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Couple of questions on the Mac Pro

bob5820

bob5820

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 23, 2006
598
0
35°0′36″N 80°40′45″W (35.0
Couple of questions on the Mac Pro

1. I forget the correct terminology but can you make several disks appear as a single volume? I'm not talking about raid, just making two 160 GB drives appear as a single 320 GB drive.

2. What PCI express cards (besides GPU) are available or in the works?
 
bigandy

bigandy

macrumors G3
Apr 30, 2004
8,852
7
Murka
1. No, it is RAID.

2. Do you mean aftermarket, or from Apple? If from Apple, check the online store, if aftermarket, check somewhere like newegg.com or similar ;)
 
Spanky Deluxe

Spanky Deluxe

macrumors demi-god
Mar 17, 2005
5,285
1,789
London, UK
You can't use off the shelf graphics cards yet. The only ones you have to choose from are the X1900 XT, 7300 GT and Quadro from Apple.
 
Fedge

Fedge

macrumors regular
Aug 9, 2006
152
0
While there are only three to choose from to run under OS X, other users have confirmed that a variety of other cards work fine under bootcamp, in XP. It seems as though any PCIe graphics card will work under bootcamp, but not under OS X. Many users have installed both cards, and simply move their monitor cable from card to card when booting between OS X and XP.
 
ampd

ampd

macrumors regular
Jan 10, 2006
114
0
bigandy said:
1. No, it is RAID.
Click to expand...

Is it actually considered raid because I always thought that it was just called JBOD (just bunch of disks) and was not actually raid...
 
ampd

ampd

macrumors regular
Jan 10, 2006
114
0
M

mistafreeze

macrumors member
Aug 29, 2006
87
0
or............................................LVM!
logical volume managment, you set aside how much space you want and assign mounts, least this is how it works in linux, windows has something similar in the server environment, im sure osx has something, if it isnt lvm.

cant see why you would want this over raid, but alas it is NOT RAID but similar to what you ask.
 
Sun Baked

Sun Baked

macrumors G5
May 19, 2002
14,941
162
bob5820 said:
I should have been more clear that I did not mean striped or mirrored RAID array. Ampd is correct I was refering to JBOD. I'm not sure that I would want to do this, just wondering if its possible.
Click to expand...
RAID is the solution recognized by the OS, a quick search of http://www.versiontracker.com showed nothing for Mac OS X yet -- you may have better luck.

Apple's solution for joining of drives, is for consolidation of RAID arrays. And at $999 per node for XSAN, pricey.
 
S

scud

macrumors newbie
Aug 31, 2006
9
0
Actually, RAID really is technically possible, it's just that it'll be done by the OS instead of by the hardware.
 
H

hal0n

macrumors regular
Dec 27, 2004
102
0
sheesh.

i have 2 500gb drives in my mac pro concat'ed together in software to make one nicely usable 930 gb (formatted) drive. i also have the stock 250 in there and 2 more 250's that are external, but no one cares about that.
 
M

mistafreeze

macrumors member
Aug 29, 2006
87
0
hal0n hows that working out for ya, pretty quick for everything? i was thinkin of running something similar with my third drive used for using bootcamp
 
H

hal0n

macrumors regular
Dec 27, 2004
102
0
mistafreeze said:
hal0n hows that working out for ya, pretty quick for everything? i was thinkin of running something similar with my third drive used for using bootcamp
Click to expand...

yeah, it's decently fast.

to be honest i'm not really impressed with the speed of this machine. i only have the standard 1 gig so i'm not taking advantage of the 256bit memory addressing or whatever.. i mean it's faster than my powerbook... but not by the amount i was hoping. there have been a few things that bogged down the entire machine... like copying 80gigs from one drive to another (from the 250 to the array).
 
F

freezerburrn

macrumors member
Aug 20, 2006
79
0
La Habra, CA
hal0n said:
yeah, it's decently fast.

to be honest i'm not really impressed with the speed of this machine. i only have the standard 1 gig so i'm not taking advantage of the 256bit memory addressing or whatever.. i mean it's faster than my powerbook... but not by the amount i was hoping. there have been a few things that bogged down the entire machine... like copying 80gigs from one drive to another (from the 250 to the array).
Click to expand...

I sure hope I'm impressed when my Mac Pro shows up at my doorstep. This will be my first Mac and I have high expectations.

Which processors do you have?
 
iMeowbot

iMeowbot

macrumors G3
Aug 30, 2003
8,634
0
ampd said:
Is it actually considered raid because I always thought that it was just called JBOD (just bunch of disks) and was not actually raid...
Click to expand...
It is called RAID these days, but it's not really RAID (no redundancy).

Anyway, to answer your original question, yes, OS X can to this. In Disk Utility, it's called a concatenated disk set, and it's found under the RAID tab.
 
H

hal0n

macrumors regular
Dec 27, 2004
102
0
freezerburrn said:
I sure hope I'm impressed when my Mac Pro shows up at my doorstep. This will be my first Mac and I have high expectations.

Which processors do you have?
Click to expand...

i have the 2.66's. i also had some early bugs that really crapped out the system. they were fixed by a software update though.

for standard tasks i don't see the speed but when i do something like open up 100 6mp pictures it's clear that it can step up and crunch data nicely.
 
M

mistafreeze

macrumors member
Aug 29, 2006
87
0
honestly i wouldn't expect the macpro to be that nice with stock ram. if you think about it, each proc only gets 512mb and osx does like its memory. 2gb should give you an average system, while 4 should make it pretty zesty. im just wanting someone to post some good working, relatively cheap (less than 200 per gb) sticks of 1gb ram.
 
bob5820

bob5820

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 23, 2006
598
0
35°0′36″N 80°40′45″W (35.0
mistafreeze said:
honestly i wouldn't expect the macpro to be that nice with stock ram. if you think about it, each proc only gets 512mb and osx does like its memory. 2gb should give you an average system, while 4 should make it pretty zesty. im just wanting someone to post some good working, relatively cheap (less than 200 per gb) sticks of 1gb ram.
Click to expand...
While I agree that 1GB is kind of light, I'm not quite sure what you mean by "...each proc only gets 512MB...". Sytem memory will be allocated as needed, its not physically divided between processors.
 
M

MacsAttack

macrumors 6502a
Jul 2, 2006
825
0
Scotland
freezerburrn said:
I'm wondering whether or not there's going to be a performance difference between 8x512mb for a total of 4gb of ram or 4x1gb for a total of 4 gb.
Click to expand...

Because of the way it works (serial interface with the second set of 4 slots chained off the first set), 8x512mb will (apparently) have a latency of 5 nanoseconds longer than 4x1gb.

Or to put things perspective - about 3 to 4% slower in benchmarks.

In real life I doubt you would see any real difference except in your bank ballance.
 
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