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MBPR vs MBP w/SSD: which is faster
- Thread starter Star Nuts
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You can equip the cmbp with a dozen different SSDs so it would depend on what SSD you chose.
The Samsung SSD in the rmbp is insanely fast.
The Samsung SSD in the rmbp is insanely fast.
The OCZ Vertex4 in a regular MBP is nearly 500MB/s read/write. I'd get a regular MBP because you can take out the optical drive and put in another hard drive for a LOT more space. You also don't have to deal with dongles/adapters for things like ethernet and firewire if those matter to you. You an also get the classic MBP with antiglare, and it doesn't lag in the UI. I'll bet you even get better GPU performance in the classic MBP because it's not overworked by the retina display.
You have to take into account that a significant part of the rMBP's resources (CPU+GPU) are wasted to handle the retina display... Hence, the cMBP will be faster hands down...
The Samsung 830 and Crucial M4 are very fast...
Well they are...compared to an HDD. I have a Crucial 512GB M4, speed is fine, but I don't use it as my primary media drive so it doesn't really matter.
*shrug* He's not wrong.
'dem Retina displays take more juice to drive. Fact of life.
I use a 240GB Intel 520. It is faster than a Samsung 830. I don't think you'd notice in real world though.
The option to use whatever is the actual fastest SSD out at any given time easily gives the cMBP the ability to be faster. You can also RAID0 SATAIII SSD's for over 1000MB/s if you were so inclined. Its the benefits of the upgradability others seem to think is a non issue.
The option to use whatever is the actual fastest SSD out at any given time easily gives the cMBP the ability to be faster. You can also RAID0 SATAIII SSD's for over 1000MB/s if you were so inclined. Its the benefits of the upgradability others seem to think is a non issue.
Too bad you can't provide any facts to support this wildly ridiculous assertion. Judging by your other posts, you have a decidedly anti-RMBP agenda for someone who doesn't even own one and doesn't use one on a regular basis. Wouldn't your time be better spent focusing on other things? I'm vocal as well, but at least I own the machine and can supply people with videos showing that what you are saying is pure and utter rubbish.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6023/the-nextgen-macbook-pro-with-retina-display-review/8
Facts. From one of the most reputable actual testing sites on the web. Truly I am not sounding any "anti" horn. But facts and physics need to be addressed as everyone is just trumpeting their chosen "team" right now. sofianito is fairly correct although it isn't so cut and dry. And may only present issues under a microscope so your experience may be completely acceptable.
Facts. From one of the most reputable actual testing sites on the web. Truly I am not sounding any "anti" horn. But facts and physics need to be addressed as everyone is just trumpeting their chosen "team" right now. sofianito is fairly correct although it isn't so cut and dry. And may only present issues under a microscope so your experience may be completely acceptable.
Well, there IS the Anandtech review:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6023/the-nextgen-macbook-pro-with-retina-display-review/8 Allow me to quote:
"To be quite honest, the hardware in the rMBP isnt enough to deliver a consistently smooth experience across all applications. At 2880 x 1800 most interactions are smooth but things like zooming windows or scrolling on certain web pages is clearly sub-30fps. At the higher scaled resolutions, since the GPU has to render as much as 9.2MP, even UI performance can be sluggish. Theres simply nothing that can be done at this point - Apple is pushing the limits of the hardware we have available today, far beyond what any other OEM has done. Future iterations of the Retina Display MacBook Pro will have faster hardware with embedded DRAM that will help mitigate this problem. But there are other limitations: many elements of screen drawing are still done on the CPU, and as largely serial architectures their ability to scale performance with dramatically higher resolutions is limited.
Some elements of drawing in Safari for example arent handled by the GPU. Quickly scrolling up and down on the AnandTech home page will peg one of the four IVB cores in the rMBP at 100%: [illustration omitted]
The GPU has an easy time with its part of the process but the CPUs workload is borderline too much for a single core to handle. Throw a more complex website at it and things get bad quickly. Facebook combines a lot of compressed images with text - every single image is decompressed on the CPU before being handed off to the GPU. Combine that with other elements that are processed on the CPU and you get a recipe for choppy scrolling.
To quantify exactly what I was seeing I measured frame rate while scrolling as quickly as possible through my Facebook news feed in Safari on the rMBP as well as my 2011 15-inch High Res MacBook Pro. While last years MBP delivered anywhere from 46 - 60 fps during this test, the rMBP hovered around 20 fps (18 - 24 fps was the typical range).
