USB 3 PCIe Card in Mac Pro with Accel (PCI Express)

[relaxo]

Is anyone running a PCIe USB 3.0 card inside of their Mac Pro in conjunction with Pro Tools Accel cards? If so, what brand? Any notes or behavior oddities?

[relaxo]

bump

[Firechild]

Why should it be problem ?
But also, why bother with USB3? Use Fw800 and put another Accelcard inside instead.

[Dism]

Originally Posted by Firechild

Why should it be problem ?
But also, why bother with USB3? Use Fw800 and put another Accelcard inside instead.

I'm inclined to agree. I have 4 USB3 ports on my machine that go largely unused. There aren't really any USB3 peripherals that actually take advantage of the bandwidth. Most flash drives and external drives barely saturate USB2, even the ones that market themselves as SuperSpeed.

Are there any specific USB3 peripherals you need it for?

[relaxo]

This is really important for me to get going asap if it is possible. Any one doing this yet? Someone must have tried this by now seing that 90%+ of all drives sold today are USB 3.0.

Why so important? Those of us that run public studios with clients coming in vertically from all directions. Yes, the ones coming in from across the aisle and above from other pro studios all have FW drives. The ones coming from bedrooms and PC based studios all tend to have USB drives with their work on it. When they had USB 2.0 drives, it didn't matter...we HAD TO transfer their data to our internal drives. Now everyone is coming in to our rooms with USB 3.0 drives that they get at Best Buy or Staples. USB 3 drives are finally fast enough to run sessions. Rather than transfer their USB 3 drive material to our internals via our Mac Pro USB 2.0 ports, we could start doing sessions right from the USB 3 drives if we put USB 3.0 pci cards in our Mac Pros.


(Please, no jokes about how it's better when things go slow...you get to charge the clients for more time.)

[DUCHUNTER]

I tried the LaCie card and it did not support USB 3 speed for regular devices.

[relaxo]

2014 ...anyone?

[John_Toolbox]

I just bought the new sonnet card:

http://www.sonnettech.com/product/tango3pcie.html

.... But I don't have a mac pro to test in, it's going to go in a thunderbolt to pcie chassis that's been "out of stock" since late december when I ordered it. Sonnet advertises this card to be capable of the full 5Gb/s (625MB/s) usb3 speed, when I get it I'll post the results back here. It's noteworthy that all macs that ship with built in usb3 ports are apparently capable of only 205MB/s across the entire USB3 bus. This limitation is fine when you're dealing with only one USB 3 drive, but transferring between 2 of them simultaneously cuts that speed in half.

[relaxo]

Anyone yet?

[relaxo]

still very interested.