512 SSD

with the samsung - if you're getting 90 mins now, you'll probably get the same maybe a bit more since it's low powered...

the sandisk and kingston will probably use more of your battery life.....

Crucial M4 which I currently use in my late 2011 15 inch - i didn't really see a difference in battery life when i did the hard drive to ssd swap.

I've been getting 7+ hours on my stock MBP, even after I adding the 16GB of RAM and my Crucial and upgraded to Mountain Lion - so I haven't had any negative effects that some have reported with ML.

My Crucial is actually pretty fast - I ran the following XBench scores a couple of weeks back while plugged up and no other applications running:

Not too sloppy!

Clinton

P.S. I wish that more users would supply XBench scores - most supply the BlackMagic Disk Speed test scores which are less comprehensible, to me, than the XBench scores.

Ok Clinton - Here's my score with my new Kingston Hyper X

Wait a minute - now I'm confused - I thought that the 'higher' scores were 'better'?

?

Clinton

yes they are - but the Crucial M4 comes with a Marvell controller that is faster than the Sandforce 2281 in some areas....

post your Blackmagic scores and you'll see the tables have been turned...

Test your Crucial kit for me - I'm surprised that my Crucial is 'out-performing' your Kingston...

Clinton

My 15 Inch Macbook is in my restaurant office right now....Will post scores tomorrow if I remember....

Have a look here for side by side performance comparison.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/355?vs=412

if you read the link i provided then yes, the Kingston while not better than Crucial, it is however, faster...

in reliability terms, they're in the same boat....The Crucial is faster in some areas and the Kingston is faster when larger files are needed to be read and written to your drive.

This page has them equal in some tasks with either the Kingston or Crucial best in other tasks. I don't know what they use to benchmark, but it looks as if one is no better than the other overall.

That said - I'm prejudiced as I have the Crucial m4 - Bimmer has both. Looks as though my Xbench scores are better but, again, I'm not sure what the anandtech site is using for the benchmarks (something either that's not available to we mere mortals or something running on Windows, perhaps?).

I don't think that the Kingston was even available when I bought the Crucial - and I bought the Crucial based upon reviews from Mac users, on both Amazon and the Crucial users forum. The Samsung 830 is supposed to be the fastest drive around these days, I think, so you may want to look at reviews from Mac users on it.

Good luck,

Clinton

shahabz wrote:

Doesn't this conclude that the Kingston is better than Crucial??

Like Clinton - I do like the way my Crucial M4 performs - I do however, like to think my Kingston HyperX is faster since it's my newest toy......But after a few test and benchmarks, no matter which benchmarking software I use, I can't see the difference since they're both pretty fast for what I use it for.

So if you go with either a Kingston HyperX, Crucial M4 or the Samsung 830 Series - you'll be getting a fast SSD.

One thing to point out though - only the Crucial M4 can be upgraded (firmware) without the need of of hooking up to a Windows Machine and it's non destructive.

shahabz wrote:

what's this firmware update?? How critical is it? When is it required?

something you really don't need to worry about......that only applies if you're having issues with your SSD.

because you're buying a new SSD your firmware is the latest one - it only applies to us who has older SSDs.

Bimmer's just saying that Crucial provides firmware that can be installed with a Mac and not having to resort to a friend with a Windows machine for firmware updates - Crucial is very Mac-friendly in that regard. My unit shipped with rev. 0309 of the firmware - the current version is 000f. I applied the 000f firmware update and had nothing but trouble so I downgraded (quite easily) to 0309.

However I monitor the Crucial sites regularly and they are now shipping units with 000f and I've heard no complaints from any Mac users. Not sure why I - and a few others - had problems but I really didn't need the firmware update anyway. And as no Mac users are having trouble with 000f in the new units I can only assume that it was a problem experienced by a few.

I also went to the anandtech site and compared the Samsung 830 benchmarks to the Crucial m4 - again, the Crucial excels at some the Samsung in others. Go to the website and select other for comparison. But, overall, you're going to want a drive that's 'fit' for Mac. For me, in that respect, Crucial wins hands-down!

Clinton