Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

New Macbook Pro: between two SSDs

From Barefeats

BOTTOMLINE
If you can take the financial heat, an SSD will turbo charge your MacBook Pro's drive operations. For large block transfers, an SSD can be as much as 2.7x faster than the fastest notebook HDD. For small random transfers, it can be as much as 8.5x faster. We have posted our operations per second data (because it is incomplete), but an SSD will process as much as 100x more per second than the fastest HDD.

The OWC Mercury Extreme is our recommendation for a third party upgrade of your MacBook Pro's internal storage. It's not only fast with advanced enterprise class features, but it passed Lloyd Chambers' "Seasoning" test with flying colors.



I have a 200gb Extreme from OWC and no issues at all and faster than my previous Crucial 225 units. Frankly right now if your buying I would not be screwing around with anything that has degradation issues. I have seen the slowdown with my older Crucials. Buy carefully folks
 
Guy Mancuso said:
I have a 200gb Extreme from OWC and no issues at all and faster than my previous Crucial 225 units. Frankly right now if your buying I would not be screwing around with anything that has degradation issues. I have seen the slowdown with my older Crucials. Buy carefully folks
Click to expand...

How much faster is the OWC drive than your old M225? I have an M225 right now. Is it that noticeable? I was thinking of getting the OWC 200 GB SSD for an upcoming Mac Pro purchase.
 
Xbench after PRAM Reset

Things improved with the F200 after PRAM reset... v. Happy with it now.
 

Attachments

  • mbp w f200 after pram reset.png
    mbp w f200 after pram reset.png
    88.7 KB · Views: 80
ValSalva said:
And is the C300 much faster than an M225? The C300 has SATA-6 which is a future proofing feature right now and can't immediately be taken advantage of. Is any increased speed worth the higher price at this point? I'm sure this drive will drop in price in the future.
Click to expand...

The price difference between the m225 and C300 is very small right now. I just ordered a 128GB C300 and the m225 was only $20 less.
 
rognu said:
investigating:

The 256gb ssd of the new macbook pro:

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1230/1/

The Toshiba like the Samsung ssd are meant to be compatible not powerful.

The review shows that, despite it doesn't do a bad job, is far from an Intel or a Vertex. Especially regarding IOMeter and, well, everything else.
Has a strength: the good relation capacity/price. Besides, as I said before, the compatibility.

I tempted to order the MBP with the 256gb ssd. Mainly because a time issue. I would follow the SandForce based units and may be I would purchase one in a year or so; depending on the performance of the Toshiba.
That looks like a good idea for me. It's fast, good priced and without problems. I have a lot of things to do this week so I'll think about it and I'll decide in two days or so.
Click to expand...

dont forget the toshiba used in the mbp have the best performance/watt ratio of all ssd drives... ;)
 
I know all of these other third party SSDs (OWC, X25, etc) are better than the Toshiba ones that Apple provides. However, the third party ones are currently so much more expensive than what apple is charging for their SSDs.

Would it be wise to jump into Apple's 128gb SSD for only $135 more (assuming you were going to be going with the $45 7200rpm 500gb HDD upgrade from apple, and using student discount), and then upgrade to a better/bigger 3rd party SSD later, once prices come down a bit? 128gb isn't much, but I can just run a 500gb 7200rpm HDD in the optibay, like what many other users seem to be doing.

The Toshiba SSD can't be that bad, can it?

-Don
 
ValSalva said:
How much faster is the OWC drive than your old M225? I have an M225 right now. Is it that noticeable? I was thinking of getting the OWC 200 GB SSD for an upcoming Mac Pro purchase.
Click to expand...

I go by processing speed of raw files and not benchmarks which take other factors in. I'm more after raw horsepower and there is a speed increase but more important after reliability.
 
Where can these be purchased right now? OWC has them as a pre-order item.
Have they been produced in large numbers?


Guy Mancuso said:
From Barefeats
The OWC Mercury Extreme is our recommendation for a third party upgrade of your MacBook Pro's internal storage. It's not only fast with advanced enterprise class features, but it passed Lloyd Chambers' "Seasoning" test with flying colors.
Click to expand...
 
