Today they issued a new Firmware update, containing the same firmware, supporting TRIM and better power-management, but with an updated updater

I am trying it on my MacBook Pro, having a 500GB 7200 rpm to put it in, if something bad happens… keep you informed!

PS: 20 minutes later, Mac OS X reinstalled, and all went flawlessly, I have to install the 10.6.3 combo update, and do a XBench! Ouch! 340 for disk subsystem after upgrading firmware, 317 before, it’s a 7% direct improvement, even with SATA 3Gb/s limiting the CRUCIAL C300 that need SATA 6Gb/s for full performance!

PS2: upgraded to 10.6.3, that is a real SSR downgrade, as score go back to 317! But the global XBench index of my MacBook Pro Core2 Duo 2×2.8Ghz is now 234, showing it’s excellent balance between CPU, GPU, Memory and SSD speed, remember that MacPro are under 170 in average!

• I installed 3 x 1TB hard-drive (RAID-0) on an original Mac Pro, at my work, to make it litterally fly. It’s original 320GB hard-drive was just like a brake for the system!
• I use 2 x 1TB hard-drive (RAID-0) on my hackintosh (4×3.4Ghz/8GB/GeForce GTX260), but still I find it not as fast as it may be. I tried a 1st generation 64GB SSD (Kingston SSD V Now) but wasn’t faster really.
• I swapped my 500GB 5400rpm hard-drive of my MacBook Pro to a 500GB 7200rpm and finally a faster 1TB 5200rpm. Before going to SSD

MacBook Pro 17″ Unibody Core2 Duo 2.8Ghz upgrade

I expected mobile Core i5 and mobile Core i7 to be really faster, but as MacWorld show, mobile Core i7 is marginally faster than Core2 Duo 2.8Ghz and slower on major tasks (as launching Windows in VM for example!). I will wait to change my MacBook Pro that there’s a real-world speed gain of at least 25%! Nobody will see difference when a computer is just 10% faster!

Instead, I tried the Kingston SSD V Now 64GB, a 1st generation SSD, that is theorically not faster than hard-drives. I discovered a world where my fan stop making noise, where all launch (including boot and shutdown, or sleep mode) where real faster, and a 2×2.8Ghz laptop that is more reactive than my 4×3.4Ghz desktop! hot!

So I decided that it,s the way to go, upgrading my MacBook Pro instead buying the new model, and I decided to have room to spare and take a real-fast SSD (a 3rd generation) with SATA 6Gbps to be able to use it on future laptops and desktop, that will have this connection. SATA 3Gbps limit this SSD to 250MB/s approximately, but with future 6Gbps-enabled laptop or desktop, it’s given to deliver up to 315MB/s, 25% faster on future computer!

So how does it perform on my actual laptop, compared to hard-drives I installed, 1st generation SSD, and how does it show up on a full-system bench as XBench?

Benchmark of hard-drives and SSD on my MacBook Pro

I forget to bench the 500GB 5400 rpm hard-drive that was shipped on my MacBook Pro. Anyway it’s not interesting, the 500GB 7200rpm was visibly faster as well as the 1TB 5200rpm. And Apple is well known to put the less-expensive drive into their “Pro” computers, that translate to under-performing hardware in many case (same for videocard/GPU).

This chart is clear, the CRUCIAL C300 256GB is just astonishing compared to 1st generation SSD (KINGSTON SSD V Now 64GB), and still beating hard-drives by a 5X performance-ratio! (1.8X for sequential access, 21X for random access! ouch!)

