How fast is your SSD, and when did you buy your MacBook Air?

[spacepower7]

At what point does all of this comparison become irrelevant and silly?

I have the slower drive but it is 5 times faster than the hard drive in my Blackbook.

I think having 4GB of ram VS 2GB is going to have a much bigger impact on system performance. I guess someone could argue that having less ram actually makes the faster drive more of a necessity.

These test are peak speeds, not real life.

Most of your apps will never max the speed of the SSD and since the MacBook Airs only have USB 2, it won't be a concern when transferring data to another drive.

Someone please tell me a real app (not a speed benchmark app) that will max the disk but not the Core2Duo CPU?

The CPU cache, CPU speed and amount of ram will have a much more significant impact on performance than the difference between thses two SSDs.

 

[Psilocybin]

At what point does all of this comparison become irrelevant and silly?

I have the slower drive but it is 5 times faster than the hard drive in my Blackbook.

I think having 4GB of ram VS 2GB is going to have a much bigger impact on system performance. I guess someone could argue that having less ram actually makes the faster drive more of a necessity.

These test are peak speeds, not real life.

Most of your apps will never max the speed of the SSD and since the MacBook Airs only have USB 2, it won't be a concern when transferring data to another drive.

Someone please tell me a real app (not a speed benchmark app) that will max the disk but not the Core2Duo CPU?

The CPU cache, CPU speed and amount of ram will have a much more significant impact on performance than the difference between thses two SSDs.

what he said ^^

 

[milescortez]

At what point does all of this comparison become irrelevant and silly?

I have the slower drive but it is 5 times faster than the hard drive in my Blackbook.

I think having 4GB of ram VS 2GB is going to have a much bigger impact on system performance. I guess someone could argue that having less ram actually makes the faster drive more of a necessity.

These test are peak speeds, not real life.

Most of your apps will never max the speed of the SSD and since the MacBook Airs only have USB 2, it won't be a concern when transferring data to another drive.

Someone please tell me a real app (not a speed benchmark app) that will max the disk but not the Core2Duo CPU?

The CPU cache, CPU speed and amount of ram will have a much more significant impact on performance than the difference between thses two SSDs.

Bingo---that's why i decided to go with a new MBP or iMac. I might upgrade my MB unibody to an SSD and a separate HD in the optical drive but at the end of the day I am bottlenecking doing HB conversions at the CPU level...none of this really matters except for boot times and maybe very fractionally on app start times.

 

[spacepower7]

Just to bring more realism to the discussion:

In regards to the settings that everyone is using in the AJA benchmark app:

Uncompressed 10 bit 1080 @ 29.97fps = 13GB per minute!!!!

Uncompressed 10 bit 1080 @ 23.98fps = 10.42GB per minute!!!

Therefore the 128GB SSD could not even edit 10 minutes of video with the drive completely empty.

It's nice to see the high speeds in the benchmark app but it does not represent any real world situation.

Honestly, I'm trying to think of an app that would be an exception but
99% of people will not notice any difference.

 

[dmelgar]

Of course it makes a HUGE difference how fast the drive is. Its silly to even ask.

Its not just how long it takes to move a giant file around. Thats the easiest way to come up with a benchmark.

A faster drive is faster at everything, especially thrashing around picking up little files spread all over the disk. That's hard to reliably test but very easy to observe.

The Macbook Air is very very fast, much faster than a Macbook Pro at launching practically any program, running most compiles, switching userids, performing anything with lots of disc I/O such as checking for updates etc. In my real world speed comparisons between my 2009 13" Macbook Pro and my 2010 11" Macbook Air, there are several cases where the Macbook Air was 10 TIMES faster than the Macbook Pro. Thats not a small difference. And certainly not because its 1.6ghz processor is faster than the MBP 2.26ghz processor.

In real world, the speed makes an enormous difference. If newer machines are 25% faster, that is very interesting and worth trying to investigate.

 

[Hellhammer]

Of course it makes a HUGE difference how fast the drive is. Its silly to even ask.

Its not just how long it takes to move a giant file around. Thats the easiest way to come up with a benchmark.

A faster drive is faster at everything, especially thrashing around picking up little files spread all over the disk. That's hard to reliably test but very easy to observe.

The Macbook Air is very very fast, much faster than a Macbook Pro at launching practically any program, running most compiles, switching userids, performing anything with lots of disc I/O such as checking for updates etc. In my real world speed comparisons between my 2009 13" Macbook Pro and my 2010 11" Macbook Air, there are several cases where the Macbook Air was 10 TIMES faster than the Macbook Pro. Thats not a small difference. And certainly not because its 1.6ghz processor is faster than the MBP 2.26ghz processor.

In real world, the speed makes an enormous difference. If newer machines are 25% faster, that is very interesting and worth trying to investigate.

Random speeds are more important in everyday usage and nobody has tested them so far...

 

[spacepower7]

Random speeds are more important in everyday usage and nobody has tested them so far...

