Laptop for tuning needs

[AdrianG]

Originally Posted by Sportsguy83

It is not the ECU. I have a retina Mac (SSD, usb 3.0, i5 proccesor) and I flash between 3-4 minutes on VMware, Parallels or Bootcamp.

@nelsmar flashes with his 8.1 tablet in 1 minute and 35 seconds.

On ecuflash?

[Sportsguy83]

Originally Posted by AdrianG

On ecuflash?

On Ecutek, but my point is, it doesn't matter if its Ecuflash or Ecutek,

IF the ECU was the limiting factor, then my flash time and nelsmar time would be the same

[AdrianG]

Originally Posted by Sportsguy83

On Ecutek, but my point is, it doesn't matter if its Ecuflash or Ecutek,

IF the ECU was the limiting factor, then my flash time and nelsmar time would be the same

I don't have any Ecutek experience so I won't speak to that. I believe Ecutek is able to do partial writes though, whereas EcuFlash does a full erase and full write with every flash. Ecutek uses their own bootloader whereas Ecuflash uses the factory loader. I believe that's why differences would appear.

If you were flashing from exactly the same map, making exactly the same changes, and the write times were so significantly different I would believe it.

[Sportsguy83]

Originally Posted by AdrianG

I don't have any Ecutek experience so I won't speak to that. I believe Ecutek is able to do partial writes though, whereas EcuFlash does a full erase and full write with every flash. Ecutek uses their own bootloader whereas Ecuflash uses the factory loader. I believe that's why differences would appear.

If you were flashing from exactly the same map, making exactly the same changes, and the write times were so significantly different I would believe it.

No, Ecutek does not do a partial flash. Ecutek flashes a full map everytime and all their flasher are of exactly the same size.

[AdrianG]

Originally Posted by Sportsguy83

No, Ecutek does not do a partial flash. Ecutek flashes a full map everytime and all their flasher are of exactly the same size.

Then I stand corrected. I only have experience with EcuFlash as I said earlier.

[jamesm]

We should compile a list of laptops that are known to have good flashing times.. since they seem to vary quite a bit by model. I wouldn't mind picking one up if I knew that it would flash like lightning .

[Sportsguy83]

Originally Posted by jamesm

We should compile a list of laptops that are known to have good flashing times.. since they seem to vary quite a bit by model. I wouldn't mind picking one up if I knew that it would flash like lightning .

I'll make a thread right now

(Give me a call when possible).

[Bg8780]

I'm speaking ONLY on theory here but I'd say the biggest factor off speed when it comes to flashing a ROM is probably your machines storage device (SSD, HDD)

I say this because @Sportsguy83 said his friends tablet flashes pretty quick. I'm sure the tablet is running a very decent SSD. Since the ROM that is being flashed is coming from the main storage device, this makes sense. Unless, the ROM that is being flashed is cached in the RAM. Then this is a different story.

I'm just thinking aloud. I could be completely wrong. I just upgraded the SSD in my Macbook recently to a much faster one, so I'll have to see if I notice a difference when I flash next. That won't be for awhile though.

[Sportsguy83]

Originally Posted by Bg8780

I'm speaking ONLY on theory here but I'd say the biggest factor off speed when it comes to flashing a ROM is probably your machines storage device (SSD, HDD)

I say this because @Sportsguy83 said his friends tablet flashes pretty quick. I'm sure the tablet is running a very decent SSD. Since the ROM that is being flashed is coming from the main storage device, this makes sense. Unless, the ROM that is being flashed is cached in the RAM. Then this is a different story.

I'm just thinking aloud. I could be completely wrong. I just upgraded the SSD in my Macbook recently to a much faster one, so I'll have to see if I notice a difference when I flash next. That won't be for awhile though.

I definitely agree the SSD plays a huge part (but not all). I went from a regular HDD old laptop and that flash was ridiculously slow....

Then I went to a Mac with SSD and lowered it to 3-4 minutes.

But now I want the cake and keep it at about 1 minute with a SSD modern Windows device.

[DJCarbine]

FWIW I had a thinkpad twist with an i5 and standard harddrive. Flash times did not improve/change when I switched to a 120gb Samsung EVO 840 SSD. Everything else was faster, but flash times felt the exact same

[Draco_PR23]

I have a MBP and I was thinking to upgrade to a SSD with Bootcamp to improve the flash times.
If not I might consider a cheap Windows laptop.

[Sportsguy83]

Originally Posted by DJCarbine

FWIW I had a thinkpad twist with an i5 and standard harddrive. Flash times did not improve/change when I switched to a 120gb Samsung EVO 840 SSD. Everything else was faster, but flash times felt the exact same

I think its a combination where a regular drive and slow processor will be way slower than SSD and fast/new processor.

Originally Posted by Draco_PR23

I have a MBP and I was thinking to upgrade to a SSD with Bootcamp to improve the flash times.
If not I might consider a cheap Windows laptop.

I'm not too happy of my MBP performance, but it will honestly depend on how much do you plan on flashing. If you want to flash say once a week, it's not a big deal at all. But I am flashing 4-5 times a night right now fine tuning driveability and then dyno time and for that its a PITA to wait inside the car 3-4 minutes everytime.

[olorin]

Originally Posted by SirBrass

And it takes forever to flash with windows on a Mac. Ask @nelsmar

Nope, about a minute and a half. Its no different than running windows on a pc. Its also pretty easy to create a windows partition on an existing OS X partition.

[olorin]

Originally Posted by Bg8780

I'm speaking ONLY on theory here but I'd say the biggest factor off speed when it comes to flashing a ROM is probably your machines storage device (SSD, HDD)

I say this because @Sportsguy83 said his friends tablet flashes pretty quick. I'm sure the tablet is running a very decent SSD. Since the ROM that is being flashed is coming from the main storage device, this makes sense. Unless, the ROM that is being flashed is cached in the RAM. Then this is a different story.

I'm just thinking aloud. I could be completely wrong. I just upgraded the SSD in my Macbook recently to a much faster one, so I'll have to see if I notice a difference when I flash next. That won't be for awhile though.

Not so sure an SSD would really make a difference. Its not doing a lot of disk activity to flash the ECU. CPU and bus speed are more important.