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Please help me choose a 256GB SSD for MBP Unibody 08

R

RealEvil

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Aug 5, 2007
338
34
Hi,

I have a MBP 15" Unibody with a 320GB HD now. Id like to upgrade to a SSD as I have a bit of cash spare at the moment.

I have read as much info as I can and have settled on 3 options (all of which I want to buy through Novatech a UK company who are just up the road from me):

GSKill Titan: http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?GSK-SSD256
OCZ Vertex: http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?OCZ-VSSD25
Corsair P256/Samsung P256: http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?SAM-SSD256 / http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?CSR-P256

There is quite a variance on price, ranging from £480 up to £570. I think the Samsung/Corsair probably offer the best performance but I cam concerned they dont offer Firmware upgrades and my favorite review site PCPer has not tested it over time yet to know how it degrades (and I dont know about TRIM commands for it etc yet).

Any advice? I am not totally clueless but I only started researching this a few days ago and I dont know a lot about which is best. The Intel 160GB is not an option - I need the extra 100GB these drives offer.

Thanks
 
Seriously, hold out for better technology.

SSD's have been out for some time, but most of them have serious deficiencies. As of this writing, a 5400rpm drive is the best fit for a laptop.

I have two top-of-the-line SATA II drives in RAID0 on my desktop computer and love it, but I understand that it is not feasible to have that on my laptop for a lot of reasons.

Every day SSD technology gets better and soon there will be an affordable alternative to "spinning" drives, but as for now, a good 5400rpm drive is the best for performance/battery life.
 
CarcinogenX said:
Seriously, hold out for better technology.

SSD's have been out for some time, but most of them have serious deficiencies. As of this writing, a 5400rpm drive is the best fit for a laptop.

I have two top-of-the-line SATA II drives in RAID0 on my desktop computer and love it, but I understand that it is not feasible to have that on my laptop for a lot of reasons.

Every day SSD technology gets better and soon there will be an affordable alternative to "spinning" drives, but as for now, a good 5400rpm drive is the best for performance/battery life.
Click to expand...

May I ask what 'serious deficiencies' the new gen SSDs have ? :) The only deficiency in an SSD is the price/gb ratio.

Once you install an SSD into a laptop, you'll never want to use a 5400 rpm or 7200 rpm HDD. Ever.

RAID0 ? Hah, no way man, you use a single SSD and it will beat the 2x RAID0 array in terms of read/write performance, especially random performance. Hands down :D

To the OP: I'd say it comes down to what you want: cheap price or support or speed. OCZ have firmware upgrades galore for the Vertex but I believe they also sell the Summit - which is the same as the Corsair

Here's my post with the Vertex on the 2008 MB https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/664252/
 
I got the corsair and I have been extra pleased with that. No problems at all till today.

Ssd might be expensive for this time being, but surely it's totally worth it. The best upgrade I've ever done.
 
Thanks for the input.

For the Samsung/Corsair I am worried that the lack of firmware updates means that they may not be many 'fixes' for long term slowdown that seems almost inevitable on a laptop SSD. Any thoughts?

I am reading about the Vertex now - thanks!
 
RealEvil said:
For the Samsung/Corsair I am worried that the lack of firmware updates means that they may not be many 'fixes' for long term slowdown that seems almost inevitable on a laptop SSD. Any thoughts?
Click to expand...

The Summit from OCZ is a Samsung based SSD and has a fix for the long term slowdown.

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showpost.php?p=397402&postcount=28

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showpost.php?p=397584&postcount=31

The Vertex has TRIM - this will work in OSX once 10.6 is out but till then, if the TRIM spec gets finalised, it would be easy to boot Linux and do a 'wiper' from there since Linux has HFS+ drivers
 
harshw said:
The Summit from OCZ is a Samsung based SSD and has a fix for the long term slowdown.

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showpost.php?p=397402&postcount=28

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showpost.php?p=397584&postcount=31

The Vertex has TRIM - this will work in OSX once 10.6 is out but till then, if the TRIM spec gets finalised, it would be easy to boot Linux and do a 'wiper' from there since Linux has HFS+ drivers
Click to expand...

Wow - is it the Samsung controller that does this 'auto management'? If so, the Corsair P256 is about £50 cheaper than the OCZ Summit.

Also, I have seen there is a Vertex for Mac. Whats the difference?
 
