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Optimising old MacPro for After Effects with as many SSDs I can cram in it

R

Rootarty

macrumors member
Original poster
Nov 13, 2014
36
0
Hi guys,
I'm trying to optimise my MacPro (5,1 mid2010 with Mavericks OS) for Adobe After Affects sand Premiere Pro as a secondarily important program .
I have just successfully got a PC Quadro 4000 working in the first x16 slot .
I had one SSD on a Sonnet Tempo in the x16 slot . I was recently told that there would be no extra bandwidth benefit putting the SSD in the x16 slot rather than the x4 . It's a fairly standard Intel SSD . Is this so ?

My ultimate goal is to install 2 SSDs in the optical drive bay with one of these OWC Multi-Mounts :
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/MM352A52ST/

And add two SSDs in an empty slot with the Sonnet Tempo SSD Pro I already have:
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Sonnet%20Technologies/TSATA6SSDPSE/

This set up is mainly to optimise the MacPro for After Effects use.
I want to have :
-One SSD with the OS and my main software (I assume all other apps can be on other drives)
-One SSD for source video/asset files
-One SSD for rendering out to videos to
-One SSD for After Effects (and Premiere Pro) cache

So, I'm also wondering :
1) With two SSDs in the Optical drive bay and two on the Sonnet Tempo Pro, what would be the optimum arrangement considering my four uses outlined above?
2) With the Quadro 4000 in one x16 slot, and the Sonnet Tempo Pro in either the other x16 or a x4, is it reasonable to add two more Sonnets into the two free slots left which would allow me to add 4 more SSDs? Or would this require too much power or cause some other problems?

Extra info : I have maxed out RAM at the unofficial Max if 48GBs.

I appreciate any advice on this....thanks,
Wade
 
Last edited:
Rootarty said:
Hi guys,
I'm trying to optimise my MacPro (5,1 mid2010 with Mavericks OS) for Adobe After Affects sand Premiere Pro as a secondarily important program .
I have just successfully got a PC Quadro 4000 working in the first x16 slot .
I had one SSD on a Sonnet Tempo in the x16 slot . I was recently told that there would be no extra bandwidth benefit putting the SSD in the x16 slot rather than the x4 . It's a fairly standard Intel SSD . Is this so ?

My ultimate goal is to install 2 SSDs in the optical drive bay with one of these OWC Multi-Mounts :
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/MM352A52ST/

And add two SSDs in an empty slot with the Sonnet Tempo SSD Pro I already have:
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Sonnet Technologies/TSATA6SSDPSE/

This set up is mainly to optimise the MacPro for After Effects use.
I want to have :
-One SSD with the OS and my main software (I assume all other apps can be on other drives)
-One SSD for source video/asset files
-One SSD for rendering out to videos to
-One SSD for After Effects (and Premiere Pro) cache

So, I'm also wondering :
1) With two SSDs in the Optical drive bay and two on the Sonnet Tempo Pro, what would be the optimum arrangement considering my four uses outlined above?
2) With the Quadro 4000 in one x16 slot, and the Sonnet Tempo Pro in either the other x16 or a x4, is it reasonable to add two more Sonnets into the two free slots left which would allow me to add 4 more SSDs? Or would this require too much power or cause some other problems?

Extra info : I have maxed out RAM at the unofficial Max if 48GBs.

I appreciate any advice on this....thanks,
Wade
Click to expand...

Back when I was adding SSDs to my old 2009 MP, I found the top x4 slots had a limit of around 1GB/s or about half the theoretical maximum of a x4 slot, here's my findings verbatim...

All the recent Mac Pro's have a pair of 4x (electrical) slots at the top that connect through the ICH and a pair of 16x slots at the bottom connected to the X58 IOH.

I believe the top two x4 slots are switched... in other words, even though cards in both those slots will negotiate a x4 connection, they will be sharing that x4 (2GB/s) bandwidth. At any rate, what I found was even more damning... it appears there's something in the architecture of the Mac Pro that's limiting bandwidth of those top slots to 1GB/s or about half what I expected.

