10.13 can boot from HFS+ RAID. 10.14 can't.
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Yes. 10.13 can boot from HFS+ RAID volumes.
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Highpoint 7101A - PCIe 3.0 SSD performance for the cMP
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Right. You can boot 10.13 from RAID, but the 10.13 installer won’t let you install onto a raid. Fun.
Just create it manually. Boot the createinstallmedia USB-key, open Terminal, create the RAID, install it as usual.
It's not for every one, but if you really need RAID, it's worth the time to learn how to do it.
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It's not VEGA related, but with SSD7101A into the slot-2, it almost completely blocks the blower of my eVGA GTX 680 Mac Edition. My eVGA GTX 680 FTW+ 4GB is a little longer, so I had to change one for the other.
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If you don't mind and be little specific on how this is done? had my own miss-adventure doing something like this 2-NVMe blades, 2-PCIe to NVMe, Raid 0 & Mojave install. What can go wrong?
Starting to wander off topic a little here, but for those people wondering if the 7101A can be used with arbitrary M.2 hardware and not just SSDs, the answer is a resounding yes. I've been testing a Magewell Eco Capture 11520 4K capture card in slot 3 of my 7101A this evening. There are only drivers for it under Windows and Linux, but it performs superbly well. It is identified properly as any normal PCIe device.
Here it is on the card itself.
As there's about 6000MB/s throughput available from this card to the M.2 sockets there is no issue at all with hammering one of the SSDs at full load (~3000MB/s) and capturing 2160p content (~1200MB/s) without a single dropped frame.
In reality, you'd never actually do this during a capture, so the 7101A should take two (potentially more) 11520 cards with no problem. This gives a frankly outstanding single-slot, fanless 4K 25fps (I'm in a PAL region) capture solution for multiple simultaneous streams. As a big bonus, the Magewell 11520 will do on-board scaling so you can down-convert 4K 2160p to HD 1080p or lower with no system load and save PCIe bandwidth. On the MacPro5,1 under Windows I could use NVENC from the GPU and capture a more than acceptable UHD H.264 output with about 6-7% CPU load.
Here it is on the card itself.
As there's about 6000MB/s throughput available from this card to the M.2 sockets there is no issue at all with hammering one of the SSDs at full load (~3000MB/s) and capturing 2160p content (~1200MB/s) without a single dropped frame.
In reality, you'd never actually do this during a capture, so the 7101A should take two (potentially more) 11520 cards with no problem. This gives a frankly outstanding single-slot, fanless 4K 25fps (I'm in a PAL region) capture solution for multiple simultaneous streams. As a big bonus, the Magewell 11520 will do on-board scaling so you can down-convert 4K 2160p to HD 1080p or lower with no system load and save PCIe bandwidth. On the MacPro5,1 under Windows I could use NVENC from the GPU and capture a more than acceptable UHD H.264 output with about 6-7% CPU load.
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Hi @handheldgames
First of all thank you for all the things you have done to this community.