RealEvil said:
Wow - is it the Samsung controller that does this 'auto management'? If so, the Corsair P256 is about £50 cheaper than the OCZ Summit.

Also, I have seen there is a Vertex for Mac. Whats the difference?
Click to expand...

There is zero difference between Vertex/Mac and Vertex/PC. Just marketing. And it's the OCZ specific firmware on the Summit that does the auto management. Samsung makes a lot of drives for a lot of people - unlike Indilinx, the Samsung drives really are ODM and hence have differences - I have not seen the auto mgmt function referred to by any other manufacturer (eg: Corsair) with a Samsung drive.

Actually the Summit is going to be my next SSD for the MB ...
 
harshw said:
There is zero difference between Vertex/Mac and Vertex/PC. Just marketing. And it's the OCZ specific firmware on the Summit that does the auto management. Samsung makes a lot of drives for a lot of people - unlike Indilinx, the Samsung drives really are ODM and hence have differences - I have not seen the auto mgmt function referred to by any other manufacturer (eg: Corsair) with a Samsung drive.

Actually the Summit is going to be my next SSD for the MB ...
Click to expand...

agreed...the summit i have done some benching on...and wow...

next week i will have benchmarks up for x25m raid 0 , raid 1 and the summit single drive and summit raid 0 , raid 1 in my mbp the following week...i cant wait.

i have been benching these drives in real scenarios with my iphone stopwatch...i have some great data!
 
RealEvil said:
Hi,

I have a MBP 15" Unibody with a 320GB HD now. Id like to upgrade to a SSD as I have a bit of cash spare at the moment.

I have read as much info as I can and have settled on 3 options (all of which I want to buy through Novatech a UK company who are just up the road from me):

GSKill Titan:
imp
http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?GSK-SSD256
OCZ Vertex:
imp
http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?OCZ-VSSD25
Corsair P256/Samsung P256:
imp
http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?SAM-SSD256 /
imp
http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?CSR-P256

There is quite a variance on price, ranging from £480 up to £570. I think the Samsung/Corsair probably offer the best performance but I cam concerned they dont offer Firmware upgrades and my favorite review site PCPer has not tested it over time yet to know how it degrades (and I dont know about TRIM commands for it etc yet).

Any advice? I am not totally clueless but I only started researching this a few days ago and I dont know a lot about which is best. The Intel 160GB is not an option - I need the extra 100GB these drives offer.

Thanks
Click to expand...

What you do, don't get the Titans. Those are the RAID0 JMicron, first gen SSDs that are total crap.

Vertex is excellent and with each firmware update, it is getting better. But it still have some issues such as bootcamp incompatibilities with older macs and some people experienced sleep/hang issues which have been fixed by 10.5.7 for most people but some still experience it with unibody macs.

Summit's only known issue is some random slow performance issues in some macs but not all.

Intel are the best compatible SSDs with Macs and they do have 320GB planned to come out by Q3/Q4 of this year.

If you don't need it right now, I strongly suggest waiting for the third generation of SSDs which will be much faster, cheaper and better overall.
 
RealEvil said:
Hi,

I have a MBP 15" Unibody with a 320GB HD now. Id like to upgrade to a SSD as I have a bit of cash spare at the moment.

I have read as much info as I can and have settled on 3 options (all of which I want to buy through Novatech a UK company who are just up the road from me):

GSKill Titan: http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?GSK-SSD256
OCZ Vertex: http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?OCZ-VSSD25
Corsair P256/Samsung P256: http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?SAM-SSD256 / http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?CSR-P256

There is quite a variance on price, ranging from £480 up to £570. I think the Samsung/Corsair probably offer the best performance but I cam concerned they dont offer Firmware upgrades and my favorite review site PCPer has not tested it over time yet to know how it degrades (and I dont know about TRIM commands for it etc yet).

Any advice? I am not totally clueless but I only started researching this a few days ago and I dont know a lot about which is best. The Intel 160GB is not an option - I need the extra 100GB these drives offer.

Thanks
Click to expand...

Oh oh. If you don't need your Superdrive... Have you thought about using two 160 GB Intel X25-Ms in Raid 0?
 
aleni said:
I got the corsair and I have been extra pleased with that. No problems at all till today.

Ssd might be expensive for this time being, but surely it's totally worth it. The best upgrade I've ever done.
Click to expand...

What was difference in your experience? In particular applications, boot times etc. Time from hibernation, etc.
 
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