New 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro Lives Up to Apple's Claims, Reaches SSD Throughput Speeds of 2GB/s

[newellj]

Because I do am stuck with 256GBytes on my Retina 15" and this is killing me.

For a MacBook ->PRO<-, 256 GBytes is too little.

I thought that the only thing that made a computer a "pro" was dozens of ports. That's what everyone's saying in the MacBook and MacBook Air forums, anyway. In any case, no one who buys one of these can be under any illusions about the storage capacity, so it's pretty hard to complain. Someone who buys a pro machine should be enough of a pro to know what they need.

And yeah, you can upgrade the SSD in the new ones...if you can find an appropriate SSD for sale that's come out of the right machine...for example, on eBay. There are no consumer aftermarket drives available for the current and recent rMBP or MBA machines. You have to scavenge, and for the 2015s it's going to take a while for those to show up on eBay...at high prices...and without a warranty...

 

[cmChimera]

More like 12 months. Skylake won't make Q3 2015 and most likely won't be in full production until Q2 2016, irregardless of Intel's leaked charts.

Oh, so you work at Intel?

 

[cookies!]

Oh, so you work at Intel?

past performance is often a poor indicator of future performance, but I do find my skepticism of intel's release estimates growing :/

 

[newellj]

** blink blink

I wish I still had our Macintosh SE that we bought back in 1987. It is a particularly memorable machine because it was the first one we kept our financial records on (Quicken, IIRC) and there was a disk failure. It took a month or so to figure out the checkbook as the checks cleared - we didn't have any backup, paper or otherwise, for the data on the disk.

I just looked up what it cost us. People who think that a maxed out rMBP is expensive should plug the cost of the SE into a site that adjusts for inflation, after making sure that they're seated.

 

[Nosferax]

And you know this to be a fact because you own a recent rMBP and have checked your facts?

Lol, The C-64 like all 8 bit computer had their os in rom. You flick the switch and it's instantly ready.

Let me know when a modern computer will boot instantly, no post test no os to load...

 

[elmateo487]

Not only watching movies, but dealing with Office apps or browsing on Safari. When I had a HDD on my older Macs, there was a noticeable slowness due to the browser being caching/loading every thumbnail and every html page. A simple page required a hundred of disk reads/writes. With a SSD, the speed bump on these operations improve the browsing experience. However, when you're loading a page, you do not feel the difference between loading something at 12ms or 3ms (e.g., loading 3MB of images, decorations, css, etc).

In short, try a better argument for refuting my point. You're talking like if everyone used FCPX in a daily basis.

You do know that each tab in say... Chrome, can be over 100mb of data right?, and once you fill up your ram, all of that gets dumped to the ssd right? At which point it would be a HUGE DIFFERENCE to move all that data right?

 

[cwt1nospam]

Lol, The C-64 like all 8 bit computer had their os in rom. You flick the switch and it's instantly ready.

Let me know when a modern computer will boot instantly, no post test no os to load...

By modern standards, the C-64 was instantly on and ready to do basically nothing.

I'll take my 2011 MBP that boots in about 16 seconds.
I expect these new machines probably do better than that!

 

[shaunp]

My memory of those was tapes though it looks like there were disks too...it was a long time ago. Had a Tandy, too!

I was talking about just switching it on, not loading anything. That takes a couple of second. Loading something from tape (I only know of one person who had a floppy disk drive cos they were v. expensive) took an ice age.

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

+1000

We need everything else to catch up so we can make use of these speeds.

I am hoping we get faster memory on the iPhone to start with. And hopefully by next year we will have affordable 1TB-2TB SSD's for my NAS

By everything else I'm thinking mainly backup drives. What external drive can make use of those backup speeds to get it done like yesterday? USB3 won't even handle the throughput nor would Thunderbolt I or USB 3.1. Thunderbolt II could potentially manage it, IF you could get the same fast drives in an external TB2 case.

Now if they could get those drives at affordable rates in say a 2TB or 4TB version, THEN we would be talking real improvements. Having to compromise storage amounts for storage speeds (or astronomical prices) doesn't sit well. While HD videos may not need to play at anywhere near those speeds, getting them from one computer or drive to another (say for backup) takes a long time with over 3TB of movies, music and photos for a new drive.

