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Got my 13" 2.66 8g w/ 512G SSD

B

bobm

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 10, 2006
60
9
I have 2008 macbook 2.4G 4G ram with a 500G 7200rpm drive and just moved to a 2010 2.66G 8G ram and 500G SSD.

(Main purpose of the upgrade was to get the extra 4G of ram to run multiple virtual machines.)

I'm very impressed, battery life is a lot better than the 2008 13" and so far the only test (beyond a quick Xbench) was a startup test between the two notebooks.

From pressing the power on till I get the login screen the numbers are:

2010 w/ SSD - 26.9 seconds
2008 w/ 7200 drive - 1:22 (one minute 22 seconds)

Notes: I have a bunch of services in LaunchAgent, etc so your results may vary. Also I did a time machine restore to get the new notebook populated which should make them mostly equal (I don't see anything missing).

I'm going to test the launch time of some of the apps but right now everything seems scary fast.

Last year we upgraded my wife's Air to the SDD version and it was amazing how it made the previously ok notebook into something that she's really happy with. (Also note that the upgrade also included going from PATA -> SATA so that may also effect performance).

I was on the fence about jumping to the i5 15" and have in the past had 15 and 17 inch notebooks (from my windows days) but am very happy with how this notebook runs.
 
wow - Nice machine!

I just ordered one with the same spec's :) I'm using an '09 13" MBP in the meantime :)

I went through the same thing, teetering between 13 and 15" notebooks ... having used both the 13 and 15" MBP's a lot in recent months my choice is the 13" ... if I need a bigger screen I'll use a real big one, a 24" ACD.

13" is so convenient to grab, use, carry, the screen, keyboard, trackpad are excellent for my needs it's the best machine on the market.
 
Battery Life

Thanks for sharing! I'd be interested in hearing some more details on the battery life once you've used your new MBP some more. Being a 13" with an SSD, I'd guess that it could hold a charge for a loooooong time. :)
 
Congrats and enjoy:) Update us on battey life on the new Macbook. Bootup speeds are pretty good but I would have thought they would have been better. I get roughly the same bootup times with the Vertex SSD in my Macbook Pro.
 
Xbench results

Here is a dump of the Xbench. Note that this is run on battery power and I don't know if that would make a difference.

------- snip
Results 191.90
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.6.3 (10D2125)
Physical RAM 8192 MB
Model MacBookPro7,1
Drive Type APPLE SSD TS512B
CPU Test 189.34
GCD Loop 311.38 16.41 Mops/sec
Floating Point Basic 150.83 3.58 Gflop/sec
vecLib FFT 126.02 4.16 Gflop/sec
Floating Point Library 298.61 52.00 Mops/sec
Thread Test 366.98
Computation 484.33 9.81 Mops/sec, 4 threads
Lock Contention 295.40 12.71 Mlocks/sec, 4 threads
Memory Test 197.59
System 233.33
Allocate 413.04 1.52 Malloc/sec
Fill 187.56 9119.79 MB/sec
Copy 195.90 4046.15 MB/sec
Stream 171.35
Copy 164.03 3387.97 MB/sec
Scale 160.00 3305.45 MB/sec
Add 182.16 3880.40 MB/sec
Triad 181.57 3884.14 MB/sec
Quartz Graphics Test 167.02
Line 147.63 9.83 Klines/sec [50% alpha]
Rectangle 182.35 54.44 Krects/sec [50% alpha]
Circle 155.10 12.64 Kcircles/sec [50% alpha]
Bezier 178.73 4.51 Kbeziers/sec [50% alpha]
Text 177.40 11.10 Kchars/sec
OpenGL Graphics Test 174.27
Spinning Squares 174.27 221.08 frames/sec
User Interface Test 142.10
Elements 142.10 652.18 refresh/sec
Disk Test 215.21
Sequential 141.69
Uncached Write 281.66 172.94 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 282.39 159.78 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 54.49 15.95 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 359.09 180.48 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 447.27
Uncached Write 257.26 27.23 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 376.00 120.37 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 1224.70 8.68 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 632.91 117.44 MB/sec [256K blocks]

------ snip

As far as battery life I don't have any firm numbers and don't have any battery test apps. But using Parallels and other apps it's very good compared to my 2008 macbook.

So far no heat issues and I worked for 6 hours last night doing browsing and other stuff and finished with 2:20 left (according to the battery meter).

BTW: The 500G only has 80G free when these tests were conducted and I don't know if that makes a difference. It might be nice to try it with a clean install but I just don't have time for that right now.
 
Very, very nice! Great little rig there.

I'll also likely order a 13", as well as a new 17" i5 or i7 pending battery results. I, too, find the 13" perfect to drag just about anywhere. Solid little beasts.

