Questions about MBA 2.0 from a former 1.0 owner

[LinMac]

I owned the MBA 1.0 and ended up returning it to Amazon after I just couldn't justify the cost of the machine when it was so slow for some tasks.

1) How warm does the MBA 2.0 get when running Handbrake to encode a DVD with the AppleTV preset?

2) Does the MBA 2.0 use a PATA connection or a SATA connection to connect to the drives? The MBA 1.0 used a PATA connection which caused some disk access latency at times.

3) Has the construction improved or do you feel the keyboard/screeen/trackpad button etc are better than the MBA 1.0?

 

[thomahawk]

from what i heard the new macbook air 2.0 is much cooler than the 1.0, if you thought the 1.0 was hot well 2.0 is warm.

as for the harddrive, i suggest getting a SSD but im not sure about the PATA im probably thinking SATA? not sure just a wild guess since most notebook drives nowadays are SATA my macbook is SATA if that helps

as for the trackpad, well its not THE 'glass trackpad' however it has the mulit touch features as the big brothers have (4finger, 2finger twisting, 3 finger, etc)

 

[six.four]

2) Does the MBA 2.0 use a PATA connection or a SATA connection to connect to the drives? The MBA 1.0 used a PATA connection which caused some disk access latency at times.

2) MBA 2 uses SATA.

And for the 100th time on this forum, the interface (between SATA and PATA) has VERY little to do with real world performance. The ONLY time you would actually notice higher latencies would be when there is more than one drive on the same cable, which is NOT the case here.

A great quote from a fluffles.net admin appropriately named Enlightenment:

.... there should be little difference between PATA or SATA as long as there is only one device on the PATA cable. SATA will be a little faster due to lower transfer latency, but this impact will be overshadowed by the mechanical limits of the drive (the seek times) and thus the performance difference will be low. Note that some SATA models have totally different controller chips and as such cannot be directly compared (then you are not testing SATA versus PATA!).

Serial ATA does not really add to performance, but it does add to convenience (no jumpers with new drives), thermal management (small cables) and hot-plug functionality. Also it enables you to use NCQ should your usage benefit from that (desktop users leave it off!).

There seriously needs to be a sticky on this - cause I swear I read "SATA is SOOO much faster than PATA" in half these threads.

 

[TJunkers]

MBA 2.0 Keyboard Question...

Is the backlighting the same as the backlighting on the new Macbook where its white or is it still a bluish tint?

Thanks!

 

[LinMac]

2) MBA 2 uses SATA.

And for the 100th time on this forum, the interface (between SATA and PATA) has VERY little to do with real world performance. The ONLY time you would actually notice higher latencies would be when there is more than one drive on the same cable, which is NOT the case here.

A great quote from a fluffles.net admin appropriately named Enlightenment:



There seriously needs to be a sticky on this - cause I swear I read "SATA is SOOO much faster than PATA" in half these threads.

Your post is accurate when discussing the platter based 80GB disk, but performance numbers would have been much better if it had a SATA interface coupled with a good 64GB SSD. The SSDs in the current Macbook Pro/Macbook models are pretty impressive. The new Intel SSDs are very impressive.

I don't mean to suggest the performance problems were completely the fault of the interface because the disk itself wasn't a speedy model. I just wanted to confirm that the SSD in the MBA 2.0 was going to be connected to an interface that I find appropriate for it.

 

[Philflow]

six.four is right on the money. PATA is not the limiting factor in the SSD performance of the 1.8/64GB.

 

[LinMac]

six.four is right on the money. PATA is not the limiting factor in the SSD performance of the 1.8/64GB.

It looks like I am going to add to my Xbench numbers, but it does make for an interesting comparison:

Mac Mini (80GB 5400rpm):

Sequential 67.22
Uncached Write 69.74 42.82 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 68.11 38.54 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 55.76 16.32 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 79.68 40.04 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Random 27.02
Uncached Write 9.39 0.99 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 65.57 20.99 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 63.56 0.45 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 94.63 17.56 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Macbook Pro (200GB 7200rpm):

Sequential 80.05

Uncached Write 82.40 50.59 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 96.00 54.32 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 56.37 16.50 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 103.38 51.96 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Random 26.24
Uncached Write 8.10 0.86 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 100.76 32.26 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 88.54 0.63 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 127.53 23.66 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Macbook Pro (128GB SSD):

Sequential 71.28

Uncached Write 107.34 65.91 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 69.55 39.35 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 36.98 10.82 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 185.97 93.47 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Random 115.88
Uncached Write 45.71 4.84 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 102.46 32.80 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 1187.04 8.41 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 490.77 91.07 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Macbook Air 1.0 (1.8GHz/64GB SSD)

Sequential 40.82

Uncached Write 33.92 20.83 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 46.51 26.32 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 27.24 7.97 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 97.00 48.75 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Random 56.13

Uncached Write 21.06 2.23 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 52.85 16.92 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 990.68 7.02 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 259.96 48.24 MB/sec [256K blocks]

The interface does have a slight effect on it, but the gap is not as wide as I originally anticipated it would be.

 

[epicycle]

For reference here are the MacBook Air 2.0 (1.8GHz 128GB SSD) numbers:

Sequential 61.23

Uncached Write 49.46 30.36 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 60.27 34.10 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 43.67 12.78 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 177.95 89.44 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Random 103.50

Uncached Write 47.66 5.05 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 68.40 21.90 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 1128.84 8.00 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 462.89 85.89 MB/sec [256K blocks]

 

[Philflow]

It looks like I am going to add to my Xbench numbers, but it does make for an interesting comparison:

The true maximum transfer rate of PATA is 100 MB/sec with bursts up to 133 MB/ sec. As you can see by the benchmarks you posted the 64GB SSD comes no where near that limitation. Even the 128GB would not be limited if it had a PATA interface.

Furthermore, Xbench is commonly overated as a benchmark tool. It's a synthetic benchmark and it's results have little to do with real life performance.

 

[jameskohn]

1.0 64gb SSD performance vs. 2.0's 128gb SSD performance

The true maximum transfer rate of PATA is 100 MB/sec with bursts up to 133 MB/ sec. As you can see by the benchmarks you posted the 64GB SSD comes no where near that limitation. Even the 128GB would not be limited if it had a PATA interface.

Furthermore, Xbench is commonly overated as a benchmark tool. It's a synthetic benchmark and it's results have little to do with real life performance.

I still am not sure if the real world performance of the new SSD machine is going to be noticeably different from the original SSD MBA???

 

[Philflow]

I still am not sure if the real world performance of the new SSD machine is going to be noticeably different from the original SSD MBA???

It will also depend on what you're doing. If you're into video editing for example it will make quite a big difference. In launching a web browser it will make very little difference. It will boot the OS a couple of seconds faster.

So for heavy application's that are GPU or hard disk dependent the new one will be noticeably faster. For light use it will be very hard to notice.

 

[NC MacGuy]

I still am not sure if the real world performance of the new SSD machine is going to be noticeably different from the original SSD MBA???

Performance, probably not but you got some realistic size now. In this case - size does matter.

Outside of performance and size, I'm going to rip mine open today and see what type of connector it uses. I always though the PATA ZIF one off's would be a hard one to upgrade and it's proved to be true.