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I am quite interested to hear from somebody who has bought the drive as I am considering buying the 256GB.

I am still debating if I should go with the c300 or the m4 as they are equally priced on Crucial's website. I know that I would not benefit from the read speed gains as the Mac Pro has only a SATA II port but I think I can benefit from the increased write speeds. Apart from that I like to buy the newest tech but I hate to be a lab rat.

I would like to know what is the impact of Crucial's slow garbage collection under Mac OS X. Is there a significant loss in read and write speeds?
 
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I got one last week but I installed it in my early 2008 MBP rather than my Mac Pro (in which I already have a C300). This is primarily because I intend to upgrade my MBP probably within the year (I'll wait for the next revision) so I'm planning ahead to just take the SSD out this laptop and shove it in the new one, so I wanted a SATA III drive :)

So far, no problems at all. Obviously the SATA I bus on the MBP is the limiting factor but the difference in the machine is mind-blowing, and even with the lower bus speed it feels just as nippy as the MP running the C300.

I installed the TRIM enabler without any problems and so far, not had any problems.

I suspect you'll never notice any difference in speed over a C300 with real-world use even if the benchmarks are slightly higher. I just figured they were the same price so I might as well get one that would still be the flagship drive a year down the line.
 
Most current gen and last gen SSD's will perform almost identical in every day use. Don't fall for the trap of buying based on specs, especially advertised sequential read and write speed. Make sure you look at random read/write performance at low queue depths (ideally QD=1)... but what you will find is that they are all very similar.

I would suggest the cheapest drive you can find that's made by a vendor you trust. Given that, the m4 and the Intel 320 seem to be the best choices right now and use Marvel and Intel controllers respectively. If you want a Sandforce based drive, I'd recommend OWC drives. The C300 is probably the best 4K random performer, but I believe it's priced more expensive now than the newer m4.

Micron (Crucial) and Intel are both in the NAND business (in a joint venture) so it makes sense that they would bin the parts and choose the best quality NAND for their own products.

OCZ probably has the worst reputation for reliability, support, and even shady business practices. IMHO, they are focused on the enthusiast PC community where the tolerance for hassles are higher in the quest for the ultimate in performance... Characteristics that don't define typical Mac users. So while the Vertex 3 (with Sandforce controller) is the benchmark leader in most tests, I personally wouldn't buy one. It's slightly better performance will not be realizable in desktop tasks, it costs more, and it comes from a company with a less than stellar track-record of late.

That's my 2-cents. :)
 
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