Although I must say for the benefit of others here, I'll make a comment on my experience with the the 17inch first gen unibody in comparison. Honestly, the 17" is not as unworkable vs. the 15s and 13s as they used to be. They feel smaller and more portable than any computer I've EVER had of this size. I've also taken it out a bit to cafes, and one time on a back and forth flight. Not many of the utterly weird looks like you'd get with the older 17" Macs, a VAIO, or a beastly Dell. The 17 unibody feels smaller, and even "looks smaller" than it used to. A testament to the new unibody construction!

Nonetheless, since the 13 has a lower resolution, I've found it's also good when you need to FOCUS on simple tasks that don't require visualization enormous data sets. For certain tasks, the 13 is definitely an amazing tool for the job. Even when you're just surfing the internet, sometimes excess screen space can get in the way and drive you to distraction. Single minded focus = good when you want to "get in the zone".

Anyway, thanks for posting your results! I hope you do update with battery info!

BTW, with a 512gb almost filled, and 8gb of ram, may I ask what sort of tasks you find yourself slaying with the 13? Obviously you're doing quite a bit more with this little guy than most are!
 
Model #

joaodrp said:
"Model MacBookPro7,1"

Should not this be something like MacBookPro6,X"?
Click to expand...

From the System Profiler

Hardware Overview:

Model Name: MacBook Pro
Model Identifier: MacBookPro7,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.66 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 3 MB
Memory: 8 GB
Bus Speed: 1.07 GHz
Boot ROM Version: MBP71.0039.B05
SMC Version (system): 1.62f5
Serial Number (system): --------------
Hardware UUID: F1B2E579-EA57-5A16-9E2B-AE91AF4C799A
Sudden Motion Sensor:
State: Enabled
 
macinside said:
Very, very nice! Great little rig there.

BTW, with a 512gb almost filled, and 8gb of ram, may I ask what sort of tasks you find yourself slaying with the 13? Obviously you're doing quite a bit more with this little guy than most are!
Click to expand...

Thanks, it's a nice latop so far.

I use my macbook when I'm on the road (every 3rd week) and am running Parallels with XP and Win7 (using 1.5 -> 2G of ram) and just started running Solaris 10 (under VirtualBox since Parallels just didn't work well enough). When I get to my remote office I hook up to a cheap (Costco) 24" monitor and work off of that. When I'm in the hotel or on the airplane I work on the laptop. I don't think that I would be able to open the 15" on about 1/2 of the flights I take and the main reason for the upgrade was to get the 8G of ram. My previous macbook (2008 alum) had 4G with a 2.4G processor and a 7200rpm drive and was fine with one virtual machine using about 1G ram but windows started doing wierd stuff when it was running out of memory so I needed to expand.

I must say that so far the new macbook seems to run cooler but I'll know more next week when I really start pushing it.

For what it's worth, Parallels brings up XP (w/1.5G ram) to the login screen in 14 seconds, again your times may be different based on drivers, etc.
 
im rockin this beast too,

dropped a 160gb g2 intel and 256gb kingston into it....

its tearing through data like a beast :D

ill get some screenshots and benchies soon.
 
MacModMachine said:
im rockin this beast too,

dropped a 160gb g2 intel and 256gb kingston into it....

its tearing through data like a beast :D

ill get some screenshots and benchies soon.
Click to expand...

If possible, please include a bat life comparison to stock.

thanks
JohnG
 
some screens
 

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Sure was...

tdream said:
Hope it was worth the $3299 :eek:
Click to expand...

You forgot the Apple Care and accessories :D. It's pricey but the worse was a Sony 17" P4 2.x Ghz with something like 1G ram. I hated that machine and it cost me over 4k.

This was an easy spend and I just don't see SSD prices dropping in the near future. It would be nice to get 512 for something less than the rest of the notebook but I just stick it in the Early Adopter Tax category.
 
Battery life

Followup on how the battery is holding out.

I've been running Parallels w/ XP, doing Excel, Outlook, and remotely connected to work (ssh mostly), did a virus scan on the XP system (which was fast, very fast) and on the mac side been browsing with Firefox and using preview to read some pdf's and sync'd my phone with iTunes.

That was 5+ hours ago and I have 3:53 left ( note that the time jumps all over the place but right now I've shutdown Parallels and am only running Firefox and Activity monitor.

I don't think I'll get 10 hours and don't think I'll see 7 or 8 with Parallels running (XP is a drain).

But I'm very happy with the performance and battery life so far.

I'm on the fence about wiping the drive and doing a clean install, this is my 3rd macbook (original blackbook) and I have a lot of stuff carried over. Has anyone else bothered doing that?
 
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