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MacBooks afflicted with SATA 'degrade'
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Author:  gavomatic57 [ Mon Jun 15, 2009 12:01 pm ]
Post subject:  MacBooks afflicted with SATA 'degrade'
Clicky
Quote:
Apple may have switched to a slower SATA interface with some new MacBook Pros.

Apple had used SATA II for its MacBooks but appears to have reverted to the older and slower SATA I for some new MacBooks. The affected models are the 13in and 15in screen MacBook Pros. The 13in white MacBook and MacBook Air and the 17in MacBook Pros use the SATA II interface.

A thread on the MacRumours web forum provides more information, including the suggestion that a firmware upgrade could fix the problem. Apple has not responded yet.

The Serial ATA interconnect links computers with disk drives and ran at 1.5Gb/s in its first incarnation, That was upgraded to 3Gb/s in the second generation of the standard, and the latest SATA III version operates at 6Gb/s.

The SATA degrade shouldn't affect hard disk drive MacBook users, but may well affect users with Flash-based solid-state drives (SSDs). Benchmarks indicate slower SSD I/O than with the 3Gb/s link, with large sequential reads the most affected. Overall, SSD use in the affected MacBooks should still show faster performance than with hard disk drives. ®


Surely some mistake? Where are they finding new SATA150 controllers??? Maybe I'll wait a week or two...
Author:  Linux_User [ Mon Jun 15, 2009 12:07 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: MacBooks afflicted with SATA 'degrade'
This surely isn't going to matter if you're using a standard HDD anyway? :?

The Macbook Air users would have every right to be pissed though!

I wait for Apple to comment, but as Gav says, shome mishtake, shurely?
Author:  big_D [ Mon Jun 15, 2009 12:11 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: MacBooks afflicted with SATA 'degrade'
SATA 2 brought more than just a bump in speed, it introduced features like NCQ, which help streamline actual disk accesses...
Author:  gavomatic57 [ Mon Jun 15, 2009 12:13 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: MacBooks afflicted with SATA 'degrade'
Thing is, it may not be a problem now, but if you plan to keep your macbook a while, an SSD upgrade a year or two down the line when they reach reasonable price levels isn't going to be difficult, but if this is a hardware problem and the interconnect IS only SATA150, it will be a problem. Hopefully a firmware update will sort it, but I'd want to be sure before I bought one.
Author:  ProfessorF [ Mon Jun 15, 2009 12:33 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: MacBooks afflicted with SATA 'degrade'
Some seasoned Apple users often wait for the first run of any new Apple line to go through before buying in. Might be worth waiting a few weeks Gav and keeping an ear to the ground for anything else that shakes loose.
Author:  gavomatic57 [ Mon Jun 15, 2009 4:53 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: MacBooks afflicted with SATA 'degrade'
ProfessorF wrote:
Some seasoned Apple users often wait for the first run of any new Apple line to go through before buying in. Might be worth waiting a few weeks Gav and keeping an ear to the ground for anything else that shakes loose.


Boohoo! Will have to keep my ear to the ground, find out what is going on!
Author:  big_D [ Mon Jun 15, 2009 5:50 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: MacBooks afflicted with SATA 'degrade'
The servers are also getting a bit of a bashing, they are around 25% slower than equivalent servers from other big name companies, such as the HP Proliants, Fujistsu Premacy, Dell etc.

This seems to be down to the current OS X Kernel not supporting NUMA, so NUMA is also switched off in firmware (Non-Uniform Memory Architecture).

This means that memory access on the Nehalem based machines (which could also explain the Mac Pro's relatively poor performance) is much slower than it should be, compared to Linux and Windows based machines - because Windows and Linux have had to deal with the AMD Opteron technology for several years, the optimisation for NUMA is built in, so it automatically takes advantage of it with the Nehalem series of chips. Apple haven't had to deal with AMD's memory access architecture before.

Hopefully Apple will address this in Snow Leopard.

In a head to head against a Fujitsu Primergy, dual 2.26Ghz server, in c't magazine, the Apple gave the following benchmark results:

(bigger number = better)

SPECjbb2005
Xserve/Apple/Sun JVM 171347
Primergy/Sun JVM 224592
Primergy/IBM JVM 277441

SPECpower_ssj2008
Xserve/Apple/Sun JVM 337
Primergy/Sun JVM 554
Primergy/IBM JVM 667

SPEC CPU 2006:
int_rate_base2006 64-bit)
Xserve 142
Primergy 173

fp_rate_base_2006 (64-bit)
Xserve 133
Primergy 155

Stream 5.8 (0 threads, MB/s)
Xserve 9200
Primergy 11200

Stream 5.8 (6 threads, MB/s)
Xserve 18000
Primergy 24600

Stream 5.8 (16 threads, MB/s)
Xserve 21200
Primergy 24200
Author:  gavomatic57 [ Mon Jun 15, 2009 7:36 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: MacBooks afflicted with SATA 'degrade'
A pretty convincing hammering then! You'd think "the most advanced operating system" would support such things as NUMA in order to deserve the tag line.

However, I still want a macbook pro.
Author:  big_D [ Mon Jun 15, 2009 7:49 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: MacBooks afflicted with SATA 'degrade'
The laptops are excellent, if pricey. The same for the iMacs, excellent design and I love the near silence when working on one, just they aren't very competitive on price, compared to a normal desktop.

But the current generation Mac Pro and Xserve seem to be unnecessarily crippled in terms of performance, compared to Windows and Linux based equivalents coming from other manufacturers.

Just reading the specs, the Xserve was running in tripple channel mode, the Primergy in dual channel mode! :shock: That makes the results even more shocking (6 x 2GB as opposed to 2x8GB). The Primergy had 4x2.5" drives in RAID 0, the XServe 3x3.5" drives... The prices were within €100 of each other.

The only place the XServe won out was on storage, it had 3TB of space on the 3.5" drives, the Primergy 290GB.
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