All tricked out...

Over the weekend swapped the OEM Hitachi 120GB 5400rpm hard drive with a Fujitsu 160GB 7200rpm hard drive.

Upped the ram from 2GB to 3GB.

Well, I guess that's about all I can do to this thing. lolz

I kinda think the MBP should come with a 7200rpm drive STANDARD.

Especially now that decent sizes are available. It's kind of absurd to build a $2000-$3000 laptop, and then skimp on a ~$100 (price difference) part which single handedly bottlenecks the whole computer and user experience.

Apple! Put the Pro back in MacBook Pro!

 

Well...hows the performance now?!

 

Um, it's um... snappier? lolz

I also installed Leopard last week, so, it's been a big ol' snappyfest over here the last couple of weeks.

Oddly, the ram made a tangible difference. I wasn't expecting that much out of the ram in normal usage, but, it was pretty noticeable from boot-up to opening Firefox and other apps.

Usually, I sell my Macs after the warranty runs out. About 4 more months in my case (yes, I still have the OEM 120GB should I need to pop it back in), but I'm really going to try to keep this one for about a full year after the warranty runs out. Hope that works out for me.

Also, I have a large side job coming up using a lot of CS3, including After Effects and some 3d using Cinema 4d, so I thought these upgrades would make the MBP a little more boss opening lots of apps and large files.

I would say this is a good combination though, for those looking to give themselves a little speed bump.

Under Vista, my hard drive score went from 4.6 to 5.3.

 

Oh, I also nabbed a 4 port powered USB2 hub. Lame.

 

I agree...let's bring out a MacBook Extreme!

 

what hub and does it work well?

 

There are cheaper generic ones, but I got a rather nice lil' HP one for $20. Seems to work great, and came with an AC adapter, so, I assume all 4 ports are powered.

 

I have that hub and it is pretty good

 

my MB got the Maxx-out this week too.

2.2ghz/200gb 7200/ 4gb OCZ ram

 

It was a good move. I had After Effects, Cinema 4d, Photoshop and Illustrator all open at once and still had some operating room.

 

count schemula,

is yours the santa rosa or the original c2d? i'm assuming the first one since i think the santa rosas are the only mbp's that support 4 gigs of ram, right? how does that ati video card do for you? i so wish we could upgrade our video cards to the nvidia ones. anyway, i was looking to do a similar upgrade to mine (ram + 7200rpm hd) to go along with my leopard upgrade.

 

Yeah, MBP in my sig... 2.16GHz 128MB X1600

I play Company of Heroes and GTR2 with no problems...

7200rpm hard drive: $200
2GB ram stick: $70
Leopard: $130

So, that's $400 right there.

Sell MBP for $1500 and get a new $1999 MBP?

I'm going to go ahead and keep this one for another year, so I just upgraded it. The 7200rpm drive should be standard on the MBP at this point.

 

i have a black 2 ghz macbook with 2gb of ram I bought last year
Any way I can trick that out to 200gb 7200rpm, and 4GB RAM?

 

can you do this with macbooks which are a year old.
Its a core 2 duo, not core1

 

The Core 2 Duo non-Santa Rosa MacBook can only support up to 3 GB of RAM, but with 3 GB you will lose dual-channel support though. So keep that in mind.

 

No way. I'll admit the 160GB 5400RPM in my MBP is the first 5400RPM hard disk I've ever used, but I notice absolutely no difference between my older machines 60GB 7200RPM and even my desktops 750GB 7200RPM or 2x1000GB 7200RPM's.

Given the unnoticeable differences, I'd rather have the cooler operating temperatures and larger hard drives that 5400RPM's offer.

7200RPM 2.5" disks have been at 200GB for awhile, whilst the 5400RPM 2.5" discs have been at 250GB and now 320GB.

Besides, 7200RPM's are rather insignificant considering how close we are to replacing "performance" hard disks with solid state disks, don't you think?

Between a 200GB 7200RPM 2.5" hard disk and a 256GB Solid State Disc, I'd rather take the SSD.

Even than, I don't think Apple would make an SSD standard unless it was in a 13" or below performance notebook. It'd be an option for the MBP. The 7200RPM's would probably go to the MB's at that point.

 

Way!

I don't notice any abnormal heat with this drive.

Also, it is well known that larger drives use perpedicular recording and have higher platters, so, yes, your 160GB 5400rpm drive probably does feel as fast as your older 60GB 7200rpm drive.

The hard drive is pretty much the main bottleneck in your laptop.

When I do graphics work, I use some unholy combination of Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects, Cinema 4d, Dreamweaver and Flash and I'm opening and saving files constantly.

I guess what I mean is that 7200rpm drives are no longer esoteric, the sizes are in the 160GB and 200GB range now and the price difference is not outrageous.

It would just be another way to make the Pro more Pro and to help differentiate the MBP from the competition. If Apple is going to put a 250GB 5400rpm drive with a street price of $160, they might as well put a 200GB 7200rpm drive in there with a street price of $200.

Of course Apple is not shy, they jack you for the full $200 if you want to "upgrade" to a 7200rpm drive. You're better off getting the stock drive and getting a 7200rpm drive and swapping it out yourself and putting the stock drive in an external case. Roughly getting the stock drive for free that way. Well, $30 for the external USB case.

 

whats dual channel support do?

 

Layman description here, it's kinda like a striped RAID but for your ram. It will fill and unfill from both sticks simultaneously, like a RAID 0. It's called interleaving in the ram world.

I upgraded to 3GB and no question whatsoever, the benfits of having 3GB of ram are far outweighing whatever I lost by losing dual channel. I open a lot of heavy apps though, and I use Fusion sometimes.

 

As long as my macbook utilizes the 3gb, and it runs much more efficiently than 2gb, that its worth it for me. What type of RAM did you get, any recommendations on where to find it?

 

If you're in the U.S., definitely take a look at Newegg.com for cheap RAM.

In Canada, you can try NCIX.com and TigerDirect.ca .

 

True, I forgot about the PMR technology in my drive and how the article did state it'd improve overall performance. Still, for my needs, I don't think I'd bother updating my hard disk unless it was to a 500GB 5400RPM hard disk or 256GB solid state disk. Than again, I probably won't update it at all. In three years, I'll hopefully have saved enough to buy a brand new 2010 MBP, or MBUltra. We can dream.

 

And in the UK? http://www.crucial.com/uk/?