I am trying to follow your document but somehow I get no change in the speed:
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sudo sh ./fast.sh 01:00
# Initial PCIe 1.0 x4
# Final PCIe 1.0 x4
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The output of the ./lspci is :
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 5400 Chipset Memory Controller Hub (rev 20)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5400 Chipset PCI Express Port 1 (rev 20)
00:05.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5400 Chipset PCI Express Port 5 (rev 20)
00:09.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5400 Chipset PCI Express Port 9 (rev 20)
00:0f.0 System peripheral: Intel Corporation 5400 Chipset QuickData Technology Device (rev 20)
00:10.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 5400 Chipset FSB Registers (rev 20)
00:10.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 5400 Chipset FSB Registers (rev 20)
00:10.2 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 5400 Chipset FSB Registers (rev 20)
00:10.3 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 5400 Chipset FSB Registers (rev 20)
00:10.4 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 5400 Chipset FSB Registers (rev 20)
00:11.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 5400 Chipset CE/SF Registers (rev 20)
00:15.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 5400 Chipset FBD Registers (rev 20)
00:15.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 5400 Chipset FBD Registers (rev 20)
00:16.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 5400 Chipset FBD Registers (rev 20)
00:16.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 5400 Chipset FBD Registers (rev 20)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 631xESB/632xESB High Definition Audio Controller (rev 09)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 631xESB/632xESB/3100 Chipset PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev 09)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 631xESB/632xESB/3100 Chipset PCI Express Root Port 2 (rev 09)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 631xESB/632xESB/3100 Chipset PCI Express Root Port 3 (rev 09)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 631xESB/632xESB/3100 Chipset PCI Express Root Port 4 (rev 09)
00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 631xESB/632xESB/3100 Chipset UHCI USB Controller #1 (rev 09)
00:1d.1 USB controller: Intel Corporation 631xESB/632xESB/3100 Chipset UHCI USB Controller #2 (rev 09)
00:1d.2 USB controller: Intel Corporation 631xESB/632xESB/3100 Chipset UHCI USB Controller #3 (rev 09)
00:1d.3 USB controller: Intel Corporation 631xESB/632xESB/3100 Chipset UHCI USB Controller #4 (rev 09)
00:1d.7 USB controller: Intel Corporation 631xESB/632xESB/3100 Chipset EHCI USB2 Controller (rev 09)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev d9)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 631xESB/632xESB/3100 Chipset LPC Interface Controller (rev 09)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 631xESB/632xESB IDE Controller (rev 09)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 631xESB/632xESB SATA AHCI Controller (rev 09)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 631xESB/632xESB/3100 Chipset SMBus Controller (rev 09)
01:00.0 Non-Volatile memory controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. Device 5762 (rev 01)
02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GF100GL [Quadro 4000] (rev a3)
02:00.1 Audio device: NVIDIA Corporation GF100 High Definition Audio Controller (rev a1)
03:00.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6311ESB/6321ESB PCI Express Upstream Port (rev 01)
03:00.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6311ESB/6321ESB PCI Express to PCI-X Bridge (rev 01)
04:00.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6311ESB/6321ESB PCI Express Downstream Port E1 (rev 01)
04:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6311ESB/6321ESB PCI Express Downstream Port E2 (rev 01)
04:02.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6311ESB/6321ESB PCI Express Downstream Port E3 (rev 01)
05:00.0 USB controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VL805 USB 3.0 Host Controller (rev 01)
07:00.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 80003ES2LAN Gigabit Ethernet Controller (Copper) (rev 01)
07:00.1 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 80003ES2LAN Gigabit Ethernet Controller (Copper) (rev 01)
0b:00.0 PCI bridge: Texas Instruments XIO2213A/B/XIO2221 PCI Express to PCI Bridge [Cheetah Express]
0c:00.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments XIO2213A/B/XIO2221 IEEE-1394b OHCI Controller [Cheetah Express]
0d:00.0 Network controller: Qualcomm Atheros AR5418 Wireless Network Adapter [AR5008E 802.11(a)bgn] (PCI-Express) (rev 01)
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Am I doing something wrong?
Thanks,
Nicu
w
Which device/slot are you trying to switch. I think the 3,1 x4 slots are pcie 1.0 devices.
Which device/slot are you trying to switch. I think the 3,1 x4 slots are pcie 1.0 devices.
Slot number 2 with a no name PCI adapter. Does your trick work only for the Highpoint?
From what I remember, posts from users attempting to change the pcie slot speed on a 3,1 with a pcie ssd were not successful.
Well at least I tried. Thank you a lot for all your answers and for your great tutorial on having a 3.1 with bootable NVME.
Cheers!
Loving that you removed the fan as I'm finding that high-pitched whine a bit of a nuisance. Curious if you've noticed any drawbacks since removing that noise maker. Is the copper fin heatsink warm to the touch? Is it held on via fasteners?
No drawbacks at all; the card is now running fully populated with 2x 1TB 970 PRO and 2x Magewell Eco Capture 11520 cards. It's already captured hours of 2160p25 footage to one of the SSDs (mostly via NVENC under Windows, though it's done a few days using x264 under macOS as well). I don't think it's dropped a frame.
