Is the new SSD any faster?

[Hansii]

The old MBA SSD was pretty slow, does anyone know the model number of the new one? Is it any faster? The newest Intel SSD reads at 250MB/s and writes at almost 100MB/s, that's alot faster than the old MBA SSD.

 

[aleksandra.]

As far as I know, until Intel released its SSDs, Samsung's 64GB was the best one available? Or at least so it seemed in all the tests. Although PATA version in Air might have been slower than SATA, it still didn't make it slow in any way.

And I don't think the 128GB SSD offered by Apple now could be Intel's.

 

[ducatidoc]

what i want to know is since the HDD switched from pATA to sATA is it safe to assume that the SSD will as well?

i would think/hope this would account for a huge speed bump.

 

[aleni]

a switch from PATA to SATA alone is all a warm welcome!

 

[dehory]

From Slashgear, it looks like they're using the STEC MACH8 SSDs. Anyone have more info about these drives?

 

[HiFiGuy528]

To my understanding, MLC is the BEST/FASTEST. Thanks for finding the links.

OCZ is made by Samsung, but cost less.

 

[HiFiGuy528]

To my understanding, MLC is the BEST/FASTEST. Thanks for finding the links.

OCZ is made by Samsung, but cost less.

The new MBA's 128GB SSD is NOT the same as the 1st gen PATA, right?

 

[dehory]

I just looked up specs for the new, highly-regarded Intel X-18M/25M mentioned by the OP. The STEC MLC drive doesn't compare favorably:

Speed (read, write)

STEC: 90MB/s, 60MB/s
Intel: 250MB/s, 70MB/s

Power consumption (active, idle)

STEC: 1W, 500mW
Intel: 150mW, 0.06W

It might be interesting to take a look at the Samsung drives' specs too.

(NB: The power consumption figures are iffy because STEC doesn't specify its benchmarks for active and idle.)

EDIT: Perhaps someone more knowledgeable than me than say whether Intel's "bandwidth" spec is the same as a figure for maximum read rate. It seems wildly higher than the figures given by both STEC and Samsung.

 

[aleni]

The new MBA's 128GB SSD is NOT the same as the 1st gen PATA, right?

not the same, which is good.

 

[HiFiGuy528]

not the same, which is good.

That means the 1st gen MBA is stuck with max. 64gb SSD?

 

[aleni]

That means the 1st gen MBA is stuck with max. 64gb SSD?

sorry, what i meant was the original mba's hard disk version is the one that uses PATA instead of SATA.