Exactly ^^^^^

@dmelgar

I stated that I am seeing a 5x increase between my machines SSD vs HDD.

The SSD's are great, and for most users it won't matter which one they get.

The benchmarks only show peak performance (sustained not random, read and write), which is not a real world situation. How often does an app write a single 4 GB file and how many MacBook Air users will be in this situation?

I'm all for the idea of improved specs but my point is:

People are talking about spending hours driving, or on the phone with Apple, to return their current MacBook Air, in hopes of receiving a faster one. Many people will never notice the difference in their daily activities. Even the slower SSD is such an improvement that these people would be content if they had not read this thread.

 

[adjuster]

I tried the AJA System Test on two computers:

27in i7 iMac, version 2009 1TB ST31000528ASQ 3.5 in. 7200 rpm drive:
write 60.6 MB/s
read 70.3 MB/s

ancient (4-yr old) MacBook Pro 2.4 with both a OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 120gb SSD and a 460gb 2.5in WDC 5400rpm 8mb 3 Gb/s cache drive.

120gb SSD:
Write 125.6 MB/s
Read: 135.1 MB/s

460gb hard drive:
write 29.4 MB/s
Read: 49.8 MB/s

I feel like I have a new MBPro with the SSD.

Would love to get a MB Air because of the weight. However, I need 400gb minimum storage.

 

[iExpensive]

Max speed does not matter. What does matter is that you are getting what you pay for. There should be no faster "revision".

 

[KPOM]

Max speed does not matter. What does matter is that you are getting what you pay for. There should be no faster "revision".

The bottom line is that we all did get what we paid for (even those of us with the "slower" drive). If Apple gets a good deal on some slightly faster Samsung drives and adds them into the mix, that's fine with me. It isn't like they shipped out a bunch of review units with faster drives and quietly snuck a slower drive into the production units.

 

[jamesryanbell]

Max speed does not matter. What does matter is that you are getting what you pay for. There should be no faster "revision".

I agree. I guess the tech-spec-jockey inside me doesn't like the fact that they discretely offered better, faster drives that quickly without telling anyone.

 

[Jest3r]

128GB 13.3" MBA with 2GB of ram purchased 2/18/11:

Write: 210.5 MB/s
Read:260.1 MB/s

 

[calvol]

128GB 13.1" MBA with 2GB of ram purchased 2/18/11:

Jest3r: Did you purchase in a store or order online? Are you U.S. or international? Seems like most of the faster drives are 128GB purchased internationally.

Thanks, Tim

 

[milescortez]

Macbook 2008 INtel x-25

It not an MBA but I thought I'd post anyway.

2008 2.4Ghz Macbook Unibody, 6 GB RAM with an Intel x25-M

103 Write
254 Read

I think this is the Gen 2 Intel SSD. I'm taking it back for a OCW which should give about 250 and 260. Either way it's way faster than the stock Hitachi 5400 250GB which was running about 53 and 53.

 

[Jest3r]

128GB 13.1" MBA with 2GB of ram purchased 2/18/11:

Jest3r: Did you purchase in a store or order online? Are you U.S. or international? Seems like most of the faster drives are 128GB purchased internationally.

Thanks, Tim

Purchased at my local Apple store here in Birmingham, AL..

 

[jamesryanbell]

Still no 11.6" with the faster drive?

 

[Flake]

my read speed was about 260mb/s but my write speed was only 139
i have a 13" 128gb 1.86GHz

 

[IngerMan]

Just got my 13 inch today from PowerMax. 1.86 4g 128

Test 181 write 210 read ts . I ran the test half a dozen times and was as low as 150's on the write. But seem to boost a little when I dimmed the screen, go figure.... It is much faster then my 2010 macbook that I traded in for.

 

[calvol]

my read speed was about 260mb/s but my write speed was only 139
i have a 13" 128gb 1.86GHz

Flake, just wonder where you bought your Air, and when? Thx, Tim

 

[CHSeifert]

So is it safe to Say you have a better chance of getting the fast Samsung SSD, if you get the 128gb version as compared to the 256gb version of the MBA - or is this just yet another rubbish rumour


----
Vh/Regards
Claus [iPhone

 

[Flake]

my read speed was about 260mb/s but my write speed was only 139
i have a 13" 128gb 1.86GHz

Flake, just wonder where you bought your Air, and when? Thx, Tim

got it from MacMall just a week ago. SSD revision AXM09A1Q

 

[brandone]

Weird, mine is much different. Am i doing something wrong?

 

[J&JPolangin]

Weird, mine is much different. Am i doing something wrong?

...2 OZCs running in RAID 0... yep its wrong (to post in this thread)

 

[brandone]

...2 OZCs running in RAID 0... yep its wrong (to post in this thread)

You got me!

 

[Ojitos84]

revision: CJAA0201, 13" Ultimate, got it yesterday (but it was a refurb)

Read:208.1
Write:190.1