The heatsink is indeed warm to the touch, which I'd class as a good thing, because it's doing what it's supposed to. But the fans barely ever ramp on this system (when using NVENC for H.264 compression) and the airflow is definitely sufficient. Even the 11520 capture cards, which are a bit buried under the USB 3.0 card above, top out at 70degC - which is fine by me.
In my original post you can see it's held on with two bolts which coincidentally matched to two holes in the board. Just needed the spare bolts and the PCB standoff nuts for them to secure onto.
I sit next to this machine; it's up on the desk to avoid sucking up carpet dust, so that fan had to go. Awful thing on an otherwise outstanding piece of equipment - though, I suppose in PC systems they can't rely on having such a ready supply of cool air to the PCIE bays.
No regrets here!
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Hi -
Pardon me but i am a little lost. I have the hightpoint 7101A card with 1 970 Pro installed on it. I am trying to clean install OS mojave but I haven't been successuful. Is there a theat that address this ?
I've upgrade the boot rom to 140.0.0.0.0 and with Radeon 580 on Sata SSD and have successfully install OS Mojave. Everthing here on this setup works fine, just that i can't find instruction to install OS on hightpoint 7101A card, Any help will be kindly appreciated
Thanks
Pardon me but i am a little lost. I have the hightpoint 7101A card with 1 970 Pro installed on it. I am trying to clean install OS mojave but I haven't been successuful. Is there a theat that address this ?
I've upgrade the boot rom to 140.0.0.0.0 and with Radeon 580 on Sata SSD and have successfully install OS Mojave. Everthing here on this setup works fine, just that i can't find instruction to install OS on hightpoint 7101A card, Any help will be kindly appreciated
Thanks
Could you post a step by step list of what you did and where the problem occurred?
It would also be helpful to know what is you are booting from.
Specific details to the error messages you received would also be helpful.
Some tips ...
If you are using the Highpoint drivers, uninstall them and use the drivers provided by Apple. For a system boot drive, Apple’s drivers have been show to deliver superior 4K performance.
Dosdude1 has a Mojave download utility for unsupported macs. Downloading a single copy you can install from may help.
Thanks handheldgame,
For the hightpoint 7101A fresh install, I have setup a USB bootable drive and have it inserted on one of the front USB ports on my mac pro 2012.
2. Removed the Sata drive
3. Installed hightpoint 7101A
4. Press the power button while holding down the ALT key (windows KB), to boot off the USB,
NO sucess. nothing to see the screen ( I am sure I am doing something wrong here)
Note that since i have the Rx580 wth boot rom 140. I am not able to see the the bootup process.
So i reinstalled the Sata back and booted off that and then tried to run the executable from the USB there and picked the 970 as the install destination. The installation does start but needs to restart and i believe after the restart I am not able to see anything on the screen (connected with HDMI).
Any help or instructions is appreciated.
Thanks
For the hightpoint 7101A fresh install, I have setup a USB bootable drive and have it inserted on one of the front USB ports on my mac pro 2012.
2. Removed the Sata drive
3. Installed hightpoint 7101A
4. Press the power button while holding down the ALT key (windows KB), to boot off the USB,
NO sucess. nothing to see the screen ( I am sure I am doing something wrong here)
Note that since i have the Rx580 wth boot rom 140. I am not able to see the the bootup process.
So i reinstalled the Sata back and booted off that and then tried to run the executable from the USB there and picked the 970 as the install destination. The installation does start but needs to restart and i believe after the restart I am not able to see anything on the screen (connected with HDMI).
Any help or instructions is appreciated.
Thanks
I have just received and installed my Highpoint 7101A-1 and a Samsung EVO 970 2TB after reading this and other threads.
