Base model Apple M2 MacBook Pro SSD Up To 50% slower than M1 MacBook Pro SSD | Half the NAND chips, half the speed

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, Blademaster91 said:

The use case would be going off device interface, there are USB-C SSD's that are faster than the 256GB SSD in the M2 macbook pro.

Care to name any? I know of some that can do right on 1GB/s, I don't know of any that can do 1.4GB/s and greater... Not that I'm particularly interested in UBS-C/TB portable SSDs.

 

Note I do not count external enclosures in this, because for those (since they are also self expandable etc) that would be the primary storage device for anything like video editing in the first place so the local SSD speed isn't a factor in usage for that.

 

If you are copying footage from cameras directly to external storage then the internal SSD doesn't matter, again also too small in the first place for this use case realistically.

 

1 hour ago, Blademaster91 said:

You can insist most people won't care, a lot of people probably won't if they're buying a macbook as an office machine, although the people that are upgrading from a base M1 macbook pro may notice moving around large files.

Again you're going to have to do a way better job to show this is implicitly true, this is  a very weak point in the eyes of reality. How many are actually buying or had the 256GB, how many are copying around files and again to where form where and for what purpose?

 

Your insistence is in my opinion less credible than my reasoning, and small amount of data, that people will not notice and care.

 

Your own point about portable (and external) SSDs being fast itself makes this a non issue. If I were a professional video editor or anything similar the last place my files would be is on or only on the internal SSD and I'd more likely have a LaCie TB (or similar) external enclosure that is of many TB of capacity and multiple GB/s of performance. In fact I may intentionally buy the 256GB model to lower the cost precisely because it's not relevant at all.

[leadeater]

3 hours ago, Roswell said:

Tell me you've never worked professionally in media/design without telling me you've never worked professionally in media/design.

Actually I provide infrastructure storage support for media design course with multiple labs of Mac and PC for video and photo editing. Netapp and ProMax are what are being used and in fact the storage aggregates being used are HDD based not SSD. And yes the School of Media and Creative Production have 6k and 8k cameras.

 

Let me ask you how many 256GB video editing workstations you have? Now answer a more simple question, is the M2 256GB SSD enough for a professional YouTube creator to record and edit video and release on YouTube with more than acceptable video quality?

 

How about less assumptions?

 

Spoiler

Tell me you made zero attempt at understanding what was said and why without telling me 

 

[HenrySalayne]

22 hours ago, leadeater said:

I mean affordability for the consumer, not Apple. Not offering a 256GB increases base retail price because parts cost isn't half for these NAND packages and even if Apple could wear the cost of course they won't, nobody does.

My numbers were wrong. I took the price of the 1 TB model.

It is actually:

980 Pro 250 GB ~ 70€

980 Pro 500 GB ~ 90€

The 250 GB 980 Pro is rated for 2700 MB/s, the 500 GB model for 5000 MB/s, so it's a really good guess they are using two NAND packages on the 500 GB model.

If the end-consumer pricing changes by only 20€, it's fair to say Apple wouldn't have to shell out more than $10 per device to make it happen.

Which makes this an even more dubious and disgusting move by Apple:

Just have one MBP 13" with 512GB for $1,399 you greedy bastards.

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, HenrySalayne said:

Which makes this an even more dubious and disgusting move by Apple:

Basically every OEM has a large(ish) increase for the same laptop 256GB vs 512GB upgrade option. Value really isn't to be found in OEM systems heh. But put it this way, if Apple didn't have the 256GB base model and instead had the 512GB as the base model then the price would either be $1499 or if lucky $1399.

 

It's not like this pricing difference wasn't already a thing with Apple devices. Do you want a 256GB option or not? If so then there's going to be a trade off.

 

I mean it's bad enough supposed professional devices don't come with SSD NAND configurations equivalent to actual professional SSDs like the Samsung Pro series but lets just say I do not subscribe to "MacBook Pro is a professional device", not in the way some like to talk about it anyway. It's just a good laptop that also sits in the business product market.

