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Does SSD make much difference on MBP?

M

mrgiapanta

macrumors regular
Original poster
Apr 5, 2010
105
0
OC, California
So far reading through the forums people keeps talking about buying and upgrading SSD to MBP.

I'm about to order baseline 13" MBP and wondering whether I should consider installing SSD as well.

Does it make a big difference in performance? What's the benefit?
If you definitely recommend, where can I get a cheap and reliable SSD? (Don't need much space. 128GB is okay with me)

Please give me some advice or point me to good thread that explains well about SSD. Thank you :)
 
mrgiapanta said:
So far reading through the forums people keeps talking about buying and upgrading SSD to MBP.

I'm about to order baseline 13" MBP and wondering whether I should consider installing SSD as well.

Does it make a big difference in performance? What's the benefit?
If you definitely recommend, where can I get a cheap and reliable SSD? (Don't need much space. 128GB is okay with me)

Please give me some advice or point me to good thread that explains well about SSD. Thank you :)
Click to expand...

Someone told me 3 year old MBP with SSD can be faster than New MBP with Hard drive....is it true?

Anyone willing to be the Knight in Shining Armor for my rescue?
 
mrgiapanta said:
So far reading through the forums people keeps talking about buying and upgrading SSD to MBP.

I'm about to order baseline 13" MBP and wondering whether I should consider installing SSD as well.

Does it make a big difference in performance? What's the benefit?
If you definitely recommend, where can I get a cheap and reliable SSD? (Don't need much space. 128GB is okay with me)

Please give me some advice or point me to good thread that explains well about SSD. Thank you :)
Click to expand...

"cheap" and "ssd" do not go in the same sentence. But it is totally worth it. The speed is amazing.
 
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As an Amazon Associate, MacRumors earns a commission from qualifying purchases made through links in this post.
As an Amazon Associate, MacRumors earns a commission from qualifying purchases made through links in this post.
if you don't really need it then its not necessary. just get a 500 gb 7200 rpm for about 80-100 bucks. hitachi travelstar is a good hard drive. I have it right now and it works great but I'm updating to a SSD in a week. so stoked :D
 
Some test results for the 512GB SSD CTO for MBP

It appears Apple uses a Toshiba SSD for the CTO option on the 2010 MBP.
Average random reads (4K - 1024K block sizes)
READ = 111MB/s
WRITE = 91MB/s
(or four times faster than the fastest 7K notebook HDD
but slower than the fastest SSDs which average 149MB/s READ and 139MB/s WRITE)

Average sustained (20MB - 100MB block size)
READ = 208MB/s
WRITE = 173MB/s
(or about two times faster than the fastest 7K notebook HDD
but slower than the fastest SSDs which average 271MB/s READ and 263MB/s WRITE)

One other factoid. In terms of number of transactions per second, the SSDs are 400 times faster than the fastest HDDs.

Main downside: A 512GB SSD costs 15 times as much as a 500GB HDD.
 
my 2 cents

I just recently (about a month ago) upgraded my mid-2010 13" MacBook Pro to 256 GB SSD (Kingston).

And yes- benchmarks are impressive, OS is loading in about 6 seconds (!), and iPhoto starts within 1 - 2 (30k+ library).

Apart from that however, interestingly, I didn't notice much of a speed increase. I started paying close attention to Activity Monitor, and Disk Activity m and I realized, that MacOS doesn't use disk as heavily as Windows does for example. It's very unlikely to perform operation that would actually read more than 10 MB in one go (apart from mentioned app opening) etc. I'd say if I had less RAM and paging occurred more intensively I would see benefit , but with 8 GB of RAM that doesn't happen.

Huge difference using Windows 7 via BootCamp - Windows loads within around 7 - 8 seconds, and is nearly as robust as MacOS.

As a conclusion - i would suggest to spend money on RAM first, and then SSD if you REALLY do perform disk heavy operations.

Hope this helps :)
 
Truly is night and day but it might not be worth it's weight for some, as someone suggestested it might be better to get a 7200 rpm hdd and call it a day if all your doing is surfing and reading emails here and there.

However if your loading lots of things and dealing with large files the ssd pays for itself and then some.

But the cons for ssd are of course it's space, it's easily rectified with an external or a bit more extreme is a hdd in the opti-bay.
 
mrgiapanta said:
awesome, thanx :)
80GB for $600 sounds very expensive to me.
I wonder what's the difference between

Intel 80 GB X25M ($224)
http://www.amazon.com/Intel-Mainstr...1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1271655956&sr=1-1

Intel 80GB X25 MLC 2.5inch ($598.95)
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001F4YIYY?tag=ppl-20
Click to expand...
You get two/four better 80GB drives from that amount of money.

Pick one.
Most around here prefer OWC ones, but both are basically the same, the others just cost a little less.

SSDs make a difference everywhere they're used.
 
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i personally wouldnt touch the C300 in a MBP, this drive will lose 70% of its perfomance when used.

go for a Sandforce 1200 controller SSD

OCZ vertex2
Corsair Force
PAtriot inferno.

Anandtech recommends these for MBP since OSX has no TRIM yet.

My friend has just installed his Force SSD 240GB and mines on its way next week
 
I recently installed a 120GB OWC Mercury Extreme Pro in my 2010 MBP. Performance over the stock 5.2K RPM drive is very noticeable. The computer boots up, launches applications, and handles files much much faster, almost instantly. I don't think I'll ever go back to using an old rotating disk hard drive ever again, at least not as an internal drive. Nope, never.

I also agree with others who have said to go with SSD's using the SandForce controllers. They have effectively eliminated the need for external TRIM management, period. Unlike drives using different controllers, every review I've seen indicates they don't suffer from write degradation over time. This had a major impact on my purchase, err investment.

If you definitely recommend, where can I get a cheap and reliable SSD? (Don't need much space. 128GB is okay with me)
Click to expand...

OWC is offering a 40GB Mercury Extreme Pro SSD for $99. For $20 more, you can get the bundle which includes a 2.5" SATA external enclosure for your old drive and a 5 piece tool kit.
 
corvus32 said:
OWC is offering a 40GB Mercury Extreme Pro SSD for $99. For $20 more, you can get the bundle which includes a 2.5" SATA external enclosure for your old drive and a 5 piece tool kit.
Click to expand...

How are the OWC SSDs, compared to say a vertex2 or x25m i see a lot of people recommending them.
 
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i finally went with the OWC ssd and its super fast .. feels like a new machine and the machine is only 2 months old lol
 
tble said:
How are the OWC SSDs, compared to say a vertex2 or x25m i see a lot of people recommending them.
Click to expand...

Here's a recent review of the 120GB OWC Mercury Extreme Pro, in which it goes head-to-head against the 120GB OCZ Vertex 2 and 160GB Intel X25-M.

Also, LLoyd Chambers has an excellent article on Real World SSD Performance that takes a look at write degradation over time. I highly recommend reading this article. His conclusion:
With an aggressive price, max read performance, and easily superior write performance, the OWC Mercury Extreme is the runaway winner.
Click to expand...
 
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