Performance variation found in SSDs shipping with new MacBook Airs
Apple last week refreshed its popular line of MacBook Airs, offering 128GB SSDs on both an 11- and 13-inch model, but a recent discovery reveals that not all SSDs perform equally.
TLD Today benchmarked the 128GB SSDs shipping on both the 11- and 13-inch models and discovered a discrepancy in the performance of the flash drive speeds.
The 128GB Samsung SM128C SSD in the 11-inch MacBook Air achieved 246 MB/s write and 264 MB/s read speeds while the 128GB Toshiba TS128C SSD in the 13-inch model was only able to achieve speeds of 156 MB/s and 208 MB/s, respectively.
Engadget followed up with a similar series of its own tests and was able to verify the discrepancy.
“During our tests, the 256GB Samsung drive in our older [MacBook Air] model achieved 214 MB/s write and 251 MB/s read speeds, while the 128GB Toshiba drive in the new MacBook Air scored 184 MB/s and 203 MB/s during write and read tests, respectively,” the publication said.
Users can check which drive is installed in their MacBook Air by clicking on "About This Mac" in the menu bar and going to More Info -> System Report, and finally, clicking on Serial ATA.
Despite the seemingly significant drop in speed, the impact is likely to be negligible in day-to-day usage. The discovery, however, remains interesting and may suggest that Apple is using Samsung parts to supply the manufacturing lines for the high-end 11-inch MacBook Airs and Toshiba parts for the low-end 13-inch model.
The entry level MacBook Air comes with a 64GB SSD while the high-end 13-inch offers a 256GB SSD as standard.
Readers are encouraged to report their own findings in comments.
TLD Today benchmarked the 128GB SSDs shipping on both the 11- and 13-inch models and discovered a discrepancy in the performance of the flash drive speeds.
The 128GB Samsung SM128C SSD in the 11-inch MacBook Air achieved 246 MB/s write and 264 MB/s read speeds while the 128GB Toshiba TS128C SSD in the 13-inch model was only able to achieve speeds of 156 MB/s and 208 MB/s, respectively.
Engadget followed up with a similar series of its own tests and was able to verify the discrepancy.
“During our tests, the 256GB Samsung drive in our older [MacBook Air] model achieved 214 MB/s write and 251 MB/s read speeds, while the 128GB Toshiba drive in the new MacBook Air scored 184 MB/s and 203 MB/s during write and read tests, respectively,” the publication said.
Users can check which drive is installed in their MacBook Air by clicking on "About This Mac" in the menu bar and going to More Info -> System Report, and finally, clicking on Serial ATA.
Despite the seemingly significant drop in speed, the impact is likely to be negligible in day-to-day usage. The discovery, however, remains interesting and may suggest that Apple is using Samsung parts to supply the manufacturing lines for the high-end 11-inch MacBook Airs and Toshiba parts for the low-end 13-inch model.
The entry level MacBook Air comes with a 64GB SSD while the high-end 13-inch offers a 256GB SSD as standard.
Readers are encouraged to report their own findings in comments.
Comments
It's been a while since I read into it, but it has something to do with the way the actual chips are made. There's an actual physical limititation keeping 64 GB drives from being anywhere close to as fast as their 256 GB older brothers.
I thought this was common knowledge among semi-educated SSD consumers?
During the few weeks I spent researching SSD's before I bought my 256 GB Crucial C300, I found that the speed of the drive increased with the size with all manufacturers. At first I was only going to buy a 120-128 GB drive but when I saw how much faster the 240-256 GB drives were in real world use I couldn't resist going with a 256 GB model.
It's been a while since I read into it, but it has something to do with the way the actual chips are made. There's an actual physical limititation keeping 64 GB drives from being anywhere close to as fast as their 256 GB older brothers.
I thought this was common knowledge among semi-educated SSD consumers?
Another possibility is that since the larger SSDs have more free space, they can run longer before write performance starts to decline from having to overwrite data.
During the few weeks I spent researching SSD's before I bought my 256 GB Crucial C300, I found that the speed of the drive increased with the size with all manufacturers. At first I was only going to buy a 120-128 GB drive but when I saw how much faster the 240-256 GB drives were in real world use I couldn't resist going with a 256 GB model.
It's been a while since I read into it, but it has something to do with the way the actual chips are made. There's an actual physical limititation keeping 64 GB drives from being anywhere close to as fast as their 256 GB older brothers.
I thought this was common knowledge among semi-educated SSD consumers?
