
single-threaded scalar -- 8563, 5.86 GB/sec
Stdlib Allocate
single-threaded scalar -- 3425, 12.8 Mallocs/sec
Stdlib Write
single-threaded scalar -- 3573, 7.40 GB/sec
Stdlib Copy
single-threaded scalar -- 4812, 4.96 GB/sec

Stream Performance (Score: 4721)
Stream Copy
single-threaded scalar -- 5271, 7.21 GB/sec
single-threaded vector -- 5855, 7.59 GB/sec
Stream Scale
single-threaded scalar -- 5468, 7.10 GB/sec
single-threaded vector -- 5749, 7.76 GB/sec
Stream Add
single-threaded scalar -- 2101, 3.17 GB/sec
single-threaded vector -- 6259, 8.71 GB/sec
Stream Triad
single-threaded scalar -- 2404, 3.32 GB/sec
single-threaded vector -- 4665, 8.73 GB/sec

 

[awer25]

FWIW, I've been using a Vertex 3 for a month in my MBP and haven't had a single problem...well, except when I tried TRIMenabler - it didn't work too well but luckily Sandforce drives have their own garbage control and don't really need TRIM. Anyway, no sleep or hibernation problems for me and everything's running at super speeds.