Q: Best COMPATIBLE ssd for NVidia MCP79 chipset?

Thanks.

It was a close call between the Samsung 850 EVO and Crucial MX200. But I chose the Samsung SSD because it is supposedly faster and more energy efficient than the Crucial. Samsung warranty is 5 years vs. 3 years for Crucial. And also because others had confirmed they were getting 3Gbps SATA 2 speed when pairing the Samsung 850 EVO with the NVidia MCP79 chipset. 

For the looks of it I see that you are using 3Gps but thats on the main HDD bay if you were to put that in the optical bay it will slow down to 1.5 gigabit per sec, and your raid will not go into the Sata 2 instead it will go with Sata 1 and where supposedly your Sata 2 should be running at the max speed to compensate it will run the Sata 1 speed to compensate for the share speed in the optical drive Nvidia chipset are the most crapped out chipset I was lucky to have gotten the intel chipset and mostly now apple uses the intel chipset controller for all macs, since late 2009....

Some in early macbook pros have the intel chipset controller.  For now we are the guinea pigs for this new technology, Intel has broken barrier with their SSD 750 its a thick SSD and we are talking about the 1 gigabyte past in speed for one SSD check out videos on youtube about this, set back it runs on Sata connection port with a PCI connector which macs don't have I saw this about a month ago and the SSD for 1.2 tera is about in the 1000 dollar range

I enabled TRIM on our office iMac9,1 (early 2009) and MacBook Pro 5,5 (also 2009) and then ran the Black Magic Disk Speed Test again on both machines.  The results are the same, as follows:

MBP5,5 = WRITE: 201MB/s, READ: 267MB/s  (SATA-II speed)

iMac9,1 = WRITE: 108MB/s, READ: 135MB/s (SATA-1 speed)

Again, both machines show the NVidia MCP79 AHCI as the SATA controller in the System Report.  But why the iMac is only 50% the speed of the MBP is baffling.  It's the same exact Samsung EVO 850 500GB in both Macs!  And again, TRIM is enabled.  The same OS is installed too (the latest version of El Capitan).  In fact, the iMac's SSD is a CCC clone of the MBP's SSD!  And yet, we have the speed difference.

So again, unless I am totally way out in left field on something, the reports I read about the Samsung EVO 850 running at full SATA-II 3G speeds in the iMac9,1 are nothing but lies.  Even so, I still would like to know, on a technical level, WHY this is so, seeing both Macs share the same exact SATA chip.  It makes no sense.

I Think it's because of a firmware release I read some of this being that the nvidia chipset could be solved with a firmware update has to be done by Apple, I would definitely prefer the Intel chipset instead of the nvidia chipset.. I was getting the same read and write speed when I just had one ssd 1 Tera in the HDD bay that's when I decided to get another SSD of the same exact model and size of the HDD to setup a raid 0 configuration, that's when I saw my read and write speed triple in speed.

The reason for the Sata 1 speed on the iMac could only be one thing a firmware of the machine which enables it to run on that speed being that the macbook Pro could of had a firmware update in its days

Where to get I that special "firmware update" for the iMac9,1?

Next...

Are you really saying you only got SATA-I (130MB/s or so) speeds with only 1 SSD in the HDD slot of the iMac11,1 (late 2009, with Intel SATA chipset)?  I ask because I can understand a doubling of 3G to 6G (I asked OWC and they verified that for RAID 0), but a tripling from SATA-I to SATA-III sounds strange.

No I got Sata 2 from the beginning with the HDD bay area but I wanted more speed and I research that by doing a RAID 0 you would get double more speed of what one SATA 2 bay could offer... So I went out and took out the optical bay and got another SSD of the same exact size and model of the EVO line and got the speed you see on my black magic disk speed.. Which now I am very happy with what I have because I could edit videos much more faster and it has brought a new life to my iMac I was running on the HDD alone with the SSD 200 plus speed and read around 260 plus speed but when I added another SSD on the optical bay and set it up in RAID 0 I got more speed than what I expected.

about the firmware I think you have to let apple do this not nvidia, I have been reading and trying to research this bug problem with apple nvidia chipset that came with it. and I am still searching to find this problem so I could post it here.

some say that by resetting the PRAM will solve this problem I don't know if it is true

Switch900 wrote:

 

about the firmware I think you have to let apple do this not nvidia, I have been reading and trying to research this bug problem with apple nvidia chipset that came with it. and I am still searching to find this problem so I could post it here.

Hopefully you can find an iMac9,1 firmware updater that I can use myself because I certainly don't want to travel 1 hour to my nearest Apple store, then pay for expensive parking, and then pay Apple to perform the firmware update.  Doing it myself, if possible, is preferred.

As to the 6G speeds you posted here (and in our now-dead thread), I don't doubt you at all.  I spoke with OWC and they confirmed that the iMac11,1 (late 2009) will indeed give 6G throughput when two same-sized SSDs are mounted internally (1 in the HDD slot and the other in the Optical bay).  So I am not worried about my iMac at home (the 11,1).  I am simply hoping this iMac9,1 at the office can be fixed to give 3G speeds.

Drivers upgrade for Nvidia MCP79 (Intel SSD 330 working on 1,5gb/s)

check that link

I think it should be in the apple updater it automatically would update it, I know that when are using the public beta of el capitan and yosemite sometimes it would need to update the firmware, I have mine with password protection so no newer update will cripple my iMac, which is in many cases that apple will launch an update on their OS for certain machines and it could cripple some features even slow down your machine, But don't take my word for it, I just research and read many blogs about this PRAM reset thing but I think it won't work at all.

The 2009 firmware update for the iMac9,1 pertains to the video card.  Furthermore, I already had it installed (yes, I checked just now).

iMac EFI Firmware Update 1.4

I then performed an SMC and PRAM resets just now, as per this:

iMac SMC and PRAM reset

Upon rebooting my iMac9,1 and running the Black Magic Disk Speed Test, I found that I am still getting slow SATA-I speeds.

Again, this is so strange.  The MBP5,5 has the same NVidia chipset, yet the iMac9,1 gets SATA-I while the MBP5,5 gets SATA-II, both with the same exact SSD and same disk contents!!

the funny thing is that apple will not give you an explanation about this so I have no idea about this all I know is that anyone with the nvidia chipset would get a hit or miss with getting SATA 2 on it, some has report SATA2 and some had the bad luck of SATA 1

All I could say is for those with SATA 1 to do a raid 0 and maybe they could get speeds of Sata 2 but I would not recommend doing any raid with the nvidia chipset.