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NVMe with ST-NGFF2013-C; Vega Internal GPU; Mac Pro 2013 (6,1)

Firmware update actually solved it.


Since I've updated to Big Sur public beta, now running 11.1, my 970 pro performances has degraded greatly.
I do 600mb/s read and write.

Did any of you noticed the same thing?


Model Name: Mac Pro
Model Identifier: MacPro6,1
Processor Name: 12-Core Intel Xeon E5
Processor Speed: 2.7 GHz
Number of Processors: 1
Total Number of Cores: 12
L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB
L3 Cache: 30 MB
Hyper-Threading Technology: Enabled
Memory: 64 GB
System Firmware Version: 131.0.0.0.0
SMC Version (system): 2.20f18
Panel Illumination Version: 1.4a6
 
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I am planning to upgrade Mac Pro 2013 (12 core D700) from Catalina to Big Sur. Any feedback, experience or suggestions are welcome.
 
I'm on the Big Sur public release and getting 1248 / 1443 read write on my 970 Evo pro.

vmule said:
Firmware update actually solved it.


Since I've updated to Big Sur public beta, now running 11.1, my 970 pro performances has degraded greatly.
I do 600mb/s read and write.

Did any of you noticed the same thing?


Model Name: Mac Pro
Model Identifier: MacPro6,1
Processor Name: 12-Core Intel Xeon E5
Processor Speed: 2.7 GHz
Number of Processors: 1
Total Number of Cores: 12
L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB
L3 Cache: 30 MB
Hyper-Threading Technology: Enabled
Memory: 64 GB
System Firmware Version: 131.0.0.0.0
SMC Version (system): 2.20f18
Panel Illumination Version: 1.4a6
Click to expand...
 
There is a new firmware in Big Sur 11.1 RC (20C69).

Hardware Overview:

Model Name: Mac Pro
Model Identifier: MacPro6,1
Processor Name: 12-Core Intel Xeon E5
Processor Speed: 2.7 GHz
Number of Processors: 1
Total Number of Cores: 12
L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB
L3 Cache: 30 MB
Hyper-Threading Technology: Enabled
Memory: 64 GB
System Firmware Version: 426.0.0.0.0
SMC Version (system): 2.20f18
Panel Illumination Version: 1.4a6
 
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I'm running Mojave with the latest security update. System Firmware version is 426.0.0.0.0

Would running a 3rd party SSD with the Sintech adapter allow for regular OS upgrades without reinstalling the original SSD? I'll jump to a clean install of Big Sur if I install a new drive.

Are there brands other than Samsung that work reliably in this configuration?
 
Sorry for doubleposting, I hope someone of you can help me.

I described my problems here before I found this thread.

Short story: I used the ST-NGFF2013-C with a WD SN750 2TB and I have the strange problem that on cold boot the Mac does not find a startup drive, only reboot or boot after PRAM reset seems to work. Also suspend does not work.

Also the write speed is slower than expected.

I installed 11 and restored from a TimeMachine backup, afterwards upgraded to 11.1.

Any idea what could help?

Edit: i just noticed that firmware is still on 425.0.0.0.0. This seems to imply that on upgrade to 11.1 the System Firmware did not get updated. Darn.
 
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@CodeJingle I’m disappointed your other priorities took over from the project. Nothing at all to gain from it as a 4,1 owner, but very interesting to read all the work you put into it and progress you were making, as well as finding out the stuff apple doesn’t want anyone to know
 
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jofarmer said:
Edit: i just noticed that firmware is still on 425.0.0.0.0. This seems to imply that on upgrade to 11.1 the System Firmware did not get updated. Darn.
Click to expand...
Yes I have noticed issues where the firmware does not update when the internal drive is NVMe. Swap out your NVMe drive for an M.2 drive using the older protocol (AHCI I think which is the M.2 equivalent of SATA) and the firmware update should go through fine.

In what you might consider my original final/closing post to the thread, I stated that the internal M.2 drive on the trash can is piped straight to the platform controller. That specific platform controller does not officially support NVMe and cannot be upgraded to support it. Which means that NVMe support cannot be guaranteed for the internal drive. It may crash once a day, or once a week. You may have weird random issues and they may rarely happen. Or it works fine for you. Also firmware updates may not install properly. External NVMe drives will work because they don't connect straight to the platform controller.

Intel® C602J Chipset - Product Specifications | Intel

Intel® C602J Chipset quick reference with specifications, features, and technologies.
ark.intel.com ark.intel.com


This issue applies the same to other older Mac computers using a similar platform controller.

My recommendation is don't use NVMe for the internal drive. That feedback is lame I know. Sorry. That concluded my work on what the thread was originally supposed to be for. I was dabbling in a path that would lead to trying to connect an external GPU and that is the part that I didn't finish.
 

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CodeJingle said:
Yes I have noticed issues where the firmware does not update when the internal drive is NVMe. Swap out your NVMe drive for an M.2 drive using the older protocol (AHCI I think which is the M.2 equivalent of SATA) and the firmware update should go through fine.

