PCIe Card + Apple SSD + Photoshop

[sammyman]

Currently I have two SSD drives in my cMP. One is for my applications. One is for my scratch drive (which also houses my Lightroom catalog data). These are older SSD drives and have read / write of 150-250MBs so I'm tinkering with the idea of getting a PCIe Card and 1TB Apple SSD drive.

What is the ideal way to setup Photoshop and Lightroom with these new drives? Should it house both the media and the scratch drives since it is so fast?

 

[IowaLynn]

You could go with the 1TB and yes, that would be much like the nMP and let it manage everything.

You should or could - those numbers are slow for any SSD from 2013 on - just move those to a Velocity Duo too and get better use.

Smaller SSDs are slower, and without TRIM and depending on capacity full, could be that slow also.

Samsung 850 EVO 500GB and 1TB are downright affordable also though limited to 550MB/sec "only."

Separating system and Lightroom AND scratch on the same PCIe-SSD can work.

What model Classic Mac Pro is this? 4,1? 3,1? helps to know along with what else besides GPU do you have for PCIe?

 

[sammyman]

I have a 2010 Mac Pro with a 8-core, and I'm in the process of hunting down some x5690's.

My SSD drives are really old. Maybe the first batch of Intel SSDs. Is there a point of doing a RAID array of these old SSD's? It seems like it would be smarter to put everything, scratch, catalog, and pictures that are being edited on the new 1TB Apple SSD.

 

[IowaLynn]

I have a 2010 Mac Pro with a 8-core, and I'm in the process of hunting down some x5690's.

My SSD drives are really old. Maybe the first batch of Intel SSDs. Is there a point of doing a RAID array of these old SSD's? It seems like it would be smarter to put everything, scratch, catalog, and pictures that are being edited on the new 1TB Apple SSD.

Retire the Intel's to system backup images.

Have you ever studied http://www.macperformanceguide.com tips on optimizing for Photoshop etc?

When I saw another thread, and using only standard SSD's like Samsung 850 - whether EVO or Pro - instead of PCIe-Express blades which can be 3.5x faster (but you still want enough memory so a lot of work that was done by scratch and cache disk storage can be done in memory).

If you had something from Samsung 830 era, Crucial or SATA III units, then "maybe" give them something to do.

Your 5,1 means that slots 3&4 are not tied together to share bandwidth and hopefully fewer conflicts when using 2nd GPU or a 3rd party graphic cards or PCIe USB3 or SATA III controllers - and can even run a stripe raid using two adapters or controllers.

The old way to get Apple blade level of performance was:
Two SATA III SSD controllers and 4 x SSDs of 250GB or 500GB.
Such contortions are history now - like running 2 or more Ultra320 SCSI controllers and 8 x 15K drives were once, or 10K Raptors later, in order to get fast scratch. Fast being relative and 800MB/sec was considered very good. A single 500GB blade can easily do.

 

[MacVidCards]

Your 5,1 means that slots 3&4 are not tied together to share bandwidth and hopefully fewer conflicts when using 2nd GPU or a 3rd party graphic cards or PCIe USB3 or SATA III controllers - and can even run a stripe raid using two adapters or controllers.

Actually this is incorrect. I have tested and guarantee that the only way to double speed via RAID-0 is to use slot 2 & 3.

