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SSD Samsung vs Toshiba ?

K

kev1234

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 11, 2011
47
0
Hi guys,

Im about to buy the new MacBook Air '13, Core i7 1.8GHz, 256GB and 4GB RAM... And I heard that the new MBA are coming with the toshiba SSD (That is slower) and the Samsung SSD (that is much faster).... my question is, how do I know with one Im getting before I buy it !! because I don't want to spend all that money to get the best MBA and when I see I get the slower SSD.... I really want to get it with the Samsung because its much faster !! so its possible to know with one I'm getting before I buy it ??? or the 256GB SSD comes with the Samsung and the 128 SSD comes with the toshiba ???

Thanks,
 
And unless you're going to be encoding videos all day with it using handbrake, you probably won't know the difference.

Allegedly samsung has better sequential read and write speed, toshiba supposedly better for non sequential.

Again, you'd probably have to be mr data on a good day to tell the difference between the two in everyday usage.
 
No way to tell until you boot the machine.

Ask the Apple sales guy if you can open it immediately in the store and check it on the spot. You'll probably end up returning it then immediately for a new one...

(I'm not going to convince you to keep a Toshiba SSD, because it's your money and it will bug you if you keep the Toshiba, since you're asking about it on the forums.)
 
You're better off pretending you didn't read about all the BS and just go buy and enjoy your MBA.
 
I have used both 11" Toshiba and Samsung SSD i5 2011 models, and I felt that the nod went to the Toshiba SSD for overall speed in my day to day use. I find this slightly surprising because the Toshiba SSD had only 2GB of RAM, and the Samsung was outfitted with 4.

It might have just been my perception of speed, but the Toshiba SSD felt slightly "snappier" overall.
 
...

not sure about the benchmarks but if what a previous poster said is true the Toshiba should be faster simply because random speeds matter much more than sequential. In the end it doesn't matter that much because the differance in speed isnt going to be noticable for 99.99% or people. A previous person mentioned handbrake encodes but he is wrong those are heavily cpu dependant not really disk dependant. What you would notice the differance in is if you use photoshop to handle very large images as apparently that is very demanding on the disk
 
xraydoc said:
Bingo.

I haven't checked the screen manufacturer on mine since I'm happy with it and don't care to know.
Click to expand...

Wow you must be a zen master :) ...thats the first thing I checked...my OCD won't allow me not to, i mean you have to know don't you?? :eek: ...now you say you didn't check the screen manufacturer, did you check the SSD?
 
...

skeevewiz said:
Wow you must be a zen master :) ...thats the first thing I checked...my OCD won't allow me not to, i mean you have to know don't you?? :eek: ...now you say you didn't check the screen manufacturer, did you check the SSD?
Click to expand...

I also checked my screen. I had a 2010 air I returned because the colors were washed out like crazy. The samsung screen on the 2011 I have is very nice, it has the toshiba ssd which is fast enough for me
 
Hey Jude said:
I have used both 11" Toshiba and Samsung SSD i5 2011 models, and I felt that the nod went to the Toshiba SSD for overall speed in my day to day use. I find this slightly surprising because the Toshiba SSD had only 2GB of RAM, and the Samsung was outfitted with 4.

It might have just been my perception of speed, but the Toshiba SSD felt slightly "snappier" overall.
Click to expand...

From what I gathered, Toshiba SSD has better random read speed but poorer random write speed. Good for opening application or files or booting up OS.

The strong point of Samsung SSD (if the specs are identical to the Samsung 470) is when it comes to heavy random read task. Toshiba (if identical to Kingston V+) will tank in the same situation, although there's no drop in speed compared to single queue but in comparison Samsung 470 will increase a lot in speed. Think of application like flashget/iGetter, Toshiba handles single segment downloads slightly better than Samsung, but Samsung can have multiple segments to accelerate the download speed few times more.

On the other hand Toshiba SSD appears to have the most solid Garbage Collection among many other SSD. Toshiba SSD seems never drop in performance after the drive get filled up with multiple datas write cycles. Samsung SSD on pre 10.6.8 probably not a great idea as there's no TRIM support. However, on Lion, Samsung SSD will not suffer from the "lazy" Garbage Collection. Samsung has updated the firmware few times since then, so I guess there isn't much differences between Toshiba/Samsung in this regard.

In the end, those are just based on lab test of Samsung 470 versus Kingston V+. They may or may not reflect the same results on the SSD used on MBA. Even if they did, both are basically equalled in performance. In the real world, you probably will not experience any difference between the two. Or put it this way - both has strong point and weak point, so you won't get the best of both world.

Buy it and enjoy.


PS: If you're into audio production, you may want to keep an eye on the SSD model. If the Samsung can handle multiple random read queues much better than Toshiba, it may be very well benefit multi audio track mixing/recording and especially, samples streaming for large sample library which consist of large amount of random clusters. Never did any real tests though, so you may want to take my words with a pinch of salt. :eek:
 
jackyyeow said:
From what I gathered, Toshiba SSD has better random read speed but poorer random write speed. Good for opening application or files or booting up OS.