In what you might consider my original final/closing post to the thread, I stated that the internal M.2 drive on the trash can is piped straight to the platform controller. That specific platform controller does not officially support NVMe and cannot be upgraded to support it. Which means that NVMe support cannot be guaranteed for the internal drive. It may crash once a day, or once a week. You may have weird random issues and they may rarely happen. Or it works fine for you. Also firmware updates may not install properly. External NVMe drives will work because they don't connect straight to the platform controller.

Intel® C602J Chipset - Product Specifications | Intel

Intel® C602J Chipset quick reference with specifications, features, and technologies.
ark.intel.com ark.intel.com


This issue applies the same to other Mac computers using a similar platform controller.

My recommendation is don't use NVMe for the internal drive. That feedback is lame I know. Sorry. That concluded my work on what the thread was originally supposed to be for. I was dabbling in a path that would lead to trying to connect an external GPU and that is the part that I didn't finish.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the update! I was following along with glee every time you posted more board schematics.

One note - original internal ssd is PCIE AHCI, weird and rare combo other than Apple OEM drives. Only a couple m.2 drives use that combo, like Samsung MZHPV for instance. M.2 SATA will not work in the internal slot, no SATA controller connected to those pins afaik.
 
tabormeister said:
One note - original internal ssd is PCIE AHCI, weird and rare combo other than Apple OEM drives. Only a couple m.2 drives use that combo, like Samsung MZHPV for instance. M.2 SATA will not work in the internal slot, no SATA controller connected to those pins afaik.
Click to expand...
The physical interface is not ‘SATA legacy’ I get that. But let’s say with the aid of various adapters that the drive slot may support both ‘SATA legacy’ and ‘SATA over PCIe’ (specifically ‘SATA Express/AHCI’). AHCI is one flavor of ‘SATA Express’, part of the ‘SATA Specification’. On the trash can, the internal M.2 drive connects directly to the C602J platform controller which has an “Integrated SATA Host Controller” within which there is an “Integrated AHCI Controller”. I attached a few screenshots from the specification 'c600-series-chipset-datasheet.pdf'.

This is part of the reason why ‘SATA Express/NVMe’ support cannot be guaranteed for the internal drive. The internal drive is hardware accelerated via the platform controller which officially supports ‘SATA Express/AHCI’ not ‘SATA Express/NVMe’.



Purchase SATA Specification | SATA-IO

sata-io.org sata-io.org
 

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CodeJingle said:
The physical interface is not ‘SATA legacy’ I get that. But let’s say with the aid of various adapters that the drive slot may support both ‘SATA legacy’ and ‘SATA over PCIe’ (specifically ‘SATA Express/AHCI’). AHCI is one flavor of ‘SATA Express’, part of the ‘SATA Specification’. On the trash can, the internal M.2 drive connects directly to the C602J platform controller which has an “Integrated SATA Host Controller” within which there is an “Integrated AHCI Controller”. I attached a few screenshots from the specification 'c600-series-chipset-datasheet.pdf'.

This is part of the reason why ‘SATA Express/NVMe’ support cannot be guaranteed for the internal drive. The internal drive is hardware accelerated via the platform controller which officially supports ‘SATA Express/AHCI’ not ‘SATA Express/NVMe’.



Purchase SATA Specification | SATA-IO

sata-io.org sata-io.org
Click to expand...
Well I'll be danged. Was under the impression that sata AHCI and PCIE AHCI were incompatible. So m.2 b+m key (sata) would work with a sintech adapter for instance?
 
tabormeister said:
Well I'll be danged. Was under the impression that sata AHCI and PCIE AHCI were incompatible. So m.2 b+m key (sata) would work with a sintech adapter for instance?
Click to expand...
Something like this M.2, which according to Newegg uses the 'SATA III' interface, should in theory work in the trash can internal drive, at least with the right adapter. The platform controller spec is a thousand pages so it is hard to know offhand, someone would have to test it to know for sure. Is that equivalent to "m.2 b+m key (sata)"?

www.newegg.com

Western Digital Blue 2.5" 4TB SATA III 3D NAND Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) WDS400T2B0A - Newegg.com

Buy Western Digital Blue 2.5" 4TB SATA III 3D NAND Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) WDS400T2B0A with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg!
www.newegg.com www.newegg.com

 

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sparkplug37 said:
Does anyone know if mixing APFS and NTFS on the same NVME drive still causes panics or has Apple fixed anything in the later OS/Boot ROMs?
Click to expand...

I note there have been a few people looking for an update on this issue in various threads, but I can't seem to find any recent responses / anecdotal evidence one way or the other.

Anyone out there running their NTFS formatted Boot Camp partition on their NVME in their Mac Pro 6,1, with their Mac partition formatted as APFS? Or on an external SSD? Any kernel panics?

Any feedback hugely appreciated.
 