My setup is a cMP 5.1,32x3.46 GHz, 64 gb ram (all rams slots used) OS Mojave, 3x Samsung 860 1TB SSDs in the standard SATA II Mac bays,GTX 680 4GB in PCIE slot 1 and the 7101-A1 in slot2. bottom 140.0.0.0.0 ,The EVO 970 shows up in System info NVMExpress as, link width x4, link speed 8.0 GT/s and Trim is enabled. I formatted the 970 to APFS, I then cloned over my old SSD mac HD boot drive using CCC to the EVO 970.
the problem I have got is that in real world testing the 970EVO + the high point 7101A is no faster than the internal Sata II 860
any help would be much appreciated
My setup is a cMP 5.1,32x3.46 GHz, 64 gb ram (all rams slots used) OS Mojave, 3x Samsung 860 1TB SSDs in the standard SATA II Mac bays,GTX 680 4GB in PCIE slot 1 and the 7101-A1 in slot2. bottom 140.0.0.0.0 ,The EVO 970 shows up in System info NVMExpress as, link width x4, link speed 8.0 GT/s and Trim is enabled. I formatted the 970 to APFS, I then cloned over my old SSD mac HD boot drive using CCC to the EVO 970.
the problem I have got is that in real world testing the 970EVO + the high point 7101A is no faster than the internal Sata II 860
any help would be much appreciated
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Sounds like you’ve done everything right, what are your benchmarks for each, just to get a measure of throughput? Could you post some screenshots of the BMD disk speed tests?
There is very little noticeable difference in normal desktop use between an internal SATA SSD and an NVME SSD because the latency on each will be in the same ballpark and both will cope largely the same with small files. The strength of the NVME drive is in bulk data transfer.
+100
There are so many posts here showing Black Magic or similar artificial benchmarks - and people waving their willies about stuff that has almost no relevance to day-to-day performance.
The difference in boot times between an SSD on a cMP SATA II port and on a cMP with an NVMe drive on a PCIe card is small.
Same with application performance. Most applications will hit the drive with a handful of parallel operations - because with spinners parallel operations can actually hurt performance.
NVMe drives, however, love to have thousands of parallel operations.
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Yes and no.
Yes, there's no noticeable difference in launching Safari and loading Facebook or opening a PDF. You're talking 119 milliseconds vs 108 milliseconds. The difference is less than one screen refresh at 60Hz(16.67ms).
No, latencies are not even remotely close to the same ballpark. AHCI's latency per request at SATA-600 is 6.0µS. NVMe's base latency is 2.8µS. It's not just bulk data, such as sequential tests like Black Magic's, but also random I/O. What I deal with for example is point-cloud data. It's billions of data points stitched together from several 3D arrays. NVMe screams on it compared to SATA, but you're taking about only 10MB/s(SATA) vs 200MB/s(NVMe 970 PRO) due to the small, random nature of eta reads.
I should have thrown ‘noticeable using the desktop’ in there.
Actually, that’s really interesting. It’s a use case I’ve never had, so I’ve been pretty ignorant as to what a difference there really is.
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The likes of Logic you’ll only really see a difference if you’re working with lots of high bit depth, high sample rate material - even then it’ll depend on how well Logic’s RAM buffering is dealing with things, because it might wipe out the difference regardless.
I find big improvements working with RAW image files and video content, because they require big bursts of drive speed. Depending on your session, audio really isn’t so big a workload these days (save for plugin processing, which your drive won’t affect) especially if you’re at 16-bit, 44.1 kHz.
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also I have noticed a speed drop when formatting to APFS on the 970 4K QD32 almost halved compared to non APFS
Haha! Just read this properly.
The only reason I personally use an NVME blade as a boot drive is because High Sierra makes such a song and dance about having user areas on a different drive. Attempting to enable iCloud Photo Library constantly errors out with "you can only enable on an APFS or HFS+ formatted volume", even though the drive is APFS. It's regardless of physical drive location too, fails just as much on normal SATA. And if that's playing up, something else will no doubt play up too, when I least want it to - so I caved.
Windows and Ubuntu use SSDs on the normal SATA ports and all three access the other NVME drive as a video scratch area. Works nicely.
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