Posted on 01/24/2023 10:38:21 PM PST by dennisw
The base level 14-inch M2 MacBook Pro reportedly has a slower SSD than its predecessor, according to tests done by 9to5Mac. In BlackMagic’s Disk Speed Test, the 512GB SSD in Apple’s latest flagship achieved read speed scores of around 2,970 MB/s and write speed scores of around 3,150 MB/s, compared to 4,900 MB/s reads and 3,950 MB/s writes that the M1 Pro with a 512GB SSD was capable of.
A previous-generation 14-inch MacBook Pro with a potentially faster SSD than the the latest models. A previous-generation 14-inch MacBook Pro with a potentially faster SSD than the the latest models. © Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge That means the 2023 base model has around 39 percent slower reads and 20 percent slower writes than the one released in 2021.
The reason for the difference is likely down to chips. According to 9to5Mac, the 512GB SSD in the previous-gen 14-inch had four NAND storage chips, whereas the one on the M2 Pro seems to have two. Those are obviously higher-capacity chips, so the computers have the same amount of storage but with worse performance because they can’t parallelize reads and writes as much.
Building newer generations of computers with fewer NAND chips isn’t new for Apple. Both the 256GB M2 MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro had slower storage than the M1 versions of those machines. (The situation was even worse with those machines, which had a single NAND chip.) But those are relatively entry-level laptops; the 14-inch MacBook Pro is a $2,000 computer aimed at creative professionals and developers — it’s not a place you’d expect Apple to cut corners or sacrifice performance.
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(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
It’d be even more annoying if the $2,500 16-inch model with a 512GB SSD also has this setup, though, as far as I’m aware, no one has confirmed this one way or the other. We asked Apple about it, and the M2 Mac Mini with a 256GB SSD, but didn’t immediately get a response.
However, MacRumors reports that the 256GB M2 Mini does indeed only have one NAND chip, similar to Air and 13-inch Pro. Again, I’d argue that’s more acceptable on a machine that costs $599. But while it’s unfortunate that the base M2 Mini has a slower SSD than M1 one did, there is a tradeoff — the M2 model starts at $100 less than its predecessor. Given everything the computer offers in terms of real-world performance, perhaps it’s hard to complain.
Thankfully, it seems like MacBook Pro models with upgraded storage don’t come with the same performance hit. Tom’s Guide and Laptop Mag tested a 14-inch M2 Pro-equipped laptop with a 2TB SSD, as well as one with an M2 Max processor (which is only available with a 1TB SSD and up), and the storage turned out to be roughly as fast or faster than the previous-gen models. MacWorld found a similar situation with the 16-inch models.
Just for reference, Tom’s Guide notes that the 2TB SSD paired with an M2 Pro was capable of 5,293 MB/s reads and 6,168 MB/s writes, a substantial leg-up from the 512GB model (as you’d hope, given that the 2TB SSD option adds a cool $600 to the price of the computer).
This isn’t to say that newer Macs with base-level SSDs will be unusably slow. The benchmark screenshots posted by 9to5Mac show that the one in the 14-inch still has enough bandwidth to play back 12K ProRes 422 HQ footage at 60FPS. \It also still handily beats the 1TB SSD in my 13-inch M1 MacBook Pro, which has been totally sufficient even when I ask it to do heavy video editing tasks, and is faster than the 256GB SSD in the M2 MacBook Air and 13-inch Pro.
Still, it’s a bit of a bummer to see that, in at least one aspect, the base-level M2 Pro machines are measurably worse than their predecessor
The reason I posted this is I like the new NVME drives. I bought a laptop from ebay with an i5-10210u CPU. With 12GB ram.
It came with a 1TB hard drive. I could not believe how miserably slow this was. Three days ago I installed a WD 500GB NVME and now it is flying. With write speeds of 3400 and reads of 2300. I installed Windows 11 on the new NVME and I have the 1TB HD for storage
I recently upgraded the NVME drive that came in my 3 year old laptop. It was relatively inexpensive and has four times the storage space of the one that came in it.
Here is the laptop deal of the day on eBay -—— Yes you can salivate
https://www.ebay.com/itm/234871100483
I would buy it but I have too many as it is
Costco was selling it for $200 off up until recently, which made it $399 It has a touch screen 17.3” and an AMD Ryzen™ 5 5625U (6-Core) Processor. I prefer the Ryzen processors over an I5 processor because the integrated graphics are much better. If the laptop came with a discrete GPU I would probably go with the Intel.
current NVMe drives can easily reach 7200 MBps (read) / 6000 MBps (write) ... 1TB for $99
https://www.amazon.com/TEAMGROUP-Graphene-Heatsink-Internal-TM8FPR001T0C129/dp/B09JCBRBP2/?th=1
AMD Ryzen™ 5 5625U... a super righteous CPU and is Zen3 architecture and 7 nano made by TSMC. So superior to previous Ryzen 5.
Hows about this on eBay?
https://www.ebay.com/itm/266063472264?mkevt=1&mkpid=0&emsid=e11070.m3698.l7534&mkcid=7&ch=osgood&euid=4c63f50e70ad4ecba1e64d95965877df&bu=43187848829&osub=-1%7E1&crd=20230124140506&segname=11070
Those are amazing speeds and great for loading games and large files. But for my modest purposes, half those speeds will suffice// All I know is that regular spinning hard drives are pathetic compared to NVME.
I have an 8th gen i5 laptop with a kinda slow NVME, but it boots up in 8 seconds and response time in Windows 11 is very fast.
screen res: 1600 x 900 —
I'm shallow!
17.3” diagonal, FHD (1920 x 1080), IPS, anti-glare, 300 nits, 72% NTSC
BACKLIT and IPS with 300 NITS brightness. I own one and just put in the 500gb NVME drive
https://www.ebay.com/sch/177/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=hp+17-by2053cl&LH_TitleDesc=0&_sop=15
https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c06955370
Apple makes it easy to upgrade the parts right?
Or do you have to have Apple geniuses to insert apple approved parts or the computer will not work properly?
Laptop breakdown
https://www.ifixit.com/News/62684/were-pretty-sure-we-just-tore-down-the-new-m2-macbook-pro
That is a BIG laptop.
Having owned a 17” laptop for my prior machine, I probably wouldn’t do it again. A 14-15” laptop with enough graphics card to also drive an external 4k monitor makes more sense. That’s what I do now. I have a 32” LG 4k monitor and it’s a great combo.
And you could make an argument to go with a 13” laptop that can do that, for portability.
What a beauty! Not sure I can resist!
The Apple Silicon MacBook Pros come as-is. You can’t upgrade the RAM or SSD internally.
I just purchased a MacBook Pro & went with the upper configuration since the laptop can’t be upgraded.
Yep - why complain about a “slower’ deal when the difference is not gonna affect what you do?
I bought a MSI Katana laptop and it boots in 11 secs - then a couple more for me to put in my PIN.
We should know in a month of two how this shakes out.
Yes, I know, my current laptop has a 15” screen with 1920 x 1080 resolution. And my phone's 6.53 in display has 2340 x 1080 resolution. But most of the old 15” laptops we have around are 1366 x 768 which to my old eyes look perfectly fine. The dpi of a 15” laptop with 1366 x 768 compared to a 17” laptop with 1600 x 900 is about the same. When your eyes are not what they once were, bigger and brighter eventually become more important to you than higher dpi.
The older I get the more I love the bigger screens... I had a 17.3” which was replaced by a 15” when the hinges broke under warranty. My wife still has her 17.3” and I have to admit to having screen envy. My 15” is super thin but it weighs nearly as much as the 17.3” that it replaced.
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