There’s 2 points that the chart doesn’t show:

• Even with it’s score near the hard-drive, the 1st generation KINGSTON SSD V Now 64GB is far faster in daily use, increase autonomy (real-world!), and the laptop feels more reactive than a 4×3.4Ghz desktop! (1.7X faster random access explain it)
• the 317 XBench subscore is astonishing for an storage system, but in fact toally in range with other subscores, from 190 (OpenGL and memory) to 340 (User Interface test), so the performances are better balanced, and it shows…

Whole system XBench performance

As said previously, with all susbsystem scores ranging from 190 to 340, except hard-drive (under 60), the system is not well-balanced, you are waiting for it to boot, waiting when launching application, waiting when using demanding applications, and screaming when using LightRoom because the thumbnails take so much time to be at least corrects! It is no more the case when disk subsystem cope with the CPU, Memory, OpenGL, User Interface, … A modern Core2 Duo laptop just fly, and it translates to XBench global score:

Notice that I put Mac Pro XBench average score, to put this in perspective. I won’t say that my laptop is faster than an average Mac Pro, it’s better to say that on some tasks, that demand disk IO, my laptop will beat them all, hands up! And I used a Mac Pro at work, I know the feeling I had with it, it just underperforms on heavy-io tasks, compared to my upgraded laptop! Seriously!

In short…

Changing from hard-drive to 1st generation SSD (KINGSTON SSD V Now 64GB) was an interesting experience, score doesn’t change, SSD is slower on most test, but user experience was impressive, beating my 4×3.4Ghz desktop with my 2×2.8Ghz laptop, giving me envy to use it more for demanding tasks! Score don’t tell the whole story when it comes to SSD, these benchmarks have been devised for hard-drives, and SSD instantly change your system responsivness!

And upgrading to a 3rd generation SSD (Crucial C300 256GB) is more impressive, but even if score is far over everything I saw or used, even on our server farm, this drive is faster than I need actually, will probably be used until it’s death, because it could give up to 25% more performance on future laptop or desktop, and you see how it pushes the XBench global score, showing how a balanced modern laptop could perform against powerful desktop equipped with under-performing hard-drives!

For myself, I love the CRUCIAL C300, but the experience started with the Kingston SSD V Now 64GB, and I think that you should avoid 1st generation SSD (except Intel’s that are probably the best SSD on the market, but don’t offer 256GB at this time), and go for 2nd generation or 3rd generation SSD, of any size. The firsts minutes you will use it, you will rediscover your computer, you will even launch the most-demanding application, just to see them fly on screen!

SSD is the way to go, it deserve a test, you might be surprised by what YOUR computer might do with one inside

Notice that average Mac Pro score 163.73 on XBench (including some hackintosh!), so my under-1000$ PC is largely faster than a majority of 2500$+ Macs!

Fair benchmarks?

They are Fair, but they didn’t test the same thing. GeekBench measure multi-threaded CPU cores in Integer and Floating-Point, and RAM bandwidth, ignoring CPU-cache size and speed in any way. XBench try to give a view of balanced speed of Mac subparts, balanced as a PowerMac G4 where CPU was the limiting factor and hard-drive relatively fast compard to PowerPC G4. MacWorld SpeedMark 6 gives an overview of application-level performance (real-world speed for these applications).

So they doesn’t measure the same thing, GeekBench is sensible to number of core, cpu frequency and DDR3 instead DDR2. XBench is sensible to balanced configuration, where CPU, Memory, OpenGL videocard, and moreover hard-drive subsystem is scaled up from PowerMac G4 balance (a good one from my point-of-view). MacWorld SpeedMark 6 will tell you which level of performance to expect on some applications and some selected tasks.

So they are fair, but you have to digg to understand what their Results means…

Benchmarks Results in real world?

Geek Bench overall score correspond to heavily multi-threaded optimized applications (kinda Pro applications) such as CineBench or H.264 encoding with x264 (FFMPEG, handbrake and many other applications). It’s memory subpart doesn’t really correspond to any application as influence is really below the cache size and performance that is not tested. Integer and Floating point performance will give you an insight for these kind of applications, for me the Integer test is the most revealing of raw cpu performance-level in many case.