 

It's about as Pro as slapping Pro on my gaming mouse because "Pro gaming" is a thing, or slapping Pro on my Samsung S10E because it's a work provided phone for an IT Professional.

 

Labels, yada yada. Almost always meaningless marketing.

[Roswell]

4 hours ago, leadeater said:

Actually I provide infrastructure storage support for media design course with multiple labs of Mac and PC for video and photo editing. Netapp and ProMax are what are being used and in fact the storage aggregates being used are HDD based not SSD. And yes the School of Media and Creative Production have 6k and 8k cameras.

 

Let me ask you how many 256GB video editing workstations you have? Now answer a more simple question, is the M2 256GB SSD enough for a professional YouTube creator to record and edit video and release on YouTube with more than acceptable video quality?

 

How about less assumptions?

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Tell me you made zero attempt at understanding what was said and why without telling me 

 

Well, if you’re well versed in professional media then you should know that there are significant benefits to having storage that can exceed 1GB/s speeds.

[leadeater]

36 minutes ago, Roswell said:

Well, if you’re well versed in professional media then you should know that there are significant benefits to having storage that can exceed 1GB/s speeds.

Yes if you could use it, that's the point. You couldn't with a 256GB SSD. How are you supposed to video edit anything that required that disk performance from such a high bit rate when such a project would never, ever, fit within that capacity. Work within your means not some theoretical point that would never be done or could be done.

 

And if you really need that much disk performance always all the time through your whole process on each and every workstation then you are doing your workflow wrong and very inefficiently.

 

There is significant benefits to not doing things in a bad way that relies on brute for no reason at all 

 

You should know 256GB would be entirely useless and thus using a more practical bitrate would mean the performance on offer is in deed far above what is required, but what would I know 

[HenrySalayne]

2 hours ago, leadeater said:

It's not like this pricing difference wasn't already a thing with Apple devices. Do you want a 256GB option or not? If so then there's going to be a trade off.

I remember a time when the 256 GB to 512 GB upgrade wasn't as expensive as the 512 GB to 1 TB upgrade.

2 hours ago, leadeater said:

Labels, yada yada. Almost always meaningless marketing.

Apple's behaviour makes me angry. They advertise their ultra powerful M2 processor (Supercharged!) and they ship basically e-waste in the base configuration. The SSD is trash and only 8 GB of RAM are a joke in 2022. And all of this under the name "Macbook Pro" in a device with zero upgrade-ability. The base model Macbook Pro is probably the least sustainable and future-proof device they ever made. It costs an eye-watering 31% more ($400) to buy a configuration that's not already outdated at the point of ordering.

 

 

[Roswell]

50 minutes ago, leadeater said:

And if you really need that much disk performance always all the time through your whole process on each and every workstation then you are doing your workflow wrong and very inefficiently.

This is how I know you’ve never touched any creative/media software beyond a novice level approach. Which is fine, but you can’t speak with authority on a subject if you have no actual experience and just conflate your expertise in one area with another profession.

 

So many examples of why this statement is misguided though. Let’s start with something obvious… Do you know what scratch is? 
 

Also why are you hyper focusing on video? I routinely shave considerable amounts of time off my workflow in graphic design by having a drive that exceeds 1GB/s.

[leadeater]

42 minutes ago, Roswell said:

This is how I know you’ve never touched any creative/media software beyond a novice level approach. Which is fine, but you can’t speak with authority on a subject if you have no actual experience and just conflate your expertise in one area with another profession.

Oh really now, well your comments make me question your experience but at least I have the decency to not bother to publicly question it at all, until now. What actually makes you such and "expert". What makes how you do your work actually good in comparison to industry norms?

 

I don't actually need to be an video editor to know what I'm about because my expertise is providing storage for customers, many of whom do this very thing.

