Best COMPATIBLE ssd for NVidia MCP79 chipset?

Bad news iMac9,1 owners (with NVidia MCP79 SATA chipset). I just purchased a Samsung EVO 850 (500GB capacity) for my iMac at the office. I formatted it with a 2015 Retina iMac using an external Drive Dock and installed El Capitan on it. I then installed that Samsung SSD into a 2.5 to 3.5 bracket and installed it inside the iMac9,1. It boots faster than the old spinning platter drive did, but my heart sank when I installed Black Magic Disk Speed Test and let it run. The fastest speeds I get are:

110MB/s — write

136MB/s — read

Those are SATA-I speeds.

(SATA-II (3G) speeds should be upwards of 275MB/s. And of course SATA-III (6G) speeds are about 500MB/s.)

Here's the exact SSD I purchase from Amazon Japan:

http://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/product/B00QIH3RUY/

And so, reports claiming the Samsung EVO 850 SSDs (6G) can run inside the iMac9,1 at 3G (SATA-II) speeds are flat out lies.

Supposedly this "slowdown-to-SATA-I" problem should NOT happen on my late 2009 iMac11,1 (also 3G) at home, which has the Intel SATA chipset instead of the stupid NVidia, but I must admit I am a bit spooked now. The X-FILES motto of TRUST NO ONE is certainly correct. I'm depressed.

I am sorry about the Nvidia chipset I mean I never told you about this chipset because I don't own a mac with this chipset, all I could say for the intel chipset. I am sorry that the nvidia chipset brings down the speed. I think the reason why these mac had the nvidia was because of that time, it must be because of the technology, We have to be lucky for those who have the intel chipset up till now. Because there is no bottle neck compatibility with the intel chipset controller, there is a wide compatibility with the Samsung and other SSD.... One thing is for sure that HDD disk create a huge bottle neck for any mac performance.

Just to let everyone know, I have an iMac at the office which is an early 2009 iMac9,1. That's what I spoke of in my previous post. That one has the NVidia SATA chipset. But my late 2009 iMac11,1 at home has the Intel chipset, like Switch900 describes. The slightly older 9,1 is different, and sadly, like I said, despite the numerous reports I read on the internet saying SAMSUNG EVO 850 SSDs work PERFECT at SATA-II (3G) speeds on the early 2009 iMac9,1, they all are lies.

I have not yet upgraded my iMac at home.

And sadly, Switch900, our other discussion about RAIDing 2 SSDs was blocked by you know who. (It now says "Unauthorized" when you try to access it.)

Now, as to TRIM, the link I posted earlier in this discussion is the easiest to understand. Here it is again:

http://www.howtogeek.com/222077/how-to-enable-trim-for-third-party-ssds-on-mac-o s-x/

But here's an even easier summary:

To enable TRIM for all SSDs attached (inside and out) to a given Mac, Open Terminal and type:

sudo trimforce enable

To disable it, you swap "enable" for the word "disable" — but why you would want to is anyone's guess.

yes I definitely know who we are talking about that person was very annoying anyway yes you would not have a problem if you have an iMac 11.1, and putting it in Raid 0 you would get the maximum out of your iMac insane speed and you could edit videos pretty fast with FCPX, I think that dude was pretty jealous about wanting to make a point.... My point is clear I just want to help others upgrade their system who wants to get the maximum out of their almost 6 year iMac...

I ended up choosing the Samsung 850 EVO for my MacBook Pro mid 2009 (with the NVidia MCP79 chipset).

I can confirm that I am getting a "Negotiated Link Speed" of 3Gbps (SATA II).

Blackmagic shows the following speeds:

210MB/s - write

267MB/s - read

The machine is performing much better now after replacing the HDD with the SSD. Boot-up and apps launch a lot faster. CPU usage is lower.

My only question is that the drive shows TRIM Support as "NO" in System Information. Does that mean I cannot enable TRIM?

I am currently running Yosemite but planning to upgrade to El Capitan.

Well you must be one lucky dude can we see your screen capture of black magic and your system report..... From what I heard the nvidia is not compatible with Sata 3 to be used with Sata 2 but anyway if you want trim enable write this in terminal

sudo trimforce enable.

that will boot into trim for the rest of the life of your computer.

it means that your computer has no idea what it will take to render those files at those speed..........

you might want to read up and research about trim, what it does it frees up space when you delete them with trim activated it acts immediately to delete files not being used by the NAND blocks in the SSD for memory storage.

TRIM is required insofar as your SSD will slow down over time without it. TRIM deals will deleted files and garbage collection. Keep in mind only some newer versions of Yosemite allow the "trimforce" Terminal command to be used. Update to El Capitan right away, then perform the trimforce command, then you're finished.

I actually bough a second 500GB Samsung EVO 850 for our 2009 MacBook Pro 5,5 at the office. Trim is now enabled on it, but I didn't have time to run the BLACK MAGIC speed test on it. I will do that on Monday and report back here on the results.

You could run a raid also if it has the intel chipset and from what I heard from people who has upgraded their macbook pro 5.5 and done raid on it has gotten pretty dam good results even with a single SSD.....

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.