The 2720 with 3x SSDs in one of the top slots could not sustain transfers more than about 1000MB/s. In one of the x16 slots, I could get sustained transfer rates around 1370MB/s which is more in line with the limit of the three drives in RAID0.
Click to expand...

I now wonder if they're not switched at all and simply both x2 slots... It would be interesting for someone to confirm this, but the reality is you would need some fast PCIe storage to do so (more than a pair of SATA3 SSDs in RAID0).

Here's a link to the full report (pics are gone)...
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1504491/

Since all you are doing is running a pair of SATA3 SSDs (~1GB/s in RAID0) off any given slot, you're not going to run into PCIe bus limitations anywhere so put your cards wherever you like and fill'em all up. :cool:
 
If you are using only one of the two x4 Slots, you can get up to 1600 MB/s. When Slots 3+4 are in use they share the same x4 uplink to the CPU
 
Last edited:
TzunamiOSX said:
If you are using only one of the two x4 Slots, you can get up to 1800 MB/s

Perhaps the controller is the problem.
Click to expand...

If you're directing this at me... You could be right. However, my controller/drive combo could hit 1300MB/s in the x16 slots but I could not get that in the x4 slots. It could be some issue with the controller, the slots, or my particular Mac Pro, but I suppose the message here is to test your throughput in those x4 slots... Don't just assume you're getting 1800MB/s... Because I could not. :(
 
Guys, when I put my Tempo Sonnet Pro with only one Intel SSD drive on it into the second x16 slot above the PC Quadro 4000, the graphics card won't produce a picture in the monitor.
However when I put the Tempo in the first x4 slot and leave the second x16 empty, the Quadro works.
I assume this is due to the fact the card was made for a PC and is perfectly calibrated to the Mac system and that a Mac version of the same card wouldn't cause this issue.
Any ideas why? Or ways around it ?
Thanks in advance for your thoughts,
Wade
 
You could reach speeds of 1GB/s+ read and write simply by buying the 1TB Apple PCIe SSD along with the cheap adaptor from eBay.
 
Pressure said:
You could reach speeds of 1GB/s+ read and write simply by buying the 1TB Apple PCIe SSD along with the cheap adaptor from eBay.
Click to expand...

Yes, i have a PCIe SSD (Samsung xp941) and this way is much more simple to get hight speed. With Two SSD blades in slot 2+4 you get 2200 MB/s.

----------

Idea:

To test the transferrate of the PCIe-Slot, put you GPU into Slot 3 and then you can see the transferrate of the Slot with the Program Cuda-Z (Performance/Memory Copy)
 
TzunamiOSX said:
Yes, i have a PCIe SSD (Samsung xp941) and this way is much more simple to get hight speed. With Two SSD blades in slot 2+4 you get 2200 MB/s.

----------

Idea:

To test the transferrate of the PCIe-Slot, put you GPU into Slot 3 and then you can see the transferrate of the Slot with the Program Cuda-Z (Performance/Memory Copy)
Click to expand...

WOW,
I might return my two EVOs and Apricorn Velocity Duo to get one of these. The max speed I can get on RAID 0 is 750mb/s.
How much did you pay for this and what adaptor do you need for it?
Thanks
 
TzunamiOSX said:
257 € for one 256 GB blade + 14 € for the adapter, but this was over 8 mounth ago.
Click to expand...

Thanks,
Do you have to get two of these in order to achieve the speeds your mentioned join RAID 0? I read that blade is 1080 MB/s Read and 800 write.
Also, what kind of adapter do you use?
 
Which SSDs would not be overkill in mid2010 MacPro?

Here is a list of the SSDs I have a choice of using. 2 will go on the 16x PCI or the 4X, whichever makes more sense, as I have one of each open right now.
The other two will be put into a multi-mount in the optic drive bay.

Here are the options marked with a green dots :


I want maximum data speed manageable by the system while not paying too much for SSDs that are overspec for the system limitations - being the optic drive connection and the PCI connections (16x and 4x). Could anybody advise me ?
Thanks heaps in advance.
Wade
 
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