Keep Apple SSD or replace with OWC 6G in 2011 MBP??

[davidw]

I have a 2011 15" MBP (2.3 GHz i7) with an Apple installed 256 GB SSD. My question is: is it worth it in terms of aggravation and risk to upgrade to a 6G OWC SSD? I already have an older model SSD that I can sell (it's a 240 GB OWC 3G SSD in the packaging) so the price differential is negligible.

I have the bleeding edge MacBook Pro (it geek benches around 11000) and it's only "slowed" by the speed of a mediocre SSD. Would my performance significantly increase? Is it true that 2011 MacBook Pros don't officially support SATA3 devices? Thanks.

 

[Orlandoech]

I have the same spec MBP you do but with the Vertex 3 Max IOPS which is on par with the OWC 6GB in terms of speed and my Geekbench is 11609, so I dont think it will make much of a diff.

But if its near free due to selling something.... then why not? Faster is always better.

 

[Philflow]

The Apple SSD may be a bottleneck for your Geekbench result, I doubt it's a bottle neck in your every day usage.

This review shows real world differences between Kingston V+ 100 (very similar to Apples SSD) and Vertex 3 (very similar to OWC). Do you think the difference is worth it?

 

[Orlandoech]

The Apple SSD may be a bottleneck for your Geekbench result, I doubt it's a bottle neck in your every day usage.

This review shows real world differences between Kingston V+ 100 (very similar to Apples SSD) and Vertex 3 (very similar to OWC). Do you think the difference is worth it?

Some of these tests are very confusing as they dont mention the hardware it was tested on. Photoshop CS5 with 3 NIK SOFTWARE plugins on my MBP loads in less than 4 seconds and MS WORD loads in less than 1 second. 17 seconds for PS is a load of ****.

 

[daneoni]

SSDs have no bearings on Geekbench results. Personally i would stick with the Apple drive. It's covered by warranty and has official TRIM support. That and you won't notice the speed difference between it and a SATA3 drive 9 times out of 10.

 

[awer25]

I would also stick to the Apple drive since you already have it. It won't make that big of a difference over the OWC.

 

[Philflow]

Some of these tests are very confusing as they dont mention the hardware it was tested on. Photoshop CS5 with 3 NIK SOFTWARE plugins on my MBP loads in less than 4 seconds and MS WORD loads in less than 1 second. 17 seconds for PS is a load of ****.

It says in the review "Toshiba C660 Sandy Bridge Notebook with Core i5 CPU " (identical hardware to Macbook Pro 13" base) and that the Photoshop launch test includes a large tiff image too

 

[Orlandoech]

It says in the review "Toshiba C660 Sandy Bridge Notebook with Core i5 CPU " (identical hardware to Macbook Pro 13" base) and that the Photoshop launch test includes a large tiff image too

Identical hardware to a Mac BUT also on Windows... not a valid statement or argument by you imo. Still not accurate test by any means unless your on the identical hardware and software, model, make, etc.

 

[bozz2006]

I don't think you'd notice much difference in speed. The random read and write performance are going to be on par. The place you would notice a difference is if you do many very large writes to the SSD. If you don't do them, or if you don't know if you do them or not. Stick with the Apple. FWIW, I don't think it would be worth it to upgrade even if you did do many large writes.

Say you went from driving 20 mph (HDD) to driving 120 mph (Apple SSD). That's a big change. However, I don't think you'd perceive much of a difference in going from 120 mph (Apple SSD) to 125 mph (OWC). But it's up to you.

 

[Philflow]

Identical hardware to a Mac BUT also on Windows... not a valid statement or argument by you imo. Still not accurate test by any means unless your on the identical hardware and software, model, make, etc.

Yes the test is in Windows but the results on OS X were very similar...