DIGLLOYD has posted several interesting articles in its Mac Performance Guide, including the Secrets of Solid State Drives (SSDs) ("Many SSDs just don’t hold up with use") and Virtual Memory Performance on Apple MacBook Pro ("A few megabytes or tens of megabytes of page outs are acceptable, but more than a few hundred megabytes means you’re losing performance in a major way.")
The most interesting piece is on MacBook Pro Core i7 SATA performance, which reveals that the 2009 MacBook Pro's impaired SATA write performance appears to have been cured. According to DIGLLOYD the April 2010 MacBook Pro has top-flight performance on both internal SATA ports. The benchmarks:
DIGLLOYD got these benchmarks courtesy of version 2 of its powerful Mac testing and diagnostic software diglloydTools 2.0 ($40). The previous version required use of the Terminal but v.2 comes wrapped in a convenient GUI and with some nice features, including:
- Solid state drive (SSD) performance enhancement
- New drive validation
- Stream testing for HD video
- Performance graphs
- Write/verify
- Enhanced stress test with memory verify
If you're into benchmarking your gear, diglloydTools is for you.