Don Nguyen said:
I know all of these other third party SSDs (OWC, X25, etc) are better than the Toshiba ones that Apple provides. However, the third party ones are currently so much more expensive than what apple is charging for their SSDs.

Would it be wise to jump into Apple's 128gb SSD for only $135 more (assuming you were going to be going with the $45 7200rpm 500gb HDD upgrade from apple, and using student discount), and then upgrade to a better/bigger 3rd party SSD later, once prices come down a bit? 128gb isn't much, but I can just run a 500gb 7200rpm HDD in the optibay, like what many other users seem to be doing.

The Toshiba SSD can't be that bad, can it?

-Don
Click to expand...



Any SSD is going to have a dramatic effect on real world performance. I'd say go for a third party drive, preferably a Sandforce controller based one, but I'm sure the Apple supplied drive will ensure a very responsive system. Might be worth researching if User Firmware upgrades are allowed though. There may be future scope for better performance with the same hardware.

Regarding Optibay, I put my stock 500GB in the original drive bay, and the SSD in the Optibay... just seemed to make sense since the HDD runs hotter and that's what the bay is designed for. Also read somewhere something about the Sudden Motion Sensor..

Best of luck.
 
intel 160gb ssd

Performance is very good VS the original 7200 rpm that came with my laptop. However the only problem is the limited amount of space. Later this year intel and micron will release new SSD's based on newer tech which = MORE SPACE and better performance. I was thinking of getting something like the C300 but the price is much higher than intels(granted it also has more space). However I think I can hold off until the end of the year when intel and other companies release much improved tech (MORE SPACE :))
 
rognu said:
investigating:

The 256gb ssd of the new macbook pro:

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1230/1/

The Toshiba like the Samsung ssd are meant to be compatible not powerful.

The review shows that, despite it doesn't do a bad job, is far from an Intel or a Vertex. Especially regarding IOMeter and, well, everything else.
Has a strength: the good relation capacity/price. Besides, as I said before, the compatibility.

I tempted to order the MBP with the 256gb ssd. Mainly because a time issue. I would follow the SandForce based units and may be I would purchase one in a year or so; depending on the performance of the Toshiba.
That looks like a good idea for me. It's fast, good priced and without problems. I have a lot of things to do this week so I'll think about it and I'll decide in two days or so.
Click to expand...


This article is a great find! It seems apple did their own research when it comes to what SSD to put in their mbps. Though it isn't the fastest, it seems to be a pretty decent drive that will last awhile.

This article has me convinced to order the 256 ssd bto 13 in mbp. This will be my first mac, and I am amazed that apple really has done their homework to find the best or efficient products in their notebooks, as I have been pleased with this result as well as the battery life increase (though had to sacrifice some power with C2D).

One quesion I have is can I use the trim command through parallels with windows 7 on the toshiba ssd? Will that work, not sure, I know OSX does not support trim yet.

Thanks for any help!
 
Yes, I bought/ordered one this morning as a matter of fact. But really Guy I wanted to make it clear to others that your hardy endorsement was of a product that is not available yet. The testing that was done was on the enterprise version, not the normal version (which I purchased).

Guy Mancuso said:
Only OWC sells them I believe.
Click to expand...
 
roxygal9 said:
One quesion I have is can I use the trim command through parallels with windows 7 on the toshiba ssd? Will that work, not sure, I know OSX does not support trim yet.
Click to expand...

I don't think that works at all. With Parallels you work with a file in your hard drive. So, I guess that Windows 7 works like it would with a standard mechanical drive. No trim recognition anywhere. Good try =)

So, no trim. It looks like this new ssd has no important degradation, or at least not in a short time. Time will tell.


I have the 256ssd in my laptop and it works pretty well. Definitely MacOS is fantastic with an ssd.

This is how it works:

xbenchhd.jpg
 
chopper dave said:
Very similar drives are:

OCZ Agility 2 - same firmware as OWC
OCZ Vertex 2 - faster firmware
OCZ Vertex LE - beta firmware, slightly faster
Corsair Force - beta firmware, slightly faster
Click to expand...

Yeah right. Buy one of those and see for yourself...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back