 

42 minutes ago, Roswell said:

I routinely shave considerable amounts of time off my workflow in graphic design by having a drive that exceeds 1GB/s.

Well that nice, however you'll have to A) Prove it B) Remember what I actually said versus this comment's applicability to what I said.

 

I will absolutely speak with authority on storage performance requirements for this because I can and have experience with it. I'll say one thing, video editors often know nothing at all about storage performance requirements and are too often self proclaimed experts in storage because "my work is demanding", sure of course it is but by no means makes you a storage expert.

 

42 minutes ago, Roswell said:

Do you know what scratch is? 

Respectfully, with that type of question go away. You're quickly showing you aren't worth discussing this topic with at all.

 

P.S. Don't think I didn't take notice you answering zero questions asked.

[Dracarris]

57 minutes ago, HenrySalayne said:

The SSD is trash and only 8 GB of RAM are a joke in 2022.

Over a year after the introduction of AS ARM, continues to compare RAM capacity to those of totally different x86 architectures with additionally totally different memory mgmt from the OSes .

 

What's next? M1/2 are bad chips because they don't nearly boost to 5GHz like 12th gen Intel?

[Roswell]

22 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Respectfully, with that type of question go away. You're quickly showing you aren't worth discussing this topic with at all.

 

P.S. Don't think I didn't take notice you answering zero questions asked.

So in other words, you have no idea. Where do you think all of the data goes from hours of revisions on something like a large format PSD? The land of fairy tales and magic? I sure as hell know it's not in my memory, considering I don't have 128GB+ of RAM in my machine. I guess my system's monitoring tools are lying to me when it shows Adobe apps reading and writing hundreds of gigs over the course of a project!

 

26 minutes ago, leadeater said:

What makes how you do your work actually good in comparison to industry norms?

I acquired an eduction for it and currently make a living in the industry.

 

28 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Well that nice, however you'll have to A) Prove it B) Remember what I actually said versus this comment's applicability to what I said.

You made the claim, it's on you to back it up. Anyone with a background in content creation would have immediately picked up on the falsehoods you were throwing out there.

 

29 minutes ago, leadeater said:

I don't actually need to be an video editor to know what I'm about because my expertise is providing storage for customers, many of whom do this very thing.

"I'm a tire salesman and therefore completely understand the nuances of F1".

[leadeater]

17 minutes ago, Roswell said:

So in other words, you have no idea.

It doesn't and still doesn't warrant answering. If you think I don't know then further reason to stop discussing.

 

17 minutes ago, Roswell said:

I guess my system's monitoring tools are lying to me when it shows Adobe apps reading and writing hundreds of gigs over the course of a project!

I mean cool story but so what, this proves exactly what?

 

This comment and the sentence(s) before it are doing a real good job at showing me yes indeed you don't know much about storage performance, storage monitoring and application performance requirements.

 

17 minutes ago, Roswell said:

I acquired an eduction for it and currently make a living in the industry.

Obliviously bad professional exist in all fields, IT and Digital Media alike. Nether does this answer the question I asked either.

 

17 minutes ago, Roswell said:

You made the claim, it's on you to back it up. Anyone with a background in content creation would have immediately picked up on the falsehoods you were throwing out there.

And what exact claim did I make, I think it's necessary at this point to get you to repeat it in your own words so I know exactly how you interpreted it, because I'm getting and have been getting extremely strong vibes of "I didn't actually read it and I also completely ignored why it was being said".

 

But no in fact you made the claim about your own workload and how it benefits you, it's on you not myself.

 

17 minutes ago, Roswell said:

"I'm a tire salesman and therefore completely understand the nuances of F1".

For tyres and traction specific to vehicle performance, yes absolutely.

 

"I drive the race car so I know everything about tyres"

 

You know this is getting silly right?

 

If you actually want to have a good faith discussion by all means, I'm actually more than happy to if you come to the table prepared and willing to do so.

