Different Benchmarking Numbers Between W7 and OSX

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Maverick1337

Gawd
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Feb 27, 2011
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580
Hello everyone,

I just installed a new SanDisk Extreme 240GB SSD and tried out some benching. It's on a Macbook 4,1 which is limited to SATA I speeds and I used AJA and BlackMagic benchmarks and got around ~120MB/s seq. R/W speeds. I boot camped windows 7 and just now benched using crystaldiskmark and got ~170MB/s seq. R/W speeds. I'm confused and don't know which one to believe. I heard that SSD's are usually slower at the beginning because there isn't a lot on them but now that I have Windows 7 on it, that's an extra 15 gigs of stuff. If anyone has any information at all I would greatly appreciate it, thank you.
 
Maverick1337 said:
Which one should I believe?
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They're both right.

The OSX driver is getting 120, the Windows driver is getting 170.

2 different drivers, so 2 different speeds.

Neither is "right" or "wrong" really. Just one is better optimized from the looks of it. Does OSX even know what an SSD is and does it need/do proper alignment like Windows 7 does?
 
Another issue is that by default, TRIM is not enabled for any SSD's but Apples own in OSX. If you are running Lion, you can get a utility here which will enable TRIM for you in OSX. What version of OSX are you running?
 
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I'm using latest version of snow leopard and I have installed trim via a guys hack to get it running. I have also tried benching random input instead of just zeros and the values come out the same. So that's not a problem either. The one thing that is weird is the Sandisk doesnt provide AHCI for boot camp windows because macs don't have a BIOS. There are of course hacks to get it but it messes up a few other things which I don't want to do.
 
Maverick1337 said:
I'm using latest version of snow leopard and I have installed trim via a guys hack to get it running. I have also tried benching random input instead of just zeros and the values come out the same. So that's not a problem either. The one thing that is weird is the Sandisk doesnt provide AHCI for boot camp windows because macs don't have a BIOS. There are of course hacks to get it but it messes up a few other things which I don't want to do.
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There are some hacks like this that will enable AHCI in boot camp, but it only works on the latest and greatest Mid 2010-2011 MBPs. The older machines (like your 4,1) don't support it and from the looks of the beta won't even in the future.
 
Yeah I've seen those and they come at a cost, which sucks. Anyways of this drive is performing that fast I'm impressed. I was really put off seeing 120 on my Mac side because my old hard drive was around 80 so it wasn't really much of an improvement in my eyes.
 
Maverick1337 said:
Yeah I've seen those and they come at a cost, which sucks. Anyways of this drive is performing that fast I'm impressed. I was really put off seeing 120 on my Mac side because my old hard drive was around 80 so it wasn't really much of an improvement in my eyes.
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In any case, for an OS drive it is the random access numbers that matter as well as the much lower latency rather than the sequential transfer numbers.
 
mwroobel said:
In any case, for an OS drive it is the random access numbers that matter as well as the much lower latency rather than the sequential transfer numbers.
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Which numbers are these and how can I tell of they are good or not for SATA I? I guess a better question would be does the fact I'm locked the SATA I limit the random read write speed or the fact I don't have ACHI?
 
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Maverick1337 said:
Which numbers are these and how can I tell of they are good or not for SATA I? I guess a better question would be does the fact I'm locked the SATA I limit the random read write speed or the fact I don't have ACHI?
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I dont think either of those numbers are bad myself, esp for an older interface, and the lower heat. The better random access times should make the laptop far more enjoyable to use, esp over time when a normal HD would start to slow up due to fragmentation.

Use the machine for a while to do the things you used to do. It's either going to seem much, much snappier, or you may not notice much of a difference at all. It really depends on the kinds of things you do with the machine. For serious multitasking, with multiple programs hitting the drive at the same time, you should see much improvement. For light usage, one task at a time, etc, probably not so much.

SSD's have their place, and not everyone sees the same benefits (see multiple threads here about how SSD's "suck" for some people, etc). For me, being able to encode HD video, game, and have a virus scan all going at the same time without making the machine even blink is worth it. Surfing the web or doing other stuff, I'd never know it was an SSD over a HD though.

Edit - You may also want to hit up the Apple forum here and see if anyone else has a similar system you can compare to if you're that worried that something isn't quite right.
 
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