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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

17" SSD MBP from SILVERADO Blazing Fast!!

Ketch Rossi

Ketch Rossi

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Location
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Just got my new MBP from Silverado, and I must say, Torrey was right on, this baby is BLAZING FAST!!

Significant speed shown all across the board, for all applications, including CS4, FCS2 and the RED apps.

Thanks so much Torrey and Tyler for your advise on this machine, I love it, and finally don't fill the big lug moving away from my desktop, in fact it is in many instances faster, especially for startup of the system it self and any of the running applications.

This is the system I got:

APPLE MBP 17" (Unibody)
2.93GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
4GB 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM
160GB Intel X-25M SSD

If you are in the market for a MBP do give a call to this guys at Silverado, this units Rocks!


EDIT"

I fotgot to mention how much I love how quite this thing is, I don't think I'll ever go back to spinning Disk Drives, this thing is so smooth, as when on my desk I use it mostly closed and connected to either my 30" Apple Cinema Display or my Cintiq 21UX, if wasn't for the images still rolling on my Cinema Display, I would think the MBP was off :)
ciao
 
I want one,
what makes this different from buying one at the store though.
 
The SSD used in this units from Silverado is different then that shipped from Apple, and trusting Torrey I ordered one, and after testing it with an other brand new MBP with an Apple SSd of 128GB we have noticed several seconds of difference in favor of the Silverado unit, all application tested, including CS4 and RedCine, started up almost instantly, vs, the Apple version needing several seconds to load, Internet as well seems to load faster on my unit.

I suggest you give Torrey at Silverado a call Luis before buying, I know they will be building my new Mac Pro station as well.

ciao
 
SSD is by far the best way to go these days, sadly the storage isn't there..160GB can go like a flash, I've got 50GB left on my 320GB Macbook Pro 15" heh...
Though hopefully by the time the new processors come out in October the SSD will be bumped up to a cheap 320GB!

Does Silverado deliver overseas?
 
Yes I know, but fortunately I have a squadron of portable G-Tech's, and now looking in to the SSD protable drives as well, I'm too happy with the SSd on the MBP that I'm looking in to go SSD all the way, and one thing for sure I will not likely use RED Drives any longer but get the SSD RED Drives.

I'm prety sure that Silverado does deliver overseas, I don't see why not, but give them a call, they also have an add here on REDUSER.

ciao
 
Good news is that 160GB X-25M drive continues to come down in price on Amazon.com. $779.56 as of today.

-michael zaletel
(shooter)
 
Imran Farouk said:
SSD is by far the best way to go these days, sadly the storage isn't there..160GB can go like a flash, I've got 50GB left on my 320GB Macbook Pro 15" heh...
Though hopefully by the time the new processors come out in October the SSD will be bumped up to a cheap 320GB!

Does Silverado deliver overseas?
Click to expand...

Yes, I bought several items and one over clocked box for our Scratch. Experience has been excellent. Lim Singapore
 
Thom Steinhoff said:
Ketch,

What does this do to your R3D rendering speeds? Any comparison's yet? Can you play bigger proxies real time?

Thanks for sharing,

Thom
Click to expand...

Just got it yesterday and didn't do any R3D file handling yet nor rendering, but in all truth this system will not be handling such tasks, but nonetheless I'm sure there will be times when on set will have to do just that.

We tested many applications and all of those that do not take advantage of multi core were smoked away by this system, and this was true for both the 2.93GHz MBP with the Apple SSD as well as the 8 Core 3.2GHz Mac Pro (Xeon).

michael zaletel said:
Good news is that 160GB X-25M drive continues to come down in price on Amazon.com. $779.56 as of today.

-michael zaletel
(shooter)
Click to expand...

The guys at Silverado have a better price.

ciao
 
KETCH ROSSI said:
We tested many applications and all of those that do not take advantage of multi core were smoked away by this system, and this was true for both the 2.93GHz MBP with the Apple SSD as well as the 8 Core 3.2GHz Mac Pro (Xeon)
Click to expand...

Thanks for your response.

Did you put a SSD in the Mac Pro as well? I'd be really interested in hearing the benefits there. That must fly. I've been holding off to get a new Mac Pro until they refresh the 30" cinema display and get Blu-Ray burning. But Now, I guess a SSD is a must-have!

Best Regards,

Thom
 
eastco said:
Can you replace the spinning disk in an existing MBP with the SSD version?
Click to expand...

Yes off course.


Thom Steinhoff said:
Thanks for your response.

