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Apple Doubles MacBook Pro R/W Performance

Lucas123 writes Benchmark tests performed on the 2015 MacBook Pro revealed it does have twice the read/write performance as the mid-2014 model. Tests performed with the Blackmagic benchmark tool revealed read/write speeds of more than 1,300MBps/1,400MBps, respectively. So what's changed? The new MacBook Pro does have a faster Intel dual-core i7 2.9GHz processor and 1866MHz LPDDR3) RAM, but the real performance gain is in the latest PCIe M.2 flash module. The 2014 model used a PCIe 2.0 x2 card and the 2015 model uses a PCIe 3.0 x4 (four I/O lanes) card. Twice the lanes, twice the speed. While Apple uses a proprietary flash card made by Samsung, Intel, Micron and SanDisk are all working on similar technology, so it's likely to soon wind up in high-end PCs.

14 of 204 comments (clear)

  1. Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You mean like any other technology purchase :(

  2. Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP by reactor451 · · Score: 5, Informative

    I know it's a little late, but for your next apple purchase (if there is one) be sure to check:

    http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/

    They generally stay on top of most of the rumors surrounding new product launches. Well enough to know if it's worth waiting for a few months before buying the new model or holding out till the next big Apple event.

  3. Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP by DRJlaw · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You bought a Haswell-based MBP knowing full well that Broadwell had been released and would work its way into the MBP line shortly.

    You also ignored the fact that Apple has been updating the Retina MacBook Pros like clockwork.

    If you're miffed, be miffed at yourself. Nobody hid this from you.

  4. Semicolons! by SammyIAm · · Score: 5, Insightful
    While Apple uses a proprietary flash card made by Samsung, Intel, Micron and SanDisk are all working on similar technology...

    What a missed opportunity for a semicolon after "Samsung", and what a confusing sentence as a result.

  5. Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'd check the benchmarks on real work you might be doing. Unless you're doing some very specific unusual tasks, doubling the continuous write and read speeds over an already fast SSD won't gain much.

  6. Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Doubling performance of one subsystem only counts as 'doubling performance' against specific workloads(of which there are some, hence the enthusiasm among users of Big Serious Databases for buying SSDs that cost substantially more than this laptop, or even a pallet of these laptops, once you get the whole storage system up and running); but your usual laptop activities probably won't be quite as dramatic.

    What is somewhat notable about this change is that these days are the first time in ages that storage systems(outside of contrived scenarios involving hanging gigantic fiber channel arrays off the lousiest PCI-X HBA you can find, then adding a cheapie PCI device to the same bus just to cut the bandwidth further, or similar silliness) have actually been bottlenecked by their connection to the rest of the system, rather than by their own inadequacy.

    With HDDs, and the earlier SSDs, the alleged link speed was a mostly theoretical value that determined little except how fast you could access the drive's cache RAM. Now, it seems, adding a couple of extra PCIe lanes can actually double performance. Not bad at all.

  7. Re:No WAY! by sexconker · · Score: 4, Informative

    Pretty much.

    M.2 slots and SSDs are now fairly common place in laptops.

    For desktops, direct PCIe flash drives have been around for years. PCIe adapters also exist if you want to use an M.2 drive now and your motherboard doesn't have an M.2 slot. Newer desktop boards ship with SATA Express ports, and drives should show up this summer offering the speed benefits of M.2 (running off PCIe lanes) as well as the benefits of NVMe, along with the possibility of being thrown into RAID (depending on your controller, of course). Many newer boards also feature a M.2 slot if you hate cables or are very space constrained.

  8. You can upgrade your 2014 MBP by Chaset · · Score: 4, Interesting

    According to this: http://blog.macsales.com/25878... OWC put a 4x PCIE SSD from a mac pro into a 2014 MBP and got the extra performance gain. i.e. the 2014 MBP has 4x PCIE wired to the connector, but by default ships with a 2x PCIE SSD. They expect to ship SSD upgrades for MBP "soon", so you're not out of luck if you have the previous model.

    --
    -- "This world is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel."
  9. Re: As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP by ERJ · · Score: 4, Informative

    Nope, I can pretty much say you would get no benefit from the faster drive for transcoding. The cpu will be the limiter. You would see benefit for non-linear video editing where you are working with massive raw files but the conversion is going to be limited in other ways.

  10. Four times the speed not twice. by YouGotTobeKidding · · Score: 5, Informative

    "Twice the lanes, twice the speed"...man someone doesnt understand the PCIe standard or how to do simple math. Its actually twice the lanes, FOUR* times the (theoretical) speed. 2x500MB/s vs 4x985MB/s * rounded up

  11. 2x PCIe 2 vs. 4x PCIe 3 by Mal-2 · · Score: 4, Informative

    The raw bandwidth available for transfers isn't doubled, it's quadrupled. PCIe 3.0 is twice as fast as PCIe 2.0, channel for channel, so the bandwidth would have doubled even if they had not added two more channels. They doubled it in two different ways at the same time.

    That said, the old flash was probably not being that badly constricted by the older standard, and the current generation is only capable of twice the throughput. However, adding even more bandwidth than that is a nice bit of future-proofing and quite welcome.

    --
    How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
  12. Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP by fnj · · Score: 4, Informative

    The terminology police hereby fine you for incorrect terms. There is no "SATA6". You probably mean SATA3, which is 6 Gbps.

    Which in no way detracts from your point, which is entirely correct.

  13. Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP by Golden_Rider · · Score: 3

    Agree.

    I swapped my old Core 2 Duo E7200 (2.53) O/Ced to 3.8 with an OCZ Agility2 SSD for an i3 with a Kingston SSDnow 300 (*old* retired machine that was given to my dad). Altough the new machine boots way faster, and the new SSD is about twice as fast in benchmarks (even if low-end), I find it faster, but not *blew me out of my chair* faster.

    Once you go from HDD to SSD, even the cheapest lowest performing SSD is gonna be much faster than anything with spinning platters.

    True, that is simply "diminishing returns". Just going from a HDD to ANY SSD will make your computer incredibly faster, but then going to any faster SSD will not give the same benefits, because that one only will be faster on continuous access (like copying large files). Booting the OS or accessing small random files will not benefit much anymore. So going for a super expensive SSD will only be worth it if a.) you read/write lots of LARGE files (e.g. movie editing) or b.) need the long-term reliability of a SSD designed for multi-year writing of tons of data.

  14. Re:As a recent buyer of a mid-2014 MBP by rthille · · Score: 3, Informative

    This is so wrong in so many ways.

    --
    Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/