Forums
New posts
Articles
Product Reviews
Policies
FAQ
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
New posts
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Forums
Apple Computing Products:
macOS - Notebook Hardware
Upgrading MBP, how and what, ( warning Mac dummy)
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="VAMountaineer" data-source="post: 1544297" data-attributes="member: 312336"><p>Upgrading your OS will do ZERO to help your speed performance. do not get sucked into the normal macidiot trap of thinking you "have to" have the latest OS. It is a dumb trap to fall into.</p><p></p><p>I would put 10.6 on that system, or perhaps 10.7.. personally I despise everything about 10.7 and 10.8, but that's me... </p><p></p><p>You will get FAR better performance improvement by putting an SSD (solid state) or SSHD (solid state hybrid drive) in the system, than ANY OTHER change. </p><p></p><p>SSD = max cost, max performance.. probably a 10x-20x speed bump over your original drive.</p><p>SSDH = average cost, high perofrmance. probably a 7-10x speed bump over your original drive.</p><p></p><p>A quick tutorial on HDDs is in order here..</p><p></p><p>HDD -> "hard disk drive" </p><p> - THis is your conventional hard drive - a spinning platter on which a bazillion digits of information are dumped.. It can get fragmented, corrupted, is a power hog, and is susceptible to impact/bumps/drops/etc.. but it's cheap.. a 500gb drive is ~$75-100... speed (RPM) is important with these.. min acceptable is 5400, 7200 is recommended, 10,000 is high performance (and $$)..</p><p></p><p>SSD - >Solid State Drive</p><p> - this is the macdaddy drive. it's 100% solid state chips. Stupid-fast performance, and insanely expensive. IF you want a boot time under 10 seconds, here's where you start.. but you'll pay for it. a 500gb is around $300-350.. a 1tb is around $575-600....</p><p> </p><p>SSHD -> "Hybrid SSD"</p><p> - this is a combination of SSD and HDD.. it's got a small amount of solid state circuitry (say 8-10gb), and has a conventional disk drive on board.. So it "learns" over time what's most important, nad will store that stuff on the SSD portion.. The rest of your data gets dumped on the disk.. From the user perspective its all 100% seamless, you'll never see it switch from SSD to HDD.. and your billfold will be grateful..</p><p>SSDH - 500gb - - ~$100.. 1tb ~$140-160..</p><p></p><p>In real-world use, I see an SSHD give about 75-80% of the performance boost that one gets with a flat-out SSD... so in terms of bang-for-the-buck, it's a no-brainer..</p><p></p><p>Also bear in mind that no Macbook Pro prior to 2012 will handle all the speed from the newer 6gb bandwidth drives, so your fanbois who want to drop large coin in a super fast SSD will be throwing 90% of that money down the drain, as the performance is mostly wasted.. (in other words, 2008-2011 era systems run 3gb bandwidth buss speeds, so a 6gb SataIII drive is a total waste over a SataII 3gb speed drive)..</p><p></p><p>Rules of thumb: NEVER defragment an SSD.. you can ruin it.</p><p>Defragmentation on a conventional HDD is a good idea.</p><p>Also, deleting your User Caches folder regularly is one of the easiest methods of gaining a lot of speed back.. </p><p></p><p>the other day I popped up a client's machine ( a rather new 2011 macbook pro) - he was complaining of speed issues.. at a cursory glance, he had over 6gb in his user cache folder.. I sent him off to get me a cup of coffee while I "looked around", and as soon as he walked off, I blitzed the user cache folder, rebooted the machine, and VOILA, it was WAY faster.....</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="VAMountaineer, post: 1544297, member: 312336"] Upgrading your OS will do ZERO to help your speed performance. do not get sucked into the normal macidiot trap of thinking you "have to" have the latest OS. It is a dumb trap to fall into. I would put 10.6 on that system, or perhaps 10.7.. personally I despise everything about 10.7 and 10.8, but that's me... You will get FAR better performance improvement by putting an SSD (solid state) or SSHD (solid state hybrid drive) in the system, than ANY OTHER change. SSD = max cost, max performance.. probably a 10x-20x speed bump over your original drive. SSDH = average cost, high perofrmance. probably a 7-10x speed bump over your original drive. A quick tutorial on HDDs is in order here.. HDD -> "hard disk drive" - THis is your conventional hard drive - a spinning platter on which a bazillion digits of information are dumped.. It can get fragmented, corrupted, is a power hog, and is susceptible to impact/bumps/drops/etc.. but it's cheap.. a 500gb drive is ~$75-100... speed (RPM) is important with these.. min acceptable is 5400, 7200 is recommended, 10,000 is high performance (and $$).. SSD - >Solid State Drive - this is the macdaddy drive. it's 100% solid state chips. Stupid-fast performance, and insanely expensive. IF you want a boot time under 10 seconds, here's where you start.. but you'll pay for it. a 500gb is around $300-350.. a 1tb is around $575-600.... SSHD -> "Hybrid SSD" - this is a combination of SSD and HDD.. it's got a small amount of solid state circuitry (say 8-10gb), and has a conventional disk drive on board.. So it "learns" over time what's most important, nad will store that stuff on the SSD portion.. The rest of your data gets dumped on the disk.. From the user perspective its all 100% seamless, you'll never see it switch from SSD to HDD.. and your billfold will be grateful.. SSDH - 500gb - - ~$100.. 1tb ~$140-160.. In real-world use, I see an SSHD give about 75-80% of the performance boost that one gets with a flat-out SSD... so in terms of bang-for-the-buck, it's a no-brainer.. Also bear in mind that no Macbook Pro prior to 2012 will handle all the speed from the newer 6gb bandwidth drives, so your fanbois who want to drop large coin in a super fast SSD will be throwing 90% of that money down the drain, as the performance is mostly wasted.. (in other words, 2008-2011 era systems run 3gb bandwidth buss speeds, so a 6gb SataIII drive is a total waste over a SataII 3gb speed drive).. Rules of thumb: NEVER defragment an SSD.. you can ruin it. Defragmentation on a conventional HDD is a good idea. Also, deleting your User Caches folder regularly is one of the easiest methods of gaining a lot of speed back.. the other day I popped up a client's machine ( a rather new 2011 macbook pro) - he was complaining of speed issues.. at a cursory glance, he had over 6gb in his user cache folder.. I sent him off to get me a cup of coffee while I "looked around", and as soon as he walked off, I blitzed the user cache folder, rebooted the machine, and VOILA, it was WAY faster..... [/QUOTE]
Verification
Post reply
Forums
Apple Computing Products:
macOS - Notebook Hardware
Upgrading MBP, how and what, ( warning Mac dummy)
Top