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Mac Pro Mid 2009 SSD and only 3Gbps

D

DeanCorp

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jul 13, 2007
334
136
Hi Guys,

I currently have a 160GB Intel X-25M G2 SSD, I am looking at upgrading to one of the faster OWC drives, however I have noticed that the chip in the Mac Pro only has a 3Gbps channel.

a.) Would I see any benefit upgrading to a 6Gbps drive and only limited to 3Gbps?

b.) Can you buy a compatible PCI-E 6Gbps card that will resolve this?

Thanks in advance.

Dean
 
1. The random speeds might still be faster as they rarely saturate the 3Gb/s bus.

2. There are 6Gb/s PCIe cards but as far as I know, they do not support booting, which might be an issue.

All in all, why do you think you need a faster SSD? In real world, the difference between the two will be negligible in most tasks.
 
Hellhammer said:
1. The random speeds might still be faster as they rarely saturate the 3Gb/s bus.

2. There are 6Gb/s PCIe cards but as far as I know, they do not support booting, which might be an issue.

All in all, why do you think you need a faster SSD? In real world, the difference between the two will be negligible in most tasks.
Click to expand...

Very true.. I am wondering if the (or probably is?) the 2TB (Software raid in Disk Utility - Striped RAID). It often takes a while to access things etc.. It is made up of 2x1TB Black WD's. I have 16GB of RAM.

Can you please suggest anything I can do to improve performance? I don't think the booting in the issue, coming to think of it.
 
DeanCorp said:
Very true.. I am wondering if the (or probably is?) the 2TB (Software raid in Disk Utility - Striped RAID). It often takes a while to access things etc.. It is made up of 2x1TB Black WD's. I have 16GB of RAM.

Can you please suggest anything I can do to improve performance? I don't think the booting in the issue, coming to think of it.
Click to expand...

If the 2TB is not the main drive, then it may end up entering the sleep mode after awhile if you have set hard drives to go to sleep when unused. That means the platters stop spinning and it always takes a few secs for them to spin up, which is most likely the source of your issue.

Try unchecking "Put hard drives to sleep" under Energy Saver in System Preferences.
 
Hellhammer said:
If the 2TB is not the main drive, then it may end up entering the sleep mode after awhile if you have set hard drives to go to sleep when unused. That means the platters stop spinning and it always takes a few secs for them to spin up, which is most likely the source of your issue.

Try unchecking "Put hard drives to sleep" under Energy Saver in System Preferences.
Click to expand...

Thanks. It was already unchecked. It just seems slower, obviously it will be since it is only a 7200rpm drive. Would I see much/any advantage in upgrading and buying the Apple hardware RAID card?

Thanks for your help, I really appreciate it :)
 
philipma1957 said:
Many people on this site dislike apples raid card. I have not read anyone that says apples raid card works well.
Click to expand...

Which is what I initially read when I bought my Mac Pro back in 2009, they were saying something about the battery?
 
I have just upgraded the firmware in my Intel SSD and enabled TRIM support, didn't' get that much benefit at all. Are there significantly faster SSD's out there?


Results 223.66
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.7.2 (11C40)
Physical RAM 16384 MB
Model MacPro4,1
Drive Type INTEL SSDSA2M160G2GC
Disk Test 223.66
Sequential 164.72
Uncached Write 123.12 75.59 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 166.72 94.33 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 125.01 36.59 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 462.18 232.29 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 348.24
Uncached Write 152.02 16.09 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 294.62 94.32 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 2496.88 17.69 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 898.21 166.67 MB/sec [256K blocks]
 
I would put both my 80GB and 160GB Intel G2s on the fact you would not be able to tell the difference between that drive and a newer one.

What is the point in having 300MB/sec read and writes when you never ever ever get anywhere close to doing that?

The most i've seen my G2 do on a day to day basis is 65MB/sec and I do video/photo editing!
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8H7 Safari/6533.18.5)

if you're using it for booting and just apps, you will be fine with the 3G models. It's already at the point where launching an app takes less than 1/4 second...
 
DeanCorp said:
I have just upgraded the firmware in my Intel SSD and enabled TRIM support, didn't' get that much benefit at all. Are there significantly faster SSD's out there?


Results 223.66
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.7.2 (11C40)
Physical RAM 16384 MB
Model MacPro4,1
Drive Type INTEL SSDSA2M160G2GC
Disk Test 223.66
Sequential 164.72
Uncached Write 123.12 75.59 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 166.72 94.33 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 125.01 36.59 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 462.18 232.29 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 348.24
Uncached Write 152.02 16.09 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 294.62 94.32 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 2496.88 17.69 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 898.21 166.67 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Click to expand...


Here are the results from a Samsung 470 256. Seems to trounce the inetl on almost every bench.. Sweet! This is on a drive that had 10.6.7, upgraded to 10.6.8 upgraded to 10.7.0, then toy 10.7.1 and use it to build/compile game code every day all day... Meaning, it's been well used, TRIM support is enabled. :) I'm at 151GB free of 256.

Results 440.76
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.7.1 (11B26)
Physical RAM 16384 MB
Model MacPro5,1
Drive Type SAMSUNG 470 Series SSD
Disk Test 440.76
Sequential 283.66
Uncached Write 384.43 236.03 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 389.53 220.40 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 145.62 42.62 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 484.10 243.30 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 987.88
Uncached Write 841.75 89.11 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 726.62 232.62 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 2055.00 14.56 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 1001.80 185.89 MB/sec [256K blocks]

My .02. Stay Intel or Samsung. I would suggest staying away from Sandforce based products.... I value my data and time too much. YMMV. Samsung just introduced a new 6G drive and it should rock. Will be out in Oct and should be smokin!
 
Last edited:
handheldgames said:
Here are the results from a Samsung 470 256. Seems to trounce the inetl on almost every bench.. Sweet! This is on a drive that had 10.6.7, upgraded to 10.6.8 upgraded to 10.7.0, then toy 10.7.1 and use it to build/compile game code every day all day... Meaning, it's been well used, TRIM support is enabled. :) I'm at 151GB free of 256.

Results 440.76
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.7.1 (11B26)
Physical RAM 16384 MB
Model MacPro5,1
Drive Type SAMSUNG 470 Series SSD
Disk Test 440.76
Sequential 283.66
Uncached Write 384.43 236.03 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 389.53 220.40 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 145.62 42.62 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 484.10 243.30 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 987.88
Uncached Write 841.75 89.11 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 726.62 232.62 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 2055.00 14.56 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 1001.80 185.89 MB/sec [256K blocks]

My .02. Stay Intel or Samsung. I would suggest staying away from Sandforce based products.... I value my data and time too much. YMMV. Samsung just introduced a new 6G drive and it should rock. Will be out in Oct and should be smokin!
Click to expand...

My Intel X-25M G2 has just failed. I decided to replace it with the new Samsung 830 series. Here is my result. Pretty happy with this until Apricorn release their new PCI-e card in April this year that will boost the performance further.

Results 475.92
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.7.3 (11D50)
Physical RAM 49152 MB
Model MacPro4,1
Drive Type SAMSUNG SSD 830 Series
Disk Test 475.92
Sequential 315.00
Uncached Write 433.31 266.05 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 389.50 220.38 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 192.65 56.38 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 379.86 190.92 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 973.02
Uncached Write 985.44 104.32 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 659.83 211.24 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 2614.43 18.53 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 834.65 154.88 MB/sec [256K blocks]
 
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