Did you put a SSD in the Mac Pro as well? I'd be really interested in hearing the benefits there. That must fly. I've been holding off to get a new Mac Pro until they refresh the 30" cinema display and get Blu-Ray burning. But Now, I guess a SSD is a must-have!

Best Regards,

Thom
Click to expand...

No, I have actually sold my Xeon Mac Pro, and will get the new MAc next month, for sure will be with the guys at Silverado, now I trust they have great solutions so I stay with them, and hope to get a Scratch station to take to Italy with.

Must also say that the fast start up times are best seen when not connected to an external Display like the Aple 30" Cinema Display, as the LED display on the MBP is almost instant vs. the external regular display which takes few to start up and exit the blue screen, but I'm sure this issue is none existing with the new 24" Apple LED Cinema Display.

ciao
 
Andrew Martin said:
Which screen did you go with in the end Ketch, Glossy or Anti-Glare?

Andi
Click to expand...

After seen the Anti-Glare, I noticed that the images seemed a bit washed out in their colors, especially the blacks, and it still had reflections, just as if they were out of focus, but still very reflective, so I went with the GLOSSY, it reflects much more, but less when the screen is set to full illumination, and for me it will be no issue, as inside I mostly used closed and connected to a secondary Display, or when open just to display the tools, and when on location or any were outside I used with a Screen Shade, which is perfect and eliminates entirely all reflections, but I do enjoy the high quality images and the very rich blacks and very bright whites I get from the Glossy display.

ciao
 
Thanks for the info Ketch. Im looking to get a new MBpro in the next week or so so im looking into that stuff so i'll get the glossy probably - cant afford the SSD so gonna go for the 7200rpm HDD for the moment.

Andrew.
 
Most welcome Andrew, few notes which are important.

If you don't use a Shade and mostly work out on the open, the screen can be very reflective, how ever for me is well worth the gain in color.

The HDD is definitely a good choice still, and the reason I went for the SSD at last was because of speed, battery life, and most of all not ever having to be concern about any movement which might effect the spinning disk, also have been noticing that with the SSD the Lap Top simply doesn't get warm at all, a very good thing when you keep it on your lap for long time.

The battery has definitely also better performance with the SSD vs. the HDD, which is also good, since you can not carry an extra battery.

ciao
 
Ketch,

Thanks for the awesome posts! We always appreciate the good experiences that our customers have with our gear.

For everyone else--if you are considering an SSD-based Mac, the Intel SSD's are the top-tier solution right now. If you think performance in a MacBook Pro is good, try out three of them in a Mac Pro!

In fact, we'll be posting some information on some cutting-edge testing we've been doing with up to four 160 GB SSD's in the new Nehalem Mac Pro in conjunction with Rob-Art Morgan at Bare Feats.

To make a long story short, we've actually seen that THREE solid state drives are faster than FOUR solid state drives.

Yes--it makes no sense.

We're getting over 700 MB/s with three, but it drops to 583 MB/s with four.

The only thing that we can think of is that the SSD's are SO fast that they are flooding the Mac Pro bus with too much data at once. We've tested this with Harpertown and Nehalem and the results are similar.

It helps that Intel's SSD group is basically across the street. Those guys are AWESOME.

I'll post up the results when all of our testing is done. We are awaiting 10.5.7 to see if its a possible driver issue. But, since its something that extends back to Harpertown, I don't think it will help get us closer to 1.0 Gb/s that we had expected with four SSD's.

One anecdote--Rob said this has also been observed in Vista Server's as well.

Torrey
-----------------------------
Torrey Loomis
President & CEO - Silverado Systems, Inc.
Outfitter to the World's Foremost Apple Professionals
2600 East Bidwell Street, Suite 280
Folsom, CA 95630
(916) 760-0032 • FAX (916) 404-5258
torrey@silverado.cc
http://www.Silverado.cc

Check out our StudioBuilder blog at http://silveradosys.blogspot.com
 
My pleasure Torrey,

spending the extra cash and jumping in to the SSD was the best choice I could have made, thanks to your advise.

This is the perfect solution for on set computer, when portability is an issue, will serve well on set of "Rape of a Beauty" and if the funds go as hoped, then I'l be ordering one of the new Towers with Three of this babies in it, no doubt.

ciao
 
torster said:
In fact, we'll be posting some information on some cutting-edge testing we've been doing with up to four 160 GB SSD's in the new Nehalem Mac Pro in conjunction with Rob-Art Morgan at Bare Feats.
Click to expand...

Awesome! I'm a big fan of Bare Feats. Looking forward to seeing the test results.
 
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