[Roswell]

16 minutes ago, leadeater said:

And what exact claim did I make

 See:

 

On 6/27/2022 at 11:28 AM, leadeater said:

Moving large files from where to where? Going off device interface choice will be the limit not local SSD almost always. And also you don't know what you're missing out if you don't know.

 

Also use cut and paste, it's instant and just a filesystem metadata update. Copying files around use case is way overblown to justify a use case where someone might notice, if they have the information required to notice and the time difference is large enough to take notice.

 

Hardly think anyone is actually going to care, being absolutely honest here.

 

Over 1GB/s is enough for almost any file format, codec, compression etc etc etc for video editing. Twice as fast as more than what is needed is no net benefit or gain here. Numbers are just numbers without meaning and context, bigger is better but better != necessary.

 

Oh no it's a "Pro" device that can literally do anything a professional could want or need to do. Not seeing the problem here?

 

May I remind everyone lower SSD performance on small capacity SSDs has always been a thing, this is not an Apple thing. It exists on Samsung SSDs, Kioxia, Micron, WD, Seagate etc. If you buy small you get less, has been the case for very long time. It also exists on M1 Mac devices too so 

 

M1 MacBook Pro:

• 256GB: 2.9GBps/2.2GBps
• 512GB: 3.6GBps/2.8GBps

I'm literally providing you with a very common use in media creation for storage that exceeds 1GB/s and you're wiggling around every which way in opposition to it. I picked something as simple as the concept of scratch because it was clear that you're not familiar with how these app's function for those who actually use them professionally. Otherwise you wouldn't make such an asinine statement.

 

But please, tell me how I don't really need the sequential performance when I'm working with 50GB+ of data on a large format image. I'm all ears.

[leadeater]

42 minutes ago, Roswell said:

I'm literally providing you with a very common use in media creation for storage that exceeds 1GB/s and you're wiggling around every which way in opposition to it.

So you didn't read and comprehend it at all confirmed, thank you for proving it. And no you have yet to prove that for your claimed usage you get a significant real, tangible benefit from an SSD that is say 3GB/s rather than 1.5GB/s. You have also not shown your application and workflow actually utilizing and generation that I/O performance load.

 

42 minutes ago, Roswell said:

But please, tell me how I don't really need the sequential performance when I'm working with 50GB+ of data on a large format image. I'm all ears.

Please tell me how you know what your requirements are and how much performance load you are generating. I'm all ears.

 

Now to highlight what I actually said so you can duck your head in shame for intentionally starting some silly beef for no reason at all and refusing to back anything you say with evidence:

 

On 6/28/2022 at 3:28 AM, leadeater said:

Over 1GB/s is enough for almost any file format, codec, compression etc etc etc for video editing. Twice as fast as more than what is needed is no net benefit or gain here. Numbers are just numbers without meaning and context, bigger is better but better != necessary.

 

 

Shame on you, I think I'll take my leave now. You don't know what you are talking about.

[Paul Thexton]

I keep reading the figure of over 1GB/s being quoted in this thread, just feel I should point out that the people who’ve done the benchmarks on the slower based spec are seeing in the region of 1,500MB/s for both read and write.

 

As an enthusiast amateur photographer I don’t do anything heavy duty enough in photoshop to warrant worrying about scratch disks, but the last time I read about them Adobe were recommending that your scratch disks should be different to the disk containing your actual work. So I’d be surprised if people were using the internal, space limited 256GB SSD for the purpose?

[Roswell]

17 minutes ago, leadeater said:

You have also not shown your application and workflow actually utilizing and generation that I/O performance load.

 

17 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Please tell me how you know what your requirements are and how much performance load you are generating. I'm all ears.

 

I make an edit or undo an action on a 4 foot wide canvas @ 300 DPI with a handful of smart objects, masks, etc and ...*gulp*... have the audacity to pan around the canvas! Oh look, there's my SSD read/writing multiple gigs!

 

Oh, whoops, need to align that text box with a guideline. Wow! Many more gigs read! Shocking!

