I am thinking about getting an Intel 320 SSD for my early 2008 MBP non unibody. I've read that the SATA chipset in this MBP supports 3Gb but that Apple for some reason only has this MBP set to 1.5Gb. The System info backs this up. Is it really worth getting an SSD for this MBP then?
lenm
MBP(4.1) 15", 2.4GHz, Mac OS X (10.6.6), iMacCore Duo 1.83GHz, iPad(3G), iPod Touch, Airport Extreme N
I think you would be spending money for something you couldn't take advantage of using completely.
@lenn5 - Did you ever try the SSD in your Early 2008 MacBook Pro (MacBookPro4,1) ?
I share your concern about wasting money on SSD because of bandwidth limit... is it truly a limit?
Intel ICH8-M AHC
Vendor: Intel
Product: ICH8-M AHCI
Link Speed: 1.5 Gigabit
I upgraded to a 7200rpm Hitachi 500GB drive earlier this year, and notice improved performance, along with total 4GB RAM. Can recommend that for sure...
Scott
Scott,
I did finally get the Intel 120GB 320 SSD for my MBP 15" 4.1. Speed improvement was enormous! Like getting a new computer. SSD speed has decreased some since I installed it 5 months ago. Too bad Apple doesn't support TRIM on non Apple SSDs. Also, Intel doesn't make an OSX version of it's SSD toolkit.
lenn
...Is it really worth getting an SSD for this MBP then?
You'd still get a speed improvement, albient not as much as newer Macs, but still an improvement. And you'd probably see a little better battery life and have a more durable drive (e.g.: no hard drive head crashes.) Whether it's worth the cost is up to you.
Me personally, I needed more storage capacity so I did not put in a SSD in my 2008 MBP. I did put in a Seagate Momentus XT hybrid drive, though. Better performance than a traditional drive, but not as much as a SSD. And yes, the 1.5Gb SATA controller does hurt the performance numbers compared to later Macs, but I still get a small speed improvement over my previous 7200 RPM non-hybrid drive.
Did the Intel ssd continue to work well over time ?
I ask because i got the basic crucial ssd and my boot times initially went down from nearly 3 minutes to 4 seconds but within a month had climbed to 12 minutes and my machine was beachballing all over the place
I went through 3 of the same ssd before getting a refund
on the plus side i' really quick at replaceing a hard drive in that mac now 🙂
I just upgraded my snail drive to the Samsung 840 evo 250 ssd. What an amazing difference. Boot time is faster, but what I appreciate more is the speed of my applications. I haven't seen the beach ball since installing.
If I didn't do it myself, I never would have believed how easy it is to do. I found the best price on Amazon. I did need to by a sata/usb adapter in order to do it. I used Superduper to transfer files. File transfer took about an hour and a half, but drive swap only took about twenty minutes... I was working with care and patience.
I would encourage those not willing to shell out money for a new computer to give this a whirl.
Early 2008 MBP(non unibody) SSD
