PCI express and maxing throughput on 1,1 MP

[freshbread]

Couple questions as I consider my current Mac pro 1,1 and potential future upgrade.

Current 2 x 3.0 dual core, 12gb ram, ati 5770, apple raid card with 3 x 2TB raid 0, two ssd in lower optical bay , one for boot and one to write to.

Question: will the MAXPower RAID mini-SAS 6G-1e1i card for example be an upgrade for me?

I'm confused on the capabilities of my express card bus and the capabilities of the apple raid card.

Can I make this machine function at sata III speed? Is pic 2.0 the standard? Other numbers to consider?

 

[Tesselator]

Question: will the MAXPower RAID mini-SAS 6G-1e1i card for example be an upgrade for me?

Yes. AFAIK the Apple card is 3Gb/s.

Can I make this machine function at sata III speed?

Yes, via that sas thing you're looking at.

Is pic 2.0 the standard?

What is "pic 2.0"? You mean PCIe? If that's what you meant the MP1,1 and 2,1 are PCIe version 1.x on all connectors. The MP3,1 has two PCIe v2.0 slots and the rest are v1.0. And the MP4,1 and 5,1 are PCIe v2.0 throughout.

 

[freshbread]

Thanks! What is AFAIK? Basically are you suggesting that if I replace my Apple RAID Card with this SAS card I've referenced, I will experience an upgrade for the four drives in the bays and whatever I connect to the external port of the card? Currently if I RAID three of them I get about 250/300 mbs read/write.

Additionally, I currently use the motherboard sata connections for two ssd's in the optical bay (which only gives me about 150/mbs read/write) for some reason (though start-up and app launch is snappy). If I connect this new card will it take away the connection for these two drives?

Yes PCI I meant. Thanks for your input.

 

[Tesselator]

AFAIK = As Far As I Know
BTW = By The Way
IIRC = If I Recall Correctly
NP = No Problem

GB = GigaByte
Gb = Gigabit
MB = MegaByte
Mb = Megabit
mb = millibit?

Thanks! What is AFAIK? Basically are you suggesting that if I replace my Apple RAID Card with this SAS card I've referenced, I will experience an upgrade for the four drives in the bays and whatever I connect to the external port of the card? Currently if I RAID three of them I get about 250/300 mbs read/write.

Yes, assuming the Apple card is 3Gb/s like I think. BTW, I get 530 to 580MB/s from three of the new(ish) Seagate ST3000DM001 (3TB, 7200RPM, 1TB per/platter, $135ea) drives. So I assume your particular RAID0 speed is because you're using slow drives. My speeds are with no RAID card... just the 5000X chipset RAID in all MacPro1,1 machines.

Additionally, I currently use the motherboard sata connections for two ssd's in the optical bay (which only gives me about 150/mbs read/write) for some reason (though start-up and app launch is snappy). If I connect this new card will it take away the connection for these two drives?

The snappy startup is because the SSD gives you 20 to 80MB/s for small files so that's to be expected. Single (fast) HDDs with those small startup file sizes (0.5k ~ 64K) typically get around 5 to 20MB/s. But the extra motherboard SATAII connecters can supply almost exactly 300MB/s each. With fast SSDs on each in RAID0 you should be able to get 595 to 600MB/s very easily. And singly you should be getting 295 to 300MB/s in benchmarkers.

Yes PCI I meant. Thanks for your input.

Sure NP. You should include the "e" on the end of that when talking to non-Mac people tho. There's PCI, PCIx, and PCIe

 

[freshbread]

Thanks. Sounds like we have a similar set-up. Actually, I'm in the process of "upgrading" (trying to speed things up, create more space, and not buy anything that I won't be able to port to a new machine eventually).

I'm using the Apple Raid card with three WD black caviar 2TB. I just switched to put two of them into Raid 0 and the third (and fourth bay--a 1TB) into individual JBOD's off the raid card.

I'm using two Samsung 840 pro 512 gb in the optical bay off the motherboard connection.

So based on what you are offering here. Seems like purchasing this new card isn't all that necessary.

Additionally, to clarify, are you suggesting to set up each of my ssd's as individual Raid 0's (is this possible?) or RAID 0 the two of them together?

Also, just to clarify. What I'm trying to do is creating the smoothest/fastest throughput for video editing and graphics rendering. So I intend to have files on my HDD raid and render them off to my SSD's (but not if the speed difference is as great as I initially experienced. Then I'd need a new organization.

Thanks again.

 

[TheEasterBunny]

Under RAID select striped set.
NOT mirrored or concatenated.
Concatenated=JABOD
JABOD=just a bunch of drives
lol

 

[Tesselator]

Thanks. Sounds like we have a similar set-up. Actually, I'm in the process of "upgrading" (trying to speed things up, create more space, and not buy anything that I won't be able to port to a new machine eventually).

Yeah, I'm currently looking into a new video card myself. I'll probably get either the GTX570 or the GTX680.

So based on what you are offering here. Seems like purchasing this new card isn't all that necessary.

It's not needed for typical operation. For large video editing I would indeed recommend getting the new RAID card, replacing your Black drives with the new faster Seagate drives, and I'd look into junking that ATI card for fast NVidia (like me, probably either the GTX570 for ~$200 or the GTX670/680 for ~$400).

Additionally, to clarify, are you suggesting to set up each of my ssd's as individual Raid 0's

No.

(is this possible?)

Yes - but not advantageous.

or RAID 0 the two of them together?

Yeah, that's the spped I quoted (295 to 300MB/s in single and 580 to 600MB/s if raided) but I wasn't recommending you do that. Just letting you know the spec. that's possible. Though now I know you're editing video maybe you should, yes.

Also, just to clarify. What I'm trying to do is creating the smoothest/fastest throughput for video editing and graphics rendering. So I intend to have files on my HDD raid and render them off to my SSD's (but not if the speed difference is as great as I initially experienced. Then I'd need a new organization.

• If you're rendering then a new video card may help with that as well - depending on the software you use.
• If you're rending individual frames to a video file like with compositing software I would want to have the frames on the SSD and render them to the HDD raid. It won't make a huge speed difference but jog/shuttle should be smoother in the application.
• If you're not getting the full speed out of your SSD drives look into (search for) enabling Trim in OS X.

I'm not sure what you mean by the part I made bold above. ?