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iMac EFI Update 1.6 Adds 6 Gb/s SATA Capabilities

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Other World Computing reports that the iMac EFI Update 1.6 released yesterday for Apple's new iMacs brings an unadvertised improvement in SATA performance for the internal hard drive bays.
While iMac EFI Update 1.6 is described as including "fixes that improve performance and stability for Thunderbolt," it would also seem that an unadvertised benefit is that it also unlocks the full 6Gb/s, SATA 3.0 capabilities of two of the internal drive bays.

Unfortunately, the optical bay remains at 3Gb/s.
Click to expand...
The report notes that Apple also released an EFI update for the current MacBook Pros yesterday, but it is unclear whether that update attempts to address SATA performance issues found in the 17-inch models.

Article Link: iMac EFI Update 1.6 Adds 6 Gb/s SATA Capabilities
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2011/05/05/imac-efi-update-1-6-adds-6-gb-s-sata-capabilities/
Nice. But do the drives that come with it support it? Or are they SATAII drives?
 
That's great, but it defeats a lot of purpose if the Optical drive isn't 6Gb. Maybe you can put an SSD in place of the regular drive, and a regular drive in place of the optical. NM it looks like 2 of the drive bays are 6Gb so that's probably good enough. I don't think the 21" has 2 drive bays though does it? Yes it does! Wow, both models. I may have to upgrade.
 
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According to iFixit teardown, it does!! This generation 21" iMacs have two bays. You can go tote teardown and see for yourself (iFixit did a 21" iMac teardown)
 
4God said:
Nice. But do the drives that come with it support it? Or are they SATAII drives?
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Well one way to check this out if you have the correct hardware is to

Goto Apple Icon in top right corner and click "About this mac" then at the bottom of the about window click on "more info". Next scroll through "Hardware" category down to "Serial-ATA" and check "Link Speed" and Negotiated Link Speed"

This will tell you if the drives are performing at 6 Gigabit Speeds or 3 Gigabit, feel free to post your results as I would like to know as well.....
 
4God said:
Nice. But do the drives that come with it support it? Or are they SATAII drives?
Click to expand...

As long as they're they're HDD, it doesn't matter. No HDD can even come near hittting the limits of SATA II, much less SATA III. And any SSD one could buy now will probably (hopefully) be SATA III. Unless they bought the crappy overpriced Apple SSD, then who knows.

What surprises me is that it wasn't already SATA III. I didn't bother checking in the first place because I assumed that by this point EVERY recently updated Mac Apple sold had SATA III. Because damn it, there's absolutely no reason not to.

strelok1911 said:
What the hell? No optical drive can reach 3GB/s
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Yeah, made me laugh too. :p
 
Stridder44 said:
As long as they're they're HDD, it doesn't matter. No HDD can even come near hittting the limits of SATA II, much less SATA III. And any SSD one could buy now will probably (hopefully) be SATA III. Unless they bought the crappy overpriced Apple SSD, then who knows.

What surprises me is that it wasn't already SATA III. I didn't bother checking in the first place because I assumed that by this point EVERY recently updated Mac Apple sold had SATA III. Because damn it, there's absolutely no reason not to.



Yeah, made me laugh too. :p
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It WAS, otherwise the EFi update would be useless...and as you've said it yourself, the ONLY reason for having SATAIII is SSD...therefore, all the whining about SATAII is close to irrelevant if no SSDs are used internally by the iMac.
 
Fullspeed Fan?

This is great news, but Barefeats reports that installing any third party drive in the 2011 iMac will make its fans run at full speed. Those of you that have installed third party drives, are you seeing this?
 
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e.m. said:
This is great news, but Barefeats reports that installing any third party drive in the 2011 iMac will make its fans run at full speed. Those of you that have installed third party drives, are you seeing this?
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If you install a drive that cannot make use of the temperature sensor that the drive you took out did, then yes, the fan will run at full speed. I took out my optical drive and upgraded my iMac to SSD + HDD and now my optical drive fan runs at max speed - UNLESS I tell it otherwise with SMC Fan Control, which is a free utility you can download :p so... I have no problems.
 
BRLawyer said:
This is unsupported, therefore irrelevant for the purposes of this update...what really matters is that internal SSDs would benefit from it...EXCELLENT news that should silence the whining of some people around here.

GO APPLE!
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Umm, I was answering someone who wondered by speed would matter for the optical drive port. Calm down dude.
 
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Stridder44 said:
As long as they're they're HDD, it doesn't matter. No HDD can even come near hittting the limits of SATA II, much less SATA III.
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You are correct only if we are talking about sustained IO speeds. But some of what you do is small writes to the disk these will go into the RAM cache on the drive and will go at SATA III speeds. un-cached reads will go much slower but cached reads will go at SATA III speeds.

Effective speed of the disk is....
(native speed) X (fraction of data that is not cached) + (6 Gb/s) X (fraction that is cached).

Now we can argue what the cache hit ratio is but not the above formula. Most writes are cached, some reads are. I don't know the exact fraction.
 
This is page 2?

But maybe the iPhone is getting a new ambient light sensor makes the front page? I personally think this is great news! My 2, OWC 6GB/s SSDs are gonna scream in Raid 0...too bad I can't make that 3 SSDs!
 
WhoDaKat said:
But maybe the iPhone is getting a new ambient light sensor makes the front page? I personally think this is great news! My 2, OWC 6GB/s SSDs are gonna scream in Raid 0...too bad I can't make that 3 SSDs!
Click to expand...

Which I had the money to invest in those SSD's :p

My X-25 will have to do for at least another year!
 
KiraDouji said:
If you install a drive that cannot make use of the temperature sensor that the drive you took out did, then yes, the fan will run at full speed. I took out my optical drive and upgraded my iMac to SSD + HDD and now my optical drive fan runs at max speed - UNLESS I tell it otherwise with SMC Fan Control, which is a free utility you can download :p so... I have no problems.
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I see. Thanks. Is the temperature sensor built in to the sata cable?
 
Cole JM said:
No. I believe not.
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Then I wonder how these new iMacs' drives are reporting their temperature to the system. The older models have a dedicated temp sensor cable.

Does anyone know which (if any) third party ssds can correctly report their temps to the system?
 
The only thing unfortunate about the optical bay not being 6GB/s is the lack of understanding from the original source.

The Z68 chipset has provisions for 6 SATA ports, 2x 6GB/s, 4x 3GB/s. Its the reason why motherboard manufacturers include marvell and other SATA chips to offer more than the 2x 6GB/s ports you would get relying solely on the Intel chipset.
 
e.m. said:
Then I wonder how these new iMacs' drives are reporting their temperature to the system. The older models have a dedicated temp sensor cable.

Does anyone know which (if any) third party ssds can correctly report their temps to the system?
Click to expand...

SATA drives can report temperatures via S.M.A.R.T. I have a Vertex 3 that i've briefly used under linux and it can report temperatures fine on its own without the need for any external temperature sensors. You'd be hard pressed to find a drive that cant.
 
e.m. said:
Then I wonder how these new iMacs' drives are reporting their temperature to the system. The older models have a dedicated temp sensor cable.

Does anyone know which (if any) third party ssds can correctly report their temps to the system?
Click to expand...

My understanding is that it's done with internal temperature sensors in the hard drive itself, combined with Apple Firmware on the hard drive and a proprietary cable. Each brand of hard drive used has a different proprietary cable and Apple Firmware.
 
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