The strong point of Samsung SSD (if the specs are identical to the Samsung 470) is when it comes to heavy random read task. Toshiba (if identical to Kingston V+) will tank in the same situation, although there's no drop in speed compared to single queue but in comparison Samsung 470 will increase a lot in speed. Think of application like flashget/iGetter, Toshiba handles single segment downloads slightly better than Samsung, but Samsung can have multiple segments to accelerate the download speed few times more.

On the other hand Toshiba SSD appears to have the most solid Garbage Collection among many other SSD. Toshiba SSD seems never drop in performance after the drive get filled up with multiple datas write cycles. Samsung SSD on pre 10.6.8 probably not a great idea as there's no TRIM support. However, on Lion, Samsung SSD will not suffer from the "lazy" Garbage Collection. Samsung has updated the firmware few times since then, so I guess there isn't much differences between Toshiba/Samsung in this regard.

In the end, those are just based on lab test of Samsung 470 versus Kingston V+. They may or may not reflect the same results on the SSD used on MBA. Even if they did, both are basically equalled in performance. In the real world, you probably will not experience any difference between the two. Or put it this way - both has strong point and weak point, so you won't get the best of both world.

Buy it and enjoy.


PS: If you're into audio production, you may want to keep an eye on the SSD model. If the Samsung can handle multiple random read queues much better than Toshiba, it may be very well benefit multi audio track mixing/recording and especially, samples streaming for large sample library which consist of large amount of random clusters. Never did any real tests though, so you may want to take my words with a pinch of salt. :eek:
Click to expand...

Im pretty sure apple uses their own firmware which can have an impact on performance. Not sure if they use custom controllers though. Either way the performance is not going to be the same even if they used the same manufacturer or same nand.
 
marrzie said:
Not sure if they use custom controllers though.
Click to expand...
I don't think so, seeing the speed of Toshiba and Samsung matching Kingston V+ and Samsung 470, I think the controllers are the same but that's just my guess.

Also the differences between the Toshiba and Samsung used by Apple is the NCQ - which is why the Samsung has better multi-queue random reads.
 
I was driving in rush hour morning traffic and was listening to a popular morning radio show (this was before my iPod and car FM transmitter). The hosts were debunking a quasi scientific news tidbit that claimed that homosexual males had two (can't remember which) fingers that were the same size.

I caught myself at a light, holding up my hand to examine it, realized what I was doing, and quickly put my hand down. Sheepishly, I looked at cars around me, and noticed that half of the men in the cars around me were doing the same thing!

I kind of think this is the same effect that MacRumors threads can cause. You can be using your machine with not a care or worry in the world-until you read one of these threads. (I read one right after I think I carelessly used migration assistant which screwed up my display settings, and blamed the LG display.)

Just relax and enjoy your machine (and/or your sexual orientation;)); everthing's fine.
 
2IS said:
You're better off pretending you didn't read about all the BS and just go buy and enjoy your MBA.
Click to expand...

I agree.


I have an 11" MBA with a Samsung 256 GB drive, but I'm sure I would have been just as happy with a Toshiba drive.

I'm more concerned about battery life than anything else, to be honest.
 
clyde2801 said:
And unless you're going to be encoding videos all day with it using handbrake, you probably won't know the difference.
Click to expand...

_Especially_ if you are encoding videos all day using Handbrake you won't know the difference. Start Handbrake. Start encoding. Then start Activity Monitor and see how Handbrake isn't going to read more than about 2 MB per second. Not even close to ten percent of what the oldest and slowest hard drive in any Mac will do.
 
clyde2801 said:
And unless you're going to be encoding videos all day with it using handbrake, you probably won't know the difference.

Allegedly samsung has better sequential read and write speed, toshiba supposedly better for non sequential.

Again, you'd probably have to be mr data on a good day to tell the difference between the two in everyday usage.
Click to expand...

I do a ton of encoding with handbrake and have the samsung drive.

I have a 2011 17-inch MBP and just got rid of my 2011 base iMac. Before those I came from a core 2 duo mac mini.

In my experience the processor was what matters.

You'll be happy with which ever you get.
 
I'm also pondering buying a 13" 1.8 i7 Air instead of a 15" Macbook Pro but wouldn't like to spend $1600 and get a slower drive and inferior panel. I looked at the spreadsheet on the other SSD and Panel thread and from what I see, all people (at least in the US) who had a 13" i7 with a 256GB SSD had the Samsung SSD and most except one or two had the LG-Phillips display.
 
SHIPARCH said:
I'm also pondering buying a 13" 1.8 i7 Air instead of a 15" Macbook Pro but wouldn't like to spend $1600 and get a slower drive and inferior panel. I looked at the spreadsheet on the other SSD and Panel thread and from what I see, all people (at least in the US) who had a 13" i7 with a 256GB SSD had the Samsung SSD and most except one or two had the LG-Phillips display.
Click to expand...

Yeah I know, if Im going to spend all that money I want to get the faster SSD too... What I can see is that the iCore 7 with 1.8GHz 13' inch get the samsung 256 SSD.....

Other thing, are they different displays too on the MBA ?? or they are all the same ? Im talking about the new MBA 2011...
 
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