 

Again, tell me you've never professionally worked in Adobe without telling me you've never worked professionally in Adobe. Know what happens while you wait for Photoshop to pull all that sequential data off of scratch to render on canvas? It hangs. A slow drive and a large format image are a great way to sit there for 10-20 seconds after an edit/canvas pan.

 

13 minutes ago, Paul Thexton said:

the last time I read about them Adobe were recommending that your scratch disks should be different to the disk containing your actual work. So I’d be surprised if people were using the internal, space limited 256GB SSD for the purpose?

 

I think that advice was more geared towards years past when most systems had mechanical drives that would choke if you had scratch usage on your OS drive.

[HenrySalayne]

23 minutes ago, Dracarris said:

Over a year after the introduction of AS ARM, continues to compare RAM capacity to those of totally different x86 architectures with additionally totally different memory mgmt from the OSes .

So you're saying Apple-Bytes can store 2x more information than all other Bytes? And using only 1/3 of the RAM channels doesn't impact performance?

And memory swapping to counter low RAM availability isn't slowed down by a trash tier SSD?

What do you think RAM does? Holding solely x86 overhead? Good luck switching between more than three Chrome tabs then.

 

[AlTech]

1 hour ago, Dracarris said:

Over a year after the introduction of AS ARM, continues to compare RAM capacity to those of totally different x86 architectures with additionally totally different memory mgmt from the OSes .

Because despite using different memory subsystems and architectures the physical capacity is still the same and nothing will ever make 8GB RAM become 16GB, even quadrupling the memory bandwidth won't fix that.

 

Nobody at Apple or in the media is seriously saying that 8GB of Unified memory is equal to 16GB or 32GB of non Unified memory. 8GB unified memory is equal to 8GB of non unified memory.

1 hour ago, Dracarris said:

 

What's next? M1/2 are bad chips because they don't nearly boost to 5GHz like 12th gen Intel?

Different CPU architectures and ISAs are designed around different clock speeds. Apple Silicon seems to be designed for around 3GHz maxmimum speed (plus or minus 10%) which makes sense cos that's basically the limit for ARM CPU cores so far. Anything faster would likely not result in any meaningful performance improvement and would destroy the main advantage ARM has over x86, power efficiency.

 

Intel's micro-architectures and core designs allow for much higher clock speed because Intel needs high clock speeds to maintain high single core and per core perf.

[leadeater]

6 minutes ago, Paul Thexton said:

So I’d be surprised if people were using the internal, space limited 256GB SSD for the purpose?

Depends, often the default location for this type of thing is in the user profile directory or alternatively in the project folder location. Different software have different defaults, even from the same software vendor.

 

For us it can be a little different since it's education and shared workstations so you can't always use the same computer, I think some move their scratch to the NAS when that isn't the default.

 

Problem is the more application workloads you move to the NAS the more demand you put on it and the more important it is for application usability too, and it's also sometime not recommend to place the scratch on a network resource but I can't actually stop people doing it. QoS and Quotas become useful here to ensure overall service quality for all.

[leadeater]

21 minutes ago, Roswell said:

I make an edit or undo an action on a 4 foot wide canvas @ 300 DPI with a handful of smart objects, masks, etc and ...*gulp*... have the audacity to pan around the canvas! Oh look, there's my SSD read/writing multiple gigs!

That doesn't state with actual data the performance requirement and demand the application I/O workload actually is 

 

All anecdotes and opinions, zero facts and evidence. Like I said, too often know nothing about storage performance requirements yet love to act like they do.

 

21 minutes ago, Roswell said:

A slow drive and a large format image are a great way to sit there for 10-20 seconds after an edit/canvas pan.

Do tell me how you know 1500MB/s is too slow... And you're doing all this on a 256GB Mac right?

 

What's most confusing is the part where I explicitly said more than what is needed is unnecessary... since when was I saying you didn't need it for your work... where did I claim a particular performance wasn't necessary for you or anything else...

