2009 MBP 13 HD vs SSD vs SSD + firmware update vs 2009 Mac Pro software RAID

UPDATE: While the thrust of this post is that my Samsung SSD with the fixed 2009 June MBP firmware works great, there are some bogus problems that other people are apparently having with the update...

--

Hey, remember like a week ago when all those fucktards were clogging the interweb tubes with moronic posts insisting that the (imo inexplicable) 1.5Gbps SATA-I 2009 MacBook Pro firmware debacle didn't matter "in the real world"? Well, yeah, they were wrong.

These numbers are interesting enough that I wish I had time to do better tests (but I don't). As soon as Apple released the SATA-II firmware update, I bought the new MBP 13, along with a Samsung MMDOE56G5MXP-0VB SSD unit (spec sheet claims 220MB/s read and 200MB/s writes).

I wouldn't have bought the laptop if Apple hadn't fixed the firmware limitation, so I obviously was going to update, but before doing so I decided to run Xbench:

1. with the stock MBP out of the box with its crappy 5400 RPM archaic spinning-physical-platter data storage device
2. with the fast SSD but without updating the firmware
3. with the fast SSD and the firmware update
4. and then on my my main 2009 8-core Mac Pro, which boots from a software RAID0 array made up of 3 Samsung 1TB disks (model HE103UJ), just for a rough comparison

As you would expect, the results were: 1 dogshit-slow, 2 okay, 3 good, and 4 good.

The new firmware confers a significant performance boost, according to Xbench and subjective user opinion.

The discrepancies between the runs made me wish I had an intern or a slave or maybe an 8-year-old nerd son or some kind of person whom I could compel to do better testing. But I don't, so this was all I had time for. Still, it's interesting.

It is also worth noting that the Mac Pro in question couldn't have its work interrupted for its test, so the results are real-world running 42 apps including VMWare running Ubuttnu, OpenSolaris, WinXP, and Win7 (all mostly idle). The MBP tests were done after the normal fresh-reboot-and-then-wait-a-few-minutes-for-the-Mac-to-stop-hyperventilating procedure.