Two weeks ago we blogged about how upgrading to Apple’s maximum supported 8GB of memory and an OWC Mercury Extreme SSD could speed up your machine to two and a half times faster then stock in the latest 2011 MacBook Pro Core i5 and Core i7 machines.
Two weeks ago, we were ecstatic about the performance numbers we were seeing. Like an average 25% faster performance with 8GB of memory!
Two weeks ago, we dubbed these machines with our upgrades as “screaming fast.”
That was two weeks ago…
Long-time readers have probably noticed that we’re not bashful talking about how great our products are. While all of what we say about the products is—to the best of our knowledge—true, I’m the first to admit that it’s kind of hard to take the word of someone who has a vested interest in selling you the product they’re talking about.
So, this time around, we’re letting some well-respected, independent reviewers say what we’ve probably already said a million times:
Lloyd Chambers (aka diglloyd) from Mac Performance Guide knows about squeezing every last bit of performance out of your Mac. So, when he got a new quad-core 2011 MacBook Pro, and decided to put it up to test against a Mac Pro, what did he do? He maxed it out with OWC memory and dropped an OWC Mercury Extreme SSD in there, of course!
I won’t say that the OWC memory upgrade was the defining upgrade that kept the MacBook Pro running neck & neck with the Mac Pro it was up against, but as diglloyd posted the next day:
…then everything comes to a crawl, as it will with any Mac with too little memory…
It doesn’t get more clear than that – the more memory you have in your Mac, the better it will perform. Just ask diglloyd.
Rob-ART over at Barefeats.com also recently got one of the new 2011 MacBook Pros with the 6Gb/s SATA bay and compared the OWC Mercury Extreme Pro to a number of standard drives, as well as to a 6Gb/s SSD.
Throughout the tests, the results of which you can see for yourself at the Barefeats site, the OWC Mercury Extreme Pro SSD (which is a 3Gb/s drive) not only blew the stock Apple SSD out of the water, but also kept pace with the 6Gb/s SSD, actually coming out faster in the Large Sequential Write test.
So, if you’re a bit skeptical when we tout the performance increases our Mercury Extreme Pro SSDs deliver, just check with Rob-ART; he’s seen it first-hand.
Apple’s newest revision of the MacBook Air has a secret weapon packed into its tiny little frame. Rather than the pokey 4200rpm hard drive its predecessors ran on, the new MacBook Airs are sporting the latest buzz-inducing hardware in high-speed data storage: a solid-state drive.
We found that if you put a stock 1.4GHz MacBook Air (2010) up against a stock 2.66GHz MacBook Pro 13” (2010), the Air can write a 500MB file up to 20% faster (meaning takes less time to do the same process) than the MacBook Pro. Unzipping a 1.0GB file is up to 20% faster on the Air too. The Air is faster despite a 1.26GHz processor speed difference!!! That’s some SSD power.
Obviously, this is due to the speed of the SSD drive; adding an SSD can significantly improve performance for any disk-intensive activity. This is not really a new concept; this sort of thing has been mentioned here before. What makes this particular nugget of information extra-interesting is that Apple seems to be leveraging their SSDs as a way to improve performance while keeping processor speed (and, as a result, the heat generated) down.
What really caught our eye, though, is something many would overlook: the MacBook Air’s SSD achieved a transfer peak data rate up to 213MB/s. OWC Mercury Extreme SSDs have achieved peak data rates of 285MB/s!
That means that by simply upgrading your Mac with our SSD, you can improve your Mac’s performance significantly! We did a few tests just to see how big a gain you can get with our SSD over the factory stock HD. Article Continues…
If you’ve been on the fence about making the switch to a SSD boot drive, don’t delay any further.
A few weeks ago, Other World Computing announced the addition of a new 40GB model to its award-winning OWC Mercury Extreme Pro SSD™ line as the most affordable high performance SandForce® Processor based Solid State Drive on the market.
Today, August 31st, 2010, marks the last day for our introductory price offer on these drives at $99.99. Orders MUST be in by 11:59:59 PM CDT today to get that special intro pricing.
