Looking for the most cost-efficient way to upgrade my Nehalem:
MacPro4,1
2,66 GHz
2 x Quad-Core
32GB RAM
I have the impression that a faster system drive (SSD) would be a good first step.
Then maybe RAM and/or CPU upgrade.
Don’t want to spend to much, and need advice making some wise decisions since at some point I ”have to” get a newer machine, maybe with a Thunderbolt chassis.
At the moment I have my system (Mavericks 10.9.5) on a Samsung SSD 840 EVO 500GB in the lower optical bay.
Don’t see any big improvements compared to an ordinary SATA drive.
I assume that optical bus has something to do with that.
System boot is 44 instead of 56 sec, and loading a Pro Tools session isn’t any faster.
I’ve been looking at the Sonnet PCIe Drive Cards, and also lately at the Create Pro solutions.
I have the original NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 graphics card in slot 1 and one HDX card in slot 2 installed.
I read that those cards must be installed in a PCIe 2.0 x4 slot for maximum speed.
What PCIe slots in the Nehalem are x4?
The Create Pro 2TB / 1TB cards are on the expensive side:
2TB Samsung SM951 PCIe 2.0 x16 card for Mac Pro | 5,700MB/s read & write RAID 0
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/2TB-Samsun...-/181942239511
But they also have the 256GB / 512GB cards:
512GB Samsung SM951 on PCIe 2.0 x4 card for Mac Pro | 1,500MB/s read & write
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/512GB-Sams...d=181942239511
Then there is the new Sonnet, but can the PCIe 2.0 slots in my Mac take advantage of the PCIe 3.0 specs?
Tempo PCIe 3.0 SSD Card
http://www.sonnettech.com/product/tempopcie3ssd.html
Lastly, these Sonnet cards, that have the advantage of using 3rd party drives, so when prices comes down I could buy a large one to host my sample libraries instead of mechanical drives:
Tempo SSD 6Gb/s SATA PCIe 2.0 Drive Card for SSDs
http://www.sonnettech.com/product/tempossd.html
Tempo SSD Pro Plus 6Gb/s SATA Dual 2.5" SSD PCIe 2.0 Card with eSATA Ports
http://www.sonnettech.com/product/tempossdproplus.html
Any thoughts appreciated