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Local Computer Store Nerd made a comment about my new MBPi5 help me understand

J

John Grieco

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 27, 2010
6
0
Olympia, Wa
Me: "Hey you don't have any SSD's lying around the shop do you? I was thinking about putting one in my macbook pro."

Him: "Why would you want to do that?.....What kind of car do you drive?"

Me: "That old honda out front, why?"

Him: "Would you put a Roles Royce engine in that POS honda of yours...No"

He then went on to try and tell me that an SSD would be a waste of money because it would never be able to be used to its full potential due to being limited by the bus speed of my computer. I really hope that that isn't the truth. I just spend $2500 on a custom MBP i5 2.4/ 8gb ram/ with the high res option. I only got the 500gb 7200rpm and was going to upgrade to an ssd when they came down in price.

Anything to prove this guy wrong would be great news! Thanks in advance.

PS I don't even know how much "bus" I have or how that would matter when upgrading to an SSD. Educate me please!
 
He's wrong. Most SSDs are slower than SATA 3Gb/s and the read&write speeds are not the main point, it's the latency. Unless you were looking at external SSD, he doesn't know what he's talking about. SATA 3Gb/s is more than enough for nice SSD
 
What Hellhammer said, the guys just talking out of his ass. Also did he honestly call your car a POS? Because tbh I'd make a complaint and never set foot in there again...
 
the guys here are correct,

you would of course see a huge speed increase using an SSD internally,
the nerd was wrong,

for what its worth, until OS X gets trim support I wouldnt bother with an SSD,

Cheers,
John
 
Yeah he definitely called my car a POS....Under About this mac i have a thing that says Link Speed: 3 gb, is that the bus speed he was referring to? Thanks for the quick response, I feel a lot better about my purchase! And I thought that he might not know much about Mac's and was just talking out his ass. He was convinced that his $1000 Asus would smoke my MBP.
 
johnalan said:
for what its worth, until OS X gets trim support I wouldnt bother with an SSD
Click to expand...

You don't need TRIM if you get SSD with SandForce as it takes care of wear leveling and block management. OWC Mercury and OCZ Vertex 2 use SandForce and there are plenty of others as well. They cost little more but they are the fastest on market

Under About this mac i have a thing that says Link Speed: 3 gb, is that the bus speed he was referring to?
Click to expand...

Likely yes as that's the interface you would use with the SSD. Anyway, all laptops (might be couple rule breakers though) have 3Gb/s SATA so he really was stupid.
 
I installed a SSD in my i7 MBP and it's smoking fast.

Btw, I'm sure if you put a Roles Royce engine into a Honda, it would be also super fast :)
 
John Grieco said:
Yeah he definitely called my car a POS....Under About this mac i have a thing that says Link Speed: 3 gb, is that the bus speed he was referring to? Thanks for the quick response, I feel a lot better about my purchase! And I thought that he might not know much about Mac's and was just talking out his ass. He was convinced that his $1000 Asus would smoke my MBP.
Click to expand...

Don't bother. It's like comparing a Porsche Carrera to a Mustang GT. Sure the GT will probably go faster, but we all know which one we'd rather be in.
 
Hellhammer said:
Likely yes as that's the interface you would use with the SSD. Anyway, all laptops (might be couple rule breakers though) have 3Gb/s SATA so he really was stupid.
Click to expand...

I think he was referring to the 1.5Gbps MBPs that came out, but I'm pretty sure Apple fixed that with a firmware/software update like within a week?

I do love it when completely oblivious PC nerds try and make comments on Macs, it's sad that they use their arrogance obtained by knowing lots about PCs in a field they know nothing about, they'll always have misinformation.
 
Schtumple said:
I think he was referring to the 1.5Gbps MBPs that came out, but I'm pretty sure Apple fixed that with a firmware/software update like within a week?
Click to expand...

Possibly but SSD would anyway be A LOT faster than the HD due latency. As I said the read&write speeds aren't that important, random reads matter the most (opening apps etc).

The link speed was 3Gb/s all the time but negotiated speed was 1.5Gb/s I think. Some people got it fixed by swapping the HD for faster HD or SSD and the negotiated speed jumped to 3Gb/s.

E.g. my HD has link and negotiated speed of 3Gb/s but my SuperDrive has link speed of 3Gb/s and negotiated speed of 1.5Gb/s because it's slower than 1.5Gb/s.

Anyway, he was wrong ;)
 
vant said:
Don't bother. It's like comparing a Porsche Carrera to a Mustang GT. Sure the GT will probably go faster, but we all know which one we'd rather be in.
Click to expand...
It's M3 vs Mustang, not Porsche. Any 911 would absolutely dust a Mustang GT around a track.

Anyway, the dude from the shop really does not know what he is talking about. Putting an SSD in anything besides a netbook will yield good results.
 
To settle this:

Porsche 911 Carrera 0-60 4.7 sec 1/4 mi 12.9 sec
Ford Mustang GT 0-60 4.3 sec 1/4 mi 12.7 sec
BMW M3 0-60 4.3 sec 1/4 mi 12.7 sec

The times vary by article, but these seem to be a good representation.
 
rmbrown09 said:
What Apple store is this and what was his name. I want his #
Click to expand...

I dont think this was an apple store. The OP refers to it as the local computer store, so I am assuming its just one of those computer repair shops/AASPs?
 
kny3twalker said:
To settle this:

Porsche 911 Carrera 0-60 4.7 sec 1/4 mi 12.9 sec
Ford Mustang GT 0-60 4.3 sec 1/4 mi 12.7 sec
BMW M3 0-60 4.3 sec 1/4 mi 12.7 sec

The times vary by article, but these seem to be a good representation.
Click to expand...

Yes, if its a drag race (straight line).... Mustangs are legendary for crappy suspensions in spite of theit HUGE engines.... and hence get smoked on the track.

Top Gear (a BBC TV show), tested the Mustang Shelby GT500.... that thing got narrowly beaten by a Subaru WRX (300-some horse power V6).... not even in the same league as the 911 or M3!!

Even with those Massive engines, the bad suspension makes most muscle cars DOGS as soon as they have to make a turn (Incidently, the $110K Corvette ZR1 got smacked around by the M5.... and that's a Sedan).
 
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