So, hurry on over to macsales.com to place your order and enjoy the amazing benefits of an OWC Mercury Extreme Pro SSD in your computer including:
Other World Computing announced today a new 40GB model to its award-winning OWC Mercury Extreme Pro SSD™ line as the most affordable high performance SandForce® Processor based Solid State Drive on the market. Designed and made in the U.S. from imported parts, the new OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 40GB SSD’s special introductory pricing of $99.99 makes it the lowest priced SSD on the market to offer three key high performance features:
The OWC Mercury Extreme Pro SSD line, which has won Editor’s choice awards and review comments like “Eye popping speed with consistent performance over time”, “Best write speeds we’ve seen”, and “The fastest SSD to hit our test bench yet” from leading performance testing sites like Tweaktown, Hot Hardware, MacPerformanceGuide, Maximum PC, Storage Review and Benchmark Reviews, is available for immediate ordering in nine configurations from 40GB to 480GB starting at $99.99. All models are Macintosh® and PC compatible and install easily into notebooks, as well as into desktops/towers with an OWC Multi-Mount adapter kit sold separately. Article Continues…
As we’re always in the pursuit of making your Mac (and our Macs, and the Mac of that nice guy down the street) faster, we have confirmed that the new Mac Pro 2010 models do address dual- and triple-channel memory addressing.
Similar to dual-channel interleaving in previous models, installing memory in matched sets of three will allow the Mac to distribute memory functions across the modules in that set, allowing faster access to that information. In triple-channel mode, you can see up to 15% more memory bandwidth over dual-channel addressing.
Technically, this isn’t anything new; the 2009 Mac Pros also had this feature. However, when they came out, there were few applications took advantage of this and most apps didn’t show any real-world advantage over dual-channel setups.
As software progresses to take advantage of the capabilities of new Macs, though, that will change. If you upgrade your 2009 or 2010 Mac Pro to a triple-channel setup now, you can rest assured that—both now and in years to come—your system will be performing to the best of its ability.
We’ve been getting a lot of traffic regarding our OWC Turnkey Upgrade Program for the 2010 Apple iMac 27″ that allows you to customize your iMac with a high-performance eSATA interface port, OWC Mercury Extreme Pro SSDs up to 480GB, hard drives up to 2TB, and/or OWC Memory Upgrades up to 16GB complete with shipping and warranty. The question asked most often though, seems to be what exactly is the benefit of upgrading my new iMac?
Well, the OWC Test lab has been a busy place and we’re pleased to announce that we’ve begun gathering the scientific data to show you just how fast you can make your iMac.
We’ve real-world tested the eSATA port and found data transfer rates are up to 3.3 times faster than FireWire 800 and an amazing 7.5 times faster than USB 2.0! We’ve put together hard drive configurations that achieve data transfer rates up to 6 times faster than the original stock hard drive alone! In adding more memory to an iMac, we’ve almost cut the processing time in half on our test machine.
For all the details, see our findings at http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/turnkey/iMac_2010_27
This morning, the online Apple Store has been taken down temporarily stating “We are busy updating the store for you and will be back shortly.” This action usually indicates a new product being released or updated.
Is Apple updating the Mac Pro lineup? Could the white iPhone be released for sale today? Perhaps the iMac lineup will be refreshed with speed increases? From the popularity of the iPad, could the iMac become a touchscreen device? Maybe even the fabled trackpad input device will be released?
We’ll have the details for you here on the OWC Blog as soon as we know. Stay tuned.
UPDATE: The iMacs have been updated to now feature Intel Core i3, i5, and i7 processors across the entire line. No more Core 2 Duo processors. In addition the Magic Trackpad has been released as the first multi-touch trackpad for Mac desktop computers.
Doesn’t look at first glance that the Mac Pro got an update per se, but we do get a tease that 12 cores of processing power is coming in August! As well as a new 27″ LED Cinema display coming soon.
Sound off if you’ve found more that we might have missed, for now, we’re getting busy updating our site!
