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Early 2015 MBA 11" SSD question

P

pulllsar

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 2, 2015
1
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I understand that the base 11 inch model uses a SanDisk SSD while the 13 inch model uses a Samsung SSD which boosts the performance of the 13's SSD. My question is if you upgrade the 11" to the 256GB SDD, is it still the SanDisk or is the 256GB always a Samsung? Does anyone have the 11" upgraded and can confirm if the SSD is SanDisk or Samsung?

IOPS are important to me :)

Edit: SDD -- SSD
 
pulllsar said:
I understand that the base 11 inch model uses a SanDisk SSD while the 13 inch model uses a Samsung SSD which boosts the performance of the 13's SSD. My question is if you upgrade the 11" to the 256GB SDD, is it still the SanDisk or is the 256GB always a Samsung? Does anyone have the 11" upgraded and can confirm if the SSD is SanDisk or Samsung?

IOPS are important to me :)

Edit: SDD -- SSD
Click to expand...

Apple often dual-sources its SSDs. I'd be surprised if the current 11" model only uses one manufacturer for its drives so I don't know if you're going to get a useful answer to your question.

Do you know the IOPSs on either drive though?

The 13" SSD seems to be faster for throughput but I haven't seen any IOPS numbers. Maybe the 11" would already be faster for your purposes.
 
prisstratton said:
You will not get a performance increase by changing the SSD. It is the interface itself that is performing faster (PCIe 2.0 x 4 versus PCIe 2.0 x 2).
...
Click to expand...

Interesting.

So throughput was/is being limited by bus width.

IOPS is almost certainly limited by other factors.

So the 11" MBA might very well be able to do a similar number of IOPS vs. the 13" MBA.
 
prisstratton said:
You will not get a performance increase by changing the SSD. It is the interface itself that is performing faster (PCIe 2.0 x 4 versus PCIe 2.0 x 2).

Please see this thread:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/2015-mba-11-13-ssds-interchangeable.1893199/#post-21472647
Click to expand...
I believe you are mistaken. Your documentation carefully states it is the SSD, which uses either PCIe 2.0x2 or PCIe 2.0x4 interface. It is like the previous 15" MBP, where the SSD's utilized 2 lanes except the 1TB ssd, which utilized 4 lanes.

In short, the Hasswell/Broadwell processor with the pci-controller are the same, but it is up to SSD how many lanes to use. Each lane can transfer 0.5TB/s. The SSD's are designed to use no more lanes, than they can fill. Never drives have faster nand and controller, while the old 1TB had more nand blocks in parallel and, both results in maximum transfer speeds above 1GB/s and therefore take advantage of 4lanes.
 
Interesting. So there is a difference between the 11" and 13" versions. Anyone know if this is also correct for mid 2013 MacBook Airs?
 
SSD-GUY said:
Interesting. So there is a difference between the 11" and 13" versions. Anyone know if this is also correct for mid 2013 MacBook Airs?
Click to expand...
No, this was an upgrade made to the 2015 13" MBA that was not carried over to the 11". There are certainly discrepancies between the different size models (i.e. battery life) but this particular instance only is present in the 2015 version.
 
DavidLynch said:
No, this was an upgrade made to the 2015 13" MBA that was not carried over to the 11". There are certainly discrepancies between the different size models (i.e. battery life) but this particular instance only is present in the 2015 version.
Click to expand...

The difference in battery life is a simple question of battery size. Both laptops use basically the same amount of power, so the 13" will get more battery life because it is bigger and has a bigger battery.
 
DavidLynch said:
No, this was an upgrade made to the 2015 13" MBA that was not carried over to the 11". There are certainly discrepancies between the different size models (i.e. battery life) but this particular instance only is present in the 2015 version.
Click to expand...

Hmm, I see. This could point towards the MBA 11 being discontinued quite soon then, and the 13 MBA being offered as an entry level option.
 
SSD-GUY said:
Hmm, I see. This could point towards the MBA 11 being discontinued quite soon then, and the 13 MBA being offered as an entry level option.
Click to expand...

It's only a small difference and it might have come down to a difference in form factor. I believe some aftermarket drives have fit in the 13" model and not in the 11" model, in the past.
 
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