Question For New MBA Owners That Have MBPs with SSDs

[neteng101]

Can anyone here that owns both the new MBA and has SSD drives in their MBP comment on the differences in performance between the systems?

I'm so tempted to just get a fully loaded 11.6" MBA... but maybe it might serve me better to just upgrade my 15" MBP (late '08 2.53) with SSD for now. Currently have a 500GB 7200rpm Hitachi in it.

Wondering if the SSD will bring the speedy feel of the MBA to my MBP.

 

[fuzzielitlpanda]

Yes it will. Get a good quality SSD like Intel X25-M Gen 2 and your system will fly

 

[neteng101]

Actually have been holding off waiting for the Intel Gen 3 drives to come out. I've used an SSD on a Windows laptop but not a Mac yet and I don't remember the old Air being nearly anywhere close to what the new one is when I tried it in the Apple store previously.

 

[Scottsdale]

The Intel SSD will run amazing in your MBP. It will make it feel like a brand new computer.

You need to decide if you would be happy with either 11 or 13 inches if you're using a 15" right now. The thing is the 13" has the same workspace in terms of pixels, but you will lose a lot of workspace with the 11" MBA.

I feel like the v 2,1 MBA with SSD is faster than an MBP already. But the few MBPs I used with SSDs felt like Mac Pros.

Good luck with your decision.

 

[elwood58]

I have a MBP with SSD (256 GB), but it is not nearly as fast as my MBA 11". The main reason is that my old MBP only has a sata bus rated at 1.5 GB per second, where the new hardware sata bus is rated at 3 GB per second.

Don't get me wrong, the SSD is still very fast, and really increased the performance of my older MBP. It also gave me sone peace of mind about physical shock to my system. I travel a lot, and take my systems in and out of the bag many times per day.

 

[neteng101]

You need to decide if you would be happy with either 11 or 13 inches if you're using a 15" right now.

I'm keeping the 15" either way... the 11" would be a portable travel companion, I don't quite need it now, but I really WANT it.

Decisions, decisions...

 

[1BadMac]

I have a MBP with SSD (256 GB), but it is not nearly as fast as my MBA 11". The main reason is that my old MBP only has a sata bus rated at 1.5 GB per second, where the new hardware sata bus is rated at 3 GB per second.

Don't get me wrong, the SSD is still very fast, and really increased the performance of my older MBP. It also gave me sone peace of mind about physical shock to my system. I travel a lot, and take my systems in and out of the bag many times per day.

1.5 vs 3.0 bus should not be the issue with your SSD,you are not going to get closet either with real world speeds. There were some firmware issues earlier on with the OS showing the negotiated speed. I would suspect your SSD as the culprit (old firmware, bad performing controller?). The 11" im testing thus far performs identical in terms of app launch and boot times in comparison with my 13" MBP w/ OCZ SSD.

 

[Pressure]

1.5 vs 3.0 bus should not be the issue with your SSD,you are not going to get closet either with real world speeds. There were some firmware issues earlier on with the OS showing the negotiated speed. I would suspect your SSD as the culprit (old firmware, bad performing controller?). The 11" im testing thus far performs identical in terms of app launch and boot times in comparison with my 13" MBP w/ OCZ SSD.

Honestly, a SATA 1.5 bus is easily saturated by any modern Solid State Disk.

 

[barefeats]

Though the 1.5Gbps interface will hamstring a top performing SSDs when it comes to large sequential transfers, it won't hamstring the small random transfers.

I say that because the random transfer speed of the top performing SSDs like the OCZ Vertex 2 and OWC Mercury Extreme is 150MB/s (or 1.5 gigabit/s). That's actually faster than the MacBook Air's flash storage whose random transfer speed is 90MB/s.

The other advantage of the SSD is the number of transfer requests it processes per second -- a 100 times as many as a standard HDD.

Having said that, though it will speed up your storage, it won't speed up your CPU or memory intensive tasks. I suggest you run Activity Monitor during your normal work flow to see if the bottleneck is your storage, your CPU, or your memory.