[Roswell]

6 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Depends, often the default location for this type of thing is in the user profile directory or alternatively in the project folder location. Different software have different defaults, even from the same software vendor.

Why would scratch be in a project folder? Do you think people are enabling/disabling hundreds of scratch disks for every project in their respective folders?

 

Normally I wouldn't nitpick to this extent, but it's again an excellent example of you not having even a basic understanding of the software you claim to understand on a professional level.

 

8 minutes ago, leadeater said:

That doesn't state with actual data the performance requirement and demand the application I/O workload actually is 

 

Do tell me how you know 1500MB/s is too slow...

 

What do you possibly want? A screencast of me at work with monitoring software running in the background? 

 

No thanks. You say you're an authority in creative apps even though you don't use them. How about you load one up and take two seconds to glance over at your I/O history. Photoshop can easily write 2GB+ in a second while I work. Working with video can dump/read even more...

[leadeater]

19 minutes ago, Roswell said:

Why would scratch be in a project folder?

Because that is literally an option and some software default to that location for this....

 

Quote

The scratch disk is the location on your computer where Premiere Pro CC 2019 will store media and other files related to your project. By default the Scratch Disk will be set to the same folder that you set as the location for your new project.

 

Adobe Premiere ^

 

19 minutes ago, Roswell said:

Normally I wouldn't nitpick to this extent, but it's again an excellent example of you not having even a basic understanding of the software you claim to understand on a professional level.

*cough* Who doesn't know how what software works? *cough*

 

Look before you leap.

 

Oh but you really meant Media Cache location right?...

Quote

Windows: \Users\username\AppData\Roaming\adobe\common
MacOS: /Users/username/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Common

 

Problem is which did you actually mean, and should I even believe you...

 

19 minutes ago, Roswell said:

What do you possibly want? A screencast of me at work with monitoring software running in the background? 

Just a simple data log of real-time data showing utilization of your storage device to prove what your actual generated I/O load is.

 

You know, I really would prefer a good faith discussion....

[Roswell]

12 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Because that is literally an option and some software default to that location for this....

 

 

Adobe Premiere ^

 

*cough* Who doesn't know how what software works? *cough*

 

Look before you leap.

 

Just a simple data log of real-time data showing utilization of your storage device to prove what your actual generated I/O load is.

Good thing him and I weren't talking about Premiere! 

 

Please refer to your own words:

 

12 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Look before you leap.

 

Default values for Photoshop. You know, the thing him and I were actually talking about (and no, the default location is never in the project's enclosing folder):

 

 

 

 

[Paul Thexton]

15 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Just a simple data log of real-time data showing utilization of your storage device to prove what your actual generated I/O load is.

 

Funnily enough this is easy to generate on Mac if you have Xcode installed, just open Instruments.app, select the File Activity template, start recording for all processes (or, I guess in this case, Photoshop.app), do a bit of work, then stop the recording.

 

Filesystem Activity for me compiling a pretty small SwiftUI project shows this (obviously there's other stuff happening system wide, but you can look at per-process info if you want to).. This is a 9 second recording. 

 

 

Admittedly that data capture isn't entirely relevant to the discussion (working with a pro-level size image in a media editing suite), as I have nothing to hand to replicate that kind of workload.  But the dev tools are available to anyone who wants to know exactly how much data is being read/written during a given workflow.

[leadeater]

12 minutes ago, Roswell said:

Default values for Photoshop. You know, the thing him and I were actually talking about (and no, the default location is never in the project folder):

As per the documentation for Premiere CC 2019 nope it is in fact default to same as project folder. 

 

Please quit acting like I said it's this way for all software and not what I actually said. I know he was talking about Photoshop, my reply was a general comment about scratch locations for different software, because you know, might just be interesting information, to have a nice discussion about things.

 

I was replying to him, not you, I do not care what you have to say at this point.