“Benchmark tests by French site Mac4Ever show that the latest MacBook Pro 15 is delivering SSD read and write speeds in excess of 1GB per second,” 9to5Mac reports. “The site repeatedly achieved these speeds when Apple claims only ‘up to 775MB per second.'”
“The MBP 15 is able to achieve these speeds because it has a 4-channel PCIe connection to the SSD, in contrast to the 2-channel link on the MBP 13 and MacBook Air models,” 9to5Mac reports, “though from some reader reports this may be the case only on models fitted with 1TB drives.”
Read more in the full article here.
Picked one up yesterday. The thing is screaming FAST.
It really is. I can’t turn up the audio because of all the screaming.
If true, a minute and half to load 1hr of HD video? That’s fast!
With each passing day, my 2010 Mac Pro looks more and more dated…
So does my late 2011 MacBook Pro.
I was recycling an HP laptop at work and on and took out the hard disk and lo and behold it is a 128GB SSD. Looked it up on the manufacturers site and they mentioned no Mac support. Windows machines only. On a hoot, I put in in my late model MacBook (white) Mountain Lion capable and bingo. I was able to format the SSD with the recover disk utilities and install Mountain Lion. I have since upgraded to Mavericks and have had no problem.
It was like a brand new machine without beach balls. Opening Pages, Numbers, MS Word, iMovie, iPhoto and iTunes and still no beach ball when I use safari.
A dated machine but very responsive now.
I envy your technical abilities, I wish I was like you, and not scared of computers as I am 🙁
You have nothing to fear but fear itself. Platitudes, schmatitudes.
But seriously, taking out the SSD was easy and installing it in my MacBook was easy as they are “user replaceable” in these models.
No doubt that many laptops are difficult to work on but most people if they are careful can do common task.
You know what was hard? Upgrading the ram on my Mac Mini as Apple has these tiny connectors that may be “easy” to connect in the open or by machine, but when you are trying to get your fat fingers between the lid and the chassis and trying to connect this tiny little connector on this this wire.. now that is a bitch.
It does help to be mechanically inclined. It comes naturally to me so there is that.
So does my 2005 PowerBook G4! 🙁
I traded in my 2008 Mac Pro to pick up a 1TB MBP.
I have a 2010 17″ MBP and will upgrade within two weeks. Can’t wait. I tried one in the Apple store and it was incredibly fast. Beyond snappy.
I have a MBP 17 inch mid 2009 and am budget constrained. I am replacing the 500 MB HD that’s 75% full with 1TB SSHD hybrid and upgrading from 4 to 8 GB RAM. DIY total of $200 from Crucial.com. Sure, not screaming fast but still glad of Apple quality and able to run Mavericks.
To all those out there who are budget constrained or in older machines, the very best thing you can do to extract the most from your well loved mac is add memory. 4 to 8 gig is a massive benefit then lesser benefit from there on unless you are using memory hungry programs. SSDs are the next best thing and can make a big difference also but the memory comes first, or with the drive tech upgrade. Yes I know many of you will go “yeah that’s bloody obvious” but there are also many out there who have yet to be touched by your golden wand of knowledge. Share a little. The Dr.
You’re going to miss that 17″ Screen. I just went from 2009 17″ that died, to brand new 15″ rMBP with every available option. Fast yes, but the screen feels so small, and, is there a trick to get more resolution on the desktop? most usable is 1920 x 1200.. which looks small on a 15.. make sure you have no WD external hard drive software.. thousands and thousands of people have lost their external drives as the view counts are racing in the tens of thousands on about 4 different message boards. Ok, you won’t regret the new computer. What are you doing with the old 17? wanna sell it?
If your 17″ MBP died you might check with Apple how much it would be to fix. Mine just died (Logic Board) and it was only $310 to fix it. It’s a flat fee to refurb the whole machine to working order. I’m wanting to squeak one more year out of it so I can get a second gen new Mac Pro. It will also be useful to have around to download CF cards once I have a desktop. Just a heads up. I was shocked about the price. Thought it would be $600 for a new logic board and would have to upgrade to something early.
SSDs are soooo slow 😉
Interesting article.
The big question is which models/sizes support 4 channel PCIe. I wish Apple offered more details under the “Tech Specs” section of their website. Why do we have to wait for companies/people to dissect Apple products to get the details. If I were deciding between a 750GB and 1TB of flash storage and one was 25% faster. I should be able to make an informed decision before I buy.
BTW why is “PCIe flash storage” being referred to as an “SSD”? To call it an SSD implies a 2.5″ solid state SATA 3 drive. Which is what we are comparing it to.
SSD == Solid State Drive
does not matter wether SAS, SATA, PCIe
The implication is yours.
When I think of a “drive” I think of a hard drive, a floppy drive, a CD drive, something of the sort.
The question is why is it being referred to as a “drive” when it has as much resemblance to any known “drive” as a stick of RAM. (which is more what it looks like).
I would think something along the line “SSS” solid state storage would be more appropriate as a generic term, or are we simply going to keep calling devices that host information “drives” for the rest of time, no matter what form they take.
There is probably a reason Apple chose to call it “flash storage” instead of a “solid state drive” (to avoid confusing the two).
Why are tanks called tanks? Because when they were experimenting the tank during World War 1, soldering noticed tests being conducted on vehicles with bulldozer type treads. The higher ups told the soldiers they were testing water transport vehicles, and referred to them as tanks. The name stuck. Weird how such a deadly weapon of war is called something so mundane.
I skipped buying a new Macbook Pro last year: I bought an SSD instead, which made my “old” machine at least 2x faster. Looks like they are trying again to get me to buy a new one. Keep trying and we’ll see what happens 😉
I’ve seen Mac’s go from taking 50 seconds to boot, down to 9 seconds after swapping out the HDD for an SSD. Of course I was using Mercury Supreme Pro 6G SSD’s from OWC. Not cheap, they’re about $529 for a 480GB model. But man are they fast. Programs like InDesign boot in about 5 seconds. You also have to have a Mac and an SSD that supports SATA 3.0 (6Gb/s).
PCIe has “lanes”, not “channels.”
-jcr
I had trouble cloning over to my new MBPR’s terabyte drive, but once I fixed it, I finally have the ‘snappy’ Mac I always dreamed about.
hi, I also had the same trouble as you when i wanna install the suse on the mbp . could you like offer the drive or link for me thx a lot
775MB per second!! What the hell maaan 🙂