If it's an extra bank of chips added, I can see different sizes being very different speeds, even if the chip speeds are the same. To be honest, I don't know how SSD controllers are built, the "banks" idea is just speculation.
However, the article is also saying that different brands of drives of the same size have very different speeds. That shouldn't be a surprise either, but it's the luck of the draw as to which you get, it's kind of a weird lottery.
Ignorance of SSD Technology causes bad articles to be written.
Probably true, can you please elaborate on specific errors?
During the few weeks I spent researching SSD's before I bought my 256 GB Crucial C300, I found that the speed of the drive increased with the size with all manufacturers. At first I was only going to buy a 120-128 GB drive but when I saw how much faster the 240-256 GB drives were in real world use I couldn't resist going with a 256 GB model.
It's been a while since I read into it, but it has something to do with the way the actual chips are made. There's an actual physical limititation keeping 64 GB drives from being anywhere close to as fast as their 256 GB older brothers.
It is fairly well known. Anand has an excellent bit of info on the subject in his review of the Vertex 3 240GB, in referencing the poorer performance of the 120GB version:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4316/o...3-240gb-review
For the TLDR; crowd, basically you're increasing the channels that can be written to, as data is written concurrently across dies.
This is what I know about SSDs:
1) Larger capacity SSDs typically have shown faster read/write speeds. This is because larger SSDs use larger GB per chip in its constructions. This gap used to be something like 20-50% difference per storage size level (64GB vs 128GB vs 256GB). Anything larger than 256GB used to double stack smaller RAM chipsets to achieve size, but have similar performance as the 128GB or 256GB counterparts. Newer generation SSDs have shown a smaller performance gap between capacity sizes.
2) SSD speed is greatly influenced by the SSD controller and chipset construction. Samsung has 22nm chips and are more efficient and faster than the industry's normal 32nm construction --Toshiba?). However, SSD chipset controllers can make a significant difference for the same chipset construction---a difference large enough to explain 280MB/s vs. 180MB/s (see OCZ's Vertex 2's 280MB/s vs. Vertex 3's 550MB/s using the SanForce SF2200!). Variation in performance among manufacturers are evident in the SSD world.
3) Use ATTO or HD Tune Pro (both are Windows programs, but it's the standard benchmark tools for PCs to test SSD speeds) to see if the speed difference is a random issue or a fundamental one.
4) I own a Vertex 3 SSD, had had SSDs with 60MB/s, 150MB/s, 180MB/s, 285MB/s, 550MB/s and 700MB/s (Revodrive x2) experience and the OS experience is marginal after 200MB/s speeds. The sweet spot for the industry for price to speed right now is the 128GB doing mid to upper 2XXMB/s. Anything above this is like buying a Ferrari instead of a normal sports car (BMW M3, let's say).
I would not be happy to know that the speed difference is a 50% difference. I would be interested to see how fast the difference is between the 64GB and 128GB SSDs on the MBA 11" MBA as well as the 128GB vs. 256GB on the MBA 13".
Ignorance of SSD Technology causes bad articles to be written.
So enlighten us.
Model
No issues thus far.
If they would compare apples to apples and benchmark the same size drive against each other I'm sure the speeds would be much more similar and less likely to be noticeable in day to day use.
If they would compare apples to apples and benchmark the same size drive against each other I'm sure the speeds would be much more similar and less likely to be noticeable in day to day use.
They did:
"The 128GB Samsung SM128C SSD in the 11-inch MacBook Air achieved 246 MB/s write and 264 MB/s read speeds while the 128GB Toshiba TS128C SSD in the 13-inch model was only able to achieve speeds of 156 MB/s and 208 MB/s, respectively."
Seems like a pretty wide margin to me.
They did:
"The 128GB Samsung SM128C SSD in the 11-inch MacBook Air achieved 246 MB/s write and 264 MB/s read speeds while the 128GB Toshiba TS128C SSD in the 13-inch model was only able to achieve speeds of 156 MB/s and 208 MB/s, respectively."
Seems like a pretty wide margin to me.
Not in the engadget article they quoted.
Not in the engadget article they quoted.
I went to the Engadget article in question to see what you mean, still not seeing your objection:
"The 128GB Samsung SSD in his 11-inch Air was able to achieve 246 MB/s write and 264 MB/s read speeds. When he switched to the 13-inch model, however, speeds dropped to 156 MB/s and 208 MB/s, respectively, using that notebook's 128GB Toshiba SSD"
Same size, very different speeds.
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Luckily there?s no such thing as a slow Air drive, and I?ll never notice the difference.
Even luckier: I just ordered the 128 in an 11-incher!