PCIe SSD cards and Mac Pro upgrades

[lucienpalmer]

Originally Posted by jbrown7282

I just started using an Msata combination for my work drives in my 5.1 Mac Pro.... Its a PCI expansion if you have an Extra slot... My card can support up to 4 Msata SSD Drives in addition to your 4 bays.... Did 3 Mixes today and was rock solid....

mSATA is only half the speed of regular SATA. Is it a card that allows you to RAID 0 the 4 mSATA chips?

[jbrown7282]

Yes it is.... It maybe a little bit slower BUT... for my Audio Mixing work on my HD native rig.... Have not come across a problem "YET" and for 50 bucks for 120GB a card its almost a no brainer... IMO.....

[lucienpalmer]

Originally Posted by jbrown7282

Yes it is.... It maybe a little bit slower BUT... for my Audio Mixing work on my HD native rig.... Have not come across a problem "YET" and for 50 bucks for 120GB a card its almost a no brainer... IMO.....

Small, but good price. Please post the manufacturer and model number when you post stuff like that.

[jbrown7282]

Kingston Digital 120GB SSDNow mS200 mSATA (6Gbps)

and the PCI card is: Syba 4 Port mSATA PCIe 2.0 x 4 Raid Card Components SD-PEX40079

Found on Amazon....

[transcend333]

does anyone have any performance info regarding rendering/consolidating 40 to 90 mins worth of material - let's say a 5.1 print master? - and noticed marked differences between 4.1/5.1 mac pros with pcie SSDs, without, and the 6.1/2 mac pros?

curious if it's possible to get pro tools to render 50% faster or if the software itself has a limit

[lucienpalmer]

Originally Posted by transcend333

does anyone have any performance info regarding rendering/consolidating 40 to 90 mins worth of material - let's say a 5.1 print master? - and noticed marked differences between 4.1/5.1 mac pros with pcie SSDs, without, and the 6.1/2 mac pros?

curious if it's possible to get pro tools to render 50% faster or if the software itself has a limit

Not sure if I understand your question. Are you using the 'bounce to disk' feature for making the print master?

[transcend333]

Not sure if I understand your question. Are you using the 'bounce to disk' feature for making the print master?

not using bounce to disk - i'm recording audio through buses to audio tracks, then punching in changes, and then consolidating those printmaster tracks.

I'm essentially trying to ascertain if there are any significant speed differences when consolidating using a mac pro with an pcieSSD and without... i'm trying to understand if the processing is throughput at the disk level or if it's more processor based so i can decided if certain upgrades will help my process at all

[lucienpalmer]

Originally Posted by transcend333

not using bounce to disk - i'm recording audio through buses to audio tracks, then punching in changes, and then consolidating those printmaster tracks.

I'm essentially trying to ascertain if there are any significant speed differences when consolidating using a mac pro with an pcieSSD and without... i'm trying to understand if the processing is throughput at the disk level or if it's more processor based so i can decided if certain upgrades will help my process at all

For consolidating, both disk write speed and processor speed would be a factor. I haven't tested it, but logic would say that a PCIe based SSD would speed that process up considerably. I just ordered a 1TB PCIe blade from OWC. I'll test consolidating next.

On a side note- why punch then have to consolidate? Use destructive punch into your stems, and then you don't have to consolidate.

[K Roche]

Originally Posted by lucienpalmer

mSATA is only half the speed of regular SATA. Is it a card that allows you to RAID 0 the 4 mSATA chips?

Wait what ? I must be missing something, is he not talking about an M2 type SSD chip and adaptor in a PCIe expansion slot ? If that is what he is talking about then depending on size of SSD and brand it would appear to be some where upwards of 2 to 4 times faster than an SSD SATA drive

[lucienpalmer]

Originally Posted by K Roche

Wait what ? I must be missing something, is he not talking about an M2 type SSD chip and adaptor in a PCIe expansion slot ? If that is what he is talking about then depending on size of SSD and brand it would appear to be some where upwards of 2 to 4 times faster than an SSD SATA drive

Nope, he's not talking about M.2 chips, he's talking about mSATA, mini-SATA. That is basically like using a regular SATA SSD. Same protocol. The Syba card he is using does take up to 4 chips in a RAID, so he could theoretically get some good speeds. Still a good upgrade option.

But it's important to remember that it's still SSD SATA protocol running through a PCIe host card. mSATA is basically being replaced by M.2. That is a PCIe protocol with 10Gbit/s potential performance. The Squid from Amfeltec (mentioned earlier in this thread) is using 4 M.2 chips in a RAID 0 on PCIe. They have figured out a way to give each of the chips a full x4 lane bandwidth. It's crazy fast.