CodeJingle said:
Something like this M.2, which according to Newegg uses the 'SATA III' interface, should in theory work in the trash can internal drive, at least with the right adapter. The platform controller spec is a thousand pages so it is hard to know offhand, someone would have to test it to know for sure. Is that equivalent to "m.2 b+m key (sata)"?

www.newegg.com

Western Digital Blue 2.5" 4TB SATA III 3D NAND Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) WDS400T2B0A - Newegg.com

Buy Western Digital Blue 2.5" 4TB SATA III 3D NAND Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) WDS400T2B0A with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg!
www.newegg.com www.newegg.com

Click to expand...
That's it exactly! The oem apple drives are faster than this so not really worth installing them, but if you needed hella storage and speed wasn't a consideration, certainly an option. I need to go back and look at the sintech adapter again, I thought it was keyed only for PCIE drives


EDIT: I am of course forgetting about the 128gb SanDisk made oem ssds... Those are turds compared to a good quality sata one like you posted there
 
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wait a minute, i've been using an NVME in my trashcan6,1 (2TB `ADATA SX8200PNP`):

Code: 
System Firmware Version: 428.0.0.0.0
SMC Version (system): 2.20f18


That workstation crashes at least once a day and reboots; it's dual D300s and there's always a GPU crash or ten waiting in `/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/` when it happens and it sucks but if there's some weird voodoo about using that NVME I'll overnight an OWC Aura 2TB or whatever they've got and not give it a second thought. I've been re-wiring components across my desk for two weeks because it's been driving me especially nuts lately.
 
incumbent said:
wait a minute, i've been using an NVME in my trashcan6,1 (2TB `ADATA SX8200PNP`):
Click to expand...
I am not saying it won't work. But it is a reason for Apple to not support NVME on the internal drive. Because it is going through a hardware accelerator that doesn't officially support 'SATA Express/NVMe'. I don't know why it works because I don't know enough about the differences between 'SATA Express/AHCI' and 'SATA Express/NVMe'.

When a crash log does point to the NVME driver as the cause it is still murky because of the other bug related to NTFS and APFS partitions on the same drive (I haven't checked recently if that bug has been fixed).

incumbent said:
That workstation crashes at least once a day and reboots; it's dual D300s and there's always a GPU crash or ten waiting in `/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/` when it happens and it sucks but if there's some weird voodoo about using that NVME I'll overnight an OWC Aura 2TB or whatever they've got and not give it a second thought
Click to expand...
If your crash log says graphics it is not going to be related to the hard drive. I don't suspect voodoo.
 
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FWIW I've been using an OWC NVMe SSD for a few years in my 6,1 and haven't had a single graphics-related driver crash ever. Not once. Granted, I'm running dual D700s, but if the problem were tied to NVMe drives, I suspect I'd have had a crash by now.
 
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I don't see any sign of my repeated panics being related to the NVME either but it hadn't even occurred to me that I was using a non-Apple or non-OWC SSD and it hadn't even occurred to me that it could be related until I started thinking about how resources are divided up internally; my old 3,1 wouldn't see an eSATA USB 3.0 card I installed until I took out a DIMM and dropped it to 56GB.

I don't mean to off-topic this thread, I've opened a case with Apple over it though and I'll chime in on the
 
I just noticed my MP's BootRom is still 133.0.0.0.0, the version prior to I installed 970EVO. I'm on Big Sur 11.5.2 now, and I've heard you don't need to swap the Apple SSD back since 13x.0.0.0.0?
 
Like you, my 6,1 is running 133.0.0.0.0 and I'm on Big Sur 11.5.2 now with no problems.

You apparently still do have to swap back in the Apple SSD to get a firmware upgrade, but that's a huge pain since I have 3 SSDs installed on an Amfeltec Angelshark card which I must completely remove.

Given that everything works fine I see no pressing reason to upgrade my firmware-- unless someone can present me with a compelling case to do so!
 
dramsey said:
You apparently still do have to swap back in the Apple SSD to get a firmware upgrade, but that's a huge pain since I have 3 SSDs installed on an Amfeltec Angelshark card which I must completely remove.
Click to expand...
Just a data point for you, but I haven't swapped in the OEM SSD to upgrade my firmware for over a year (I honestly can't remember the last time I did it). I'm currently running "System Firmware Version" 428.140.7.0.0, so my system is keeping its boot ROM/firmware up to date without me having to swap out anything.
 
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kfscoll said:
Just a data point for you, but I haven't swapped in the OEM SSD to upgrade my firmware for over a year (I honestly can't remember the last time I did it). I'm currently running "System Firmware Version" 428.140.7.0.0, so my system is keeping its boot ROM/firmware up to date without me having to swap out anything.
Click to expand...
Yeah I don't think there is the need for me to upgrade the firmware since it's been working very stable, just wondering why it didn't upgrade.
 
kfscoll said:
Just a data point for you, but I haven't swapped in the OEM SSD to upgrade my firmware for over a year (I honestly can't remember the last time I did it). I'm currently running "System Firmware Version" 428.140.7.0.0, so my system is keeping its boot ROM/firmware up to date without me having to swap out anything.
Click to expand...
Is this on a 6,1? If so, I wonder what the difference between our systems is. I've moved from Catalina to several versions of Big Sur and never received a firmware upgrade...
 
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