Remember at 2880 x 1800 there are simply more pixels to push and more work to be done by both the CPU and the GPU. Its even worse in those applications that have higher quality assets: the CPU now has to decode images at 4x the resolution of what its used to. Future CPUs will take this added workload into account, but itll take time to get there.
The good news is Mountain Lion provides some relief. At WWDC Apple mentioned the next version of Safari is ridiculously fast, but it wasnt specific about why. It turns out that Safari leverages Core Animation in Mountain Lion and more GPU accelerated as a result. Facebook is still a challenge because of the mixture of CPU decoded images and a standard web page, but the experience is a bit better. Repeating the same test as above I measured anywhere from 20 - 30 fps while scrolling through Facebook on MLs Safari.
Whereas I would consider the rMBP experience under Lion to be borderline unacceptable, everything is significantly better under Mountain Lion. Dont expect buttery smoothness across the board, youre still asking a lot of the CPU and GPU, but its a lot better."
To be completely objective, it sounds like there is, or may be, a difference in some tasks, but it may be minimized with further software/OS optimizations under 10.8. But it does sounds like there is currently a bit of a tradeoff in performance in exchange for the retina display. Granted, most people will value the benefits of the nicer screen and others may not even be able to perceive the difference between the two.
Simple fact and common sense
: Resampling consumes cpu and gpu resources, and in the case of dGPU, more data has to be moved from RAM to VRAM... I have nothing against the retina display. I just don't like the sealed parts of current rMBP...
As Orlandoech.com earlier said it depends on what SSD you place into the cMBP.
The main advantage of the cMBP is that as SSDs gets faster and cheaper over time you can ensure that your longevity will somehow be extended.
To answer your question through as to which is faster wrt SSD's...If money isn't an issue you can pimp out the cMPR with faster ssd's than the current retina in a RAID 0 Config and get 1000 mb/s read/write which is silly fast. Whether you need this is matter-less.The fact of the matter is one can modify and speed up a cMPR to have faster SSD's.
If you youtube 'Fastest MacBook Pro on The Planet Part 3" you will see why the cMBP can be customised to be faster than the retina ssd.
In fairness though, I doubt you'd notice any difference in real world usage with either of the Macbooks with either ssd configuration.
The main advantage of the cMBP is that as SSDs gets faster and cheaper over time you can ensure that your longevity will somehow be extended.
To answer your question through as to which is faster wrt SSD's...If money isn't an issue you can pimp out the cMPR with faster ssd's than the current retina in a RAID 0 Config and get 1000 mb/s read/write which is silly fast. Whether you need this is matter-less.The fact of the matter is one can modify and speed up a cMPR to have faster SSD's.
If you youtube 'Fastest MacBook Pro on The Planet Part 3" you will see why the cMBP can be customised to be faster than the retina ssd.
In fairness though, I doubt you'd notice any difference in real world usage with either of the Macbooks with either ssd configuration.
I don't really understand the Anand review, if we take 2800x1800 with a 24bit colour palette - that is 5.1e6 * 3B = 15MB per frame at 60Hz = 933MB/s — the memory bandwidth of the NVidia 650M is 80GB/s — more than enough to handle the demands to the GPU drawing buffer.
Bandwidth on the Intel HD 4000 is 25.6GB/s — still more than necessary
Even at our oversampled 3840x2400 we have a demand of 1.6GB/s — still way under the memory bandwidth of either card.
A simple test is to drag activity monitor around as fast as possible:
2010 MBP @ 1440x900: Windowserver CPU: ~11%
2012 rMBP @ 3840x2400: Windowserver CPU: ~13%
The CPU and GPU are theoretically far more than capable of driving the retina display, and for most apps this is not an issue. Perhaps with very heavy realtime GPU calculations then the extra memory bandwisth saturation of the retina display may come into play, but you need to push pretty hard...
Bandwidth on the Intel HD 4000 is 25.6GB/s — still more than necessary
Even at our oversampled 3840x2400 we have a demand of 1.6GB/s — still way under the memory bandwidth of either card.
A simple test is to drag activity monitor around as fast as possible:
2010 MBP @ 1440x900: Windowserver CPU: ~11%
2012 rMBP @ 3840x2400: Windowserver CPU: ~13%
The CPU and GPU are theoretically far more than capable of driving the retina display, and for most apps this is not an issue. Perhaps with very heavy realtime GPU calculations then the extra memory bandwisth saturation of the retina display may come into play, but you need to push pretty hard...
In the long term, the cMBP will be quicker. SSD technology will evolve and become quicker, so you could buy the newest, quickest, best thing and put it in your cMBP while the rMBP (purchased on the same date) will be stuck with its original SSD.
As for the current situation, both should perform equally. The SSD in the retina seems to be the Samsung 830 series controller, so if you buy an 830 SSD you should get equal performance. There are actually SSDs out now that are quicker than the 830s (Plextor M5, maybe others), but they are more expensive.
As for the current situation, both should perform equally. The SSD in the retina seems to be the Samsung 830 series controller, so if you buy an 830 SSD you should get equal performance. There are actually SSDs out now that are quicker than the 830s (Plextor M5, maybe others), but they are more expensive.
Math does not always work out when SW and absent optimizations are involved. HW theory is not real world. If it was the case my Half-life copy would run the same in OS X as in Windows. That ain't the case. As they also said it is possible to recoup some performance discrepancy through software optimizations and patches down the road. The plain fact is that even though the GPU is overclocked it performs slightly below the cMBP because of the demands put upon it. Does not mean the experience of using a cMBP is better than an rMBP. It may honestly be the other way around. Since a screen is what you stare at all day. I certainly don't stare at benchmarks that enlarge my e-peen. It just means technically the cMBP has the ability to be configured faster. Off the shelf and without SSD the cMBP is slower.
It wouldn't hurt for you to read once in a while before giving an advice of something you're not aware of.
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/OWC/Aura_Pro_Retina_2012/
Right, one overpriced manufacturer that rMBP users must rely on if they choose to upgrade. As opposed to the much broader and much more advanced market that cMBP users can look at. I didn't bother to mention that thing because it wasn't worth mentioning.
Right, one overpriced manufacturer that rMBP users must rely on if they choose to upgrade. As opposed to the much broader and much more advanced market that cMBP users can look at. I didn't bother to mention that thing because it wasn't worth mentioning.
I was just making a point, you don't get stuck with the original SSD, but now that you're talking like you have a clue let me make a few points about this statement:
- You can change the SSD if you want to.
- You may keep the SSD your computer came with, using it as an external.
- Prices will eventually go down as with any other product.
I never said it was a better option than upgrading the cMBP, all I'm saying is your statement is wrong, therefor misleading information. Who are you to decide if it's worth or not for the OP?
Yes, I certainly agree that OS X has terrible graphics drivers, and most of what people are complaining about here is actually Apple failing to invest re-engineering the GPU driver model in OS X. This is why Apple lag substantially behind every other OS in terms of current OpenGL support, an inability to drive output above 8bits, the years of delay between when Windows/Linux supported hardware decoded video and Apple did etc. Hackintosh owners have much better GPU support than genuine Apple owners do!
But what Anand implied, and people have repeated here is that the rMBP is close to its hardware limits; this is patently false.
I think this is not a straight forward estimation. The rMBP has a higher clocked GPU, and a much better thermal system that stops the GPU/CPU from throttling. That means that it is certainly possible over the course of working on real-world tasks, the rMBP maintains performance as the cMBP slows substantially. That will certainly catapult the rMBP above the cMBP running on an external display, and will result in tit-for-tat performance on the internal display.
I think that over time, Apple will fix some bits of the GPU driver architecture, but their engineering effort has been diverted into iDevices for years and desktop OS X now just needs to be "good enough".
Why are people talking about GPUs? And regarding that, I don't understand the whole "it's fact because anandtech tested one rMBP on Lion and he said it was fact so it is fact". I think the size of the userbase saying that the rMBP under ML doesn't lag is a more reliable source honestly.
Regarding the actual question in this thread, it depends on the speed of the SSD. Apple say the rMBP SSDs have 500 MB/s read and write speeds and from what I've seen they do generally reach this. So if you buy an SSD that can work that fast or faster according to its spec, which you can usually find on the manufacturer's website or in reviews, then there's your answer.
Regarding the actual question in this thread, it depends on the speed of the SSD. Apple say the rMBP SSDs have 500 MB/s read and write speeds and from what I've seen they do generally reach this. So if you buy an SSD that can work that fast or faster according to its spec, which you can usually find on the manufacturer's website or in reviews, then there's your answer.
