PCIe SSD cards and Mac Pro upgrades

[Darryl Ramm]

900 MB/s read/write on a SATA drive is impossibly fast and likely meaningless when trying to compare drives. That performance is likely measured through the filesystem cache, and might measure similarly fast numbers with slower drives.

[lucienpalmer]

Sorry, I mistyped. It's over 600MB/sec, not 900. I'm dyslexic (really).

To be specific, Blackmagic Disk Speed Test is giving him 686.1 MB/sec write and 689.5 MB/sec read with a Samsung EVO 1TB SSD (MZ-75E1T0B/AM) connected internally to a CalDigit FASTA-6GU3 PCI card.

Unfortunately, CalDigit discontinued the card with internal SATA, and the new model only has external SATA. I wanted a clean install with my SSD mounted internally. So instead, I bought a similar card on Ebay from Hong Kong (link below). It works great, but the internal SATA port must be running though it's USB 3.0 bus, because my internal SATA SSD appears as an external USB device to the Mac. I'm using an OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G SSD and I get 340 MB/sec write and 341 MB/sec read using AJA's disk red/write test.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/272059253733...%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

I just bought a Samsung EVO 1TB SSD (MZ-75E1T0B/AM). It should be here Tuesday. I'm going to run speed tests on the drive via my USB/SATA card and with my OWC Accelsior SSD card:

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/P...sior/S-Carrier

[Darryl Ramm]

OK that makes more sense, but the Blackmsgic tests do measure cached results, which can confuse comparisons between drives.

[munkitkat]

Cheap and proven with 4,1 and 5,1 towers.

[Buccanears]

Don't forget your graphics card. The GT120 has been known to be a bit slow and messes with the GUI. An ATI 5770 is a much better option.

[lucienpalmer]

Originally Posted by Buccanears

Don't forget your graphics card. The GT120 has been known to be a bit slow and messes with the GUI. An ATI 5770 is a much better option.

True, and this card is better than the 5770. Plus, OWC offers cash for trade-ins on your old card.

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Sapph...o1HhoC8-zw_wcB

[Will Russell]

I've got a 12 core 5,1 that I use for a ProTools HDX rig. I have a Sonnet Tempo SSD Pro Plus 6Gb/s SATA PCIe 2.0 Card for Dual SSDs and 2 480G OWC Electra 6G drives and I couldn't be happier. Overall system response is wicked fast, and although I cannot actually measure it, it is my strong impression that it does improves ProTools performance overall.

I also traded out my GT 120 for a faster ATI Radeon Hd 5770.

Regarding Pro tools and graphics performance, Yosemite is fine if you run the Quartz debug in the background. you get a little bit of video tearing but the meters are smooth and accurate. El Capitan and Pro Tools graphics are currently a mess and best avoided.

[lucienpalmer]

+1 on running Quartz debug to disable beam sync. I don't use extended desktop video, but disabling beam sync helps my meters run smoother.

[lucienpalmer]

To get back on topic, the latest and greatest way to go for SSD would be to avoid SATA connectors and use M.2 chips. Put four of them on the same board and install it in the x16 (slot 2) of a MacPro 2010-2012.

http://amfeltec.com/products/pci-exp...2-ssd-modules/

You can get speeds of almost 5500 MB/sec. Check out the barefeats test below.

http://barefeats.com/hard210.html

Pretty crazy.

[K Roche]

I recently upgraded my mid 2010 Mac Pro 6 core 333 ghz with a single Samsung SM951 512GB M.2 80mm PCIe 3.0 x 4 Internal Solid State Drive MZHPV512HDGL-00000
placed it in PCIe slot 3 with the Lycom DT 120 adaptor/card and is currently my boot drive.

Amazingly simple 5 minute project. simply screw (one screw provided with DT 120) the SM 951 blade on to the DT 120 adaptor/card (can only go on one way) . Remove the side access cover of the Mac. Then hand loosen the keeper bar and slide out the available PCIe slot's blank plate from back of the Mac. Then it simply push and snap fit the DT 120 adaptor/card into the the available pcie slot (can only go in one way ) Hand tighten the keeper and put the side cover of the Mac back on. Done


So here are the Black Magic read write speeds as you can see fairly close to the "barefeats" test score ( linked by lucienpalmer above) for the single 951 configuration .