XBench will reveal a balanced configuration, for example putting 2×1TB 7200 rpm in RAID-0 in a first-generation Mac Pro instead of the crappy 320GB hard-drive will enable it to go from 115 to 170+, Cinebench won’t be faster or game, but in day-to-day use you will find your Mac much more responsive, application launching faster. It doesn’t reveal a faster CPU on new iMac because with Core i7 iMac you still have a single 1TB 7200 rpm hard-drive, marginally faster in real-world performance to what you had on iMac G5 for example, while CPU is 8X faster! Launch an heavy application on both and you will discover that hard-drive is a limitation for today’s Mac, except upgraded Mac Pro

MacWorld SpeedMark 6 will give you a good view on the performance-level for specific tasks on some applications. But if you use another application or another task in the tested applications, it will be of no help to know if your Mac will be faster or slower than another. Radeon 4670 shine one Call of Duty, but it’s a dog when using OpenCL applications and you might prefer a GT120 for that matter. You may use mono-threaded “compressor” for HD Video, but if you use heavily multi-threaded x264 based application, results will vary! Aperture is used for photography but the big majority of photographer use Adobe LightRoom 2 that is really different in it’s internal conception and multi-tasking use or GPU use!

All-in-one, none of these benchmarks will give you a complete point-of-view about your Mac with your Application, except SpeedMark 6 if you use same Applications and tasks.

How to use these benchmarks?

You will end-up looking at benchmark global score, where you have to take a look at sub-scores: these are much more revealing. You must compare sub-score between Mac to see how they will fit for your use, for example…

Gamer: OpenGL results of XBench are totally out (old 3D), you must focus on SpeedMark 6 Call Of Duty performance-level that is most revealing. Forget GeekBench!

User of heavily multi-threaded application, with few disk IO (ie. x264 video encoding): Focus yourself on the GeekBench Floating Point score, SpeedMark 6 CineBench, Handbrake and MathematicaMark scores. Forget XBench!

Apache/Mysql/PHP-Ruby developper: You must focus on GeekBench Integer Score there’s no floating point involved, XBench is of no-use (until you need heavy disk IO!), SpeedMark 6 too.

Launching many applications at-once (after boot) and waiting: look at your XBench disk score, and try with faster hard-drive, or with Mac Pro install 2 or 3 new hard-drive in RAID-0!

Having a mix of applications, of different kind, try to find the kinda application you use in MacWorld SpeedMark 6 and do your own metric

To resume…

GeekBench, XBench and MacWorld SpeedMark 6 are fair tests, but they doesn’t test the same thing (subparts versus Application-level performance) and subpart test are oriented among CPU+RAM or whole computer subparts, with maximum performance or balanced performance as primary target.

None of them could be a true measure of a Mac performance, because the performance of YOUR MAC depends on the Application you use and the tasks you perform. It’s something personal and none of them could be a true metrics that you may definitely apply to a Mac.

But you could do you own Mix to see wether a Mac will be faster or not for your own use, remembering that 20% faster is hardly noticeable, and 40% faster on task execution may justify a move on long tasks (but not short ones), and you need 70% faster to see differences on fast actions!

So upgrading from 2.8Ghz to 3.06Ghz iMac won’t give you any real juice, albeit upgrading from Core2 Duo 3.06Ghz to Core i5 2.66Ghz will be impressive

New 3.06Ghz iMac score a deceptive 133 on 21.5inch and a not-so-whopping 171 on 27inch, both with 4GB DDR3 (2×2GB DDR3), 1TB 7200rpm hard-drive and underclocked ATI Radeon 4670 with 256MB video-ram. So it’s between 133 and 171.

Old 3.06Ghz generation scored approximately 201, and overall 1.2X faster than the 27″ new iMac! The old 2.93Ghz iMac is still 1.1X faster than new 3.06Ghz generation. Even a 2.8Ghz DDR2 24″ scores better than the new 27″ 3.06Ghz on XBench!

Worse, it seems the new iMac 21.5inch 3.06Ghz DDR3 Radeon 4670 is slower than 2007 iMac 20″ 2.4Ghz DDR2!

They are totally and deceptively under-performers, and the price tag may reflect the bad technical choices (probably ATI Radeon instead nVidia GeForce!), and an old entry-level iMac 2.66Ghz 24″ GeForce 9400M will outperform the brand-new 27″ Radeon 4670 model