Sadly, Apple seems to make huge strides in ONE area on their computers at times. They come out with Thunderbolt (with not much for it at the time), but their graphics offerings were/are mostly abysmal (and sadly almost always have been). They'll offer USB-C, but give you only one stinking port. They'll get the lastest CPUs from Intel before everyone else and put on a glorious Retina display, but mated with Intel graphics, you'd be better off with some $800 PC notebooks out there if you want to run a game. WTF can't Apple offer a truly mind blowing machine for those that WANT one? Even the Mac Pro blows at gaming. Why should Mac users have to buy a separate Windows machine just to do gaming? Why does Apple turn so many users over to Microsoft and other rival manufacturing companies for such a large market segment. It's just bizarre. In the old days, you could blame it on limited resources, but now Apple is richer than just about everybody. There's simply NO EXCUSE for compromises any longer, IMO. Get me a desktop Mac with at least 4K and a TRUE gaming level video card so even if I have to put Windows on it to run some games, I at least won't have to buy two different computers and two different desks to put them on (and no, a PS4 is not remotely capable as a true gaming level PC and NEVER will be since they are always 4-10 generations of hardware behind).

 

[brdeveloper]

You do know that each tab in say... Chrome, can be over 100mb of data right?, and once you fill up your ram, all of that gets dumped to the ssd right? At which point it would be a HUGE DIFFERENCE to move all that data right?

Not a problem for 2009 Macs which support 8GB of RAM, unless you have something like 50+ opened tabs.

 

[cwt1nospam]

Why does Apple turn so many users over to Microsoft and other rival manufacturing companies for such a large market segment.

1. It isn't large, at least not in profits.
2. Gamers tend to be technical, and that's the opposite direction from where computers are headed. The internet of things can't need techies to keep it running. These things need to be easy to use and reliable. No overclocking or liquid cooling!

----------

Not a problem for 2009 Macs which support 8GB of RAM, unless you have something like 50+ opened tabs.

I don't think anyone's arguing that older Macs don't benefit a great deal from replacing a slow hard drive (many were 5400 rpm!) with a fast SSD. There are other parts of the computer though, and depending on what you're doing the faster processor, RAM, or graphics can make a big difference. Even the power efficiency can be hugely important when running off the battery.

What it boils down to is that if you're saying that your 2009 Mac is holding its own for what you're doing, then you're right. That doesn't mean it can hold its own in all, or even most, situations when compared to a new model.

 

[elmateo487]

Not a problem for 2009 Macs which support 8GB of RAM, unless you have something like 50+ opened tabs.

You should probably just check activity monitor. And if anything is in the cache then it is on the disk.

You should be more open to learning.

 

[brdeveloper]

What it boils down to is that if you're saying that your 2009 Mac is holding its own for what you're doing, then you're right. That doesn't mean it can hold its own in all, or even most, situations when compared to a new model.

Never said it's plenty of performance when doing every task. By the way, the 2015 15" rMBP is c***y for CUDA applications, since it doesn't even support CUDA - only nvidia gpus are compatible with the framework. So, in this sense, a 2009 or a 2010 Macbook, or maybe a 2012 retina is better than a 2015 one. I know, it's just an extreme case, almost a joke, just to argue that:

A 2009 Mac equipped with a SSD and 8GB of RAM is still plenty capable of doing any office stuff (Numbers, Pages, Excel, etc) and browsing (HTML5 stuff). In these cases, they perform nearly the same as a 2015 laptop considering that a human being can't note the difference between a few milliseconds.

 

[Freida]

how about GPU performance? Any benchmarks out, yet?

 

[dannys1]

Samsung SSD SM951

Yes, or a version there of as Samsung don't make that in 1TB version yet.

 

[bkkcanuck]

I wish I still had our Macintosh SE that we bought back in 1987. It is a particularly memorable machine because it was the first one we kept our financial records on (Quicken, IIRC) and there was a disk failure. It took a month or so to figure out the checkbook as the checks cleared - we didn't have any backup, paper or otherwise, for the data on the disk.

I just looked up what it cost us. People who think that a maxed out rMBP is expensive should plug the cost of the SE into a site that adjusts for inflation, after making sure that they're seated.

The first home computer I had was an IBM PC (the original) with enough memory (cannot remember how much - but it was not enough to get text error messages in IBM Assembler - just numeric - I do remember you needed 96KB for the text messages, so I am thinking 64KB), a CGA graphics card, Electrohome monitor, two floppy drives, DOS 1.1 (no directories, no hard drives), and a dot matrix (narrow carriage) printer.... price.... $6,400CAD after a 20% discount.

Accounting for inflation today's equivalent is $16,700

 

[bcc2k]

And you know this to be a fact because you own a recent rMBP and have checked your facts?

No, but he makes a joke.
A Commodore 64 with no internal hard drive and 64 KB of RAM isn't exactly the rMBP 15" killer

 

[Nosferax]

No, but he makes a joke.
A Commodore 64 with no internal hard drive and 64 KB of RAM isn't exactly the rMBP 15" killer

Finally someone get it!

 

[domagojp]

Confused

So the speed is 2GB/s and it 8GB file it took 14 seconds to transfer. Shouldn't it be 4 seconds??

 

[subsonix]

So the speed is 2GB/s and it 8GB file it took 14 seconds to transfer. Shouldn't it be 4 seconds??

But from where and to what did you transfer the file?

 

[jnpy!$4g3cwk]

Never said it's plenty of performance when doing every task. By the way, the 2015 15" rMBP is c***y for CUDA applications, since it doesn't even support CUDA - only nvidia gpus are compatible with the framework. So, in this sense, a 2009 or a 2010 Macbook, or maybe a 2012 retina is better than a 2015 one. I know, it's just an extreme case, almost a joke, just to argue that:.

Which application are you using that uses CUDA? As previously mentioned by someone, there are issues with recent CUDA libraries. OpenCL is also more portable.

I don't know if there is a place where these results are collected, but, the Luxmark benchmark uses OpenCL. The largest result I see posted here is about 5000, for a 3x card AMD R9 setup:

http://www.tonymacx86.com/graphics/147035-post-os-x-yosemite-luxmark-opencl-benchmarks.html

I wonder if there is a luxmark number for a mobile GPU similar to the new MBP?

EDIT: Below is the definitive site. For workstation cards, the Nvidia Titan X has the top single-card number of 17,518, while the Radeon HD 7970 clocks in at 14,777.

http://www.luxmark.info/top_results/LuxBall%20HDR/OpenCL/GPU/1

I wouldn't know what to compare the new MBP GPU to, though.

 

[MarvinK9]

Given that a 3rd Party 250GB PCIe SSD costs $400, with a 1TB costing almost $1000 just to barely get 800-1000 MB/s, I don't think Apple is overcharging for their storage.

I think you need to re-check those prices. A 256GB SSD goes for about $1/GB.
Here;s a link to one for $260 Cdn. http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Produc...249046&cm_re=SSD_256gb-_-20-249-046-_-Product

Yes, it is slower. Just pointing out that your prices are way off.

Here's a 400GB drive for $425 USD. With Read speeds up to 2.2GB/s
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Produc...&cm_re=SSD_PCI-Express-_-20-167-300-_-Product

I love Apple products, but Apple overcharges for upgrades, they always have.

 

[TechZeke]

I think you need to re-check those prices. A 256GB SSD goes for about $1/GB.
Here;s a link to one for $260 Cdn. http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Produc...249046&cm_re=SSD_256gb-_-20-249-046-_-Product

Yes, it is slower. Just pointing out that your prices are way off.

Here's a 400GB drive for $425 USD. With Read speeds up to 2.2GB/s
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Produc...&cm_re=SSD_PCI-Express-_-20-167-300-_-Product

I love Apple products, but Apple overcharges for upgrades, they always have.

Yes, I haven't looked at PCIe SSDs in awhile, but I don't really see how this proves anything. On the rMBP BTO, Its a $300 USD upgrade from the 256GB to get the 512GB or $800 to go for the 1TB, which is in line with the prices of the SSDs you quoted. You haven't shown that Apple over charges for the storage upgrades.

 

[MarvinK9]

Yes, I haven't looked at PCIe SSDs in awhile, but I don't really see how this proves anything.

Wasn't trying to prove anything.. just correcting the SSD prices.

You haven't shown that Apple over charges for the storage upgrades.

I wasn't trying to. I did make the claim that they overcharge for upgrades in general and no, I did not prove it.

The last time I noticed this was a while ago and it was to do with RAM upgrades which were significantly inflated with respect to alternative sources.

 

[TechZeke]

Wasn't trying to prove anything.. just correcting the SSD prices.



I wasn't trying to. I did make the claim that they overcharge for upgrades in general and no, I did not prove it.

The last time I noticed this was a while ago and it was to do with RAM upgrades which were significantly inflated with respect to alternative sources.

Okay, fair enough.

I wasn't trying to excuse their other BTO upgrades; I agree that their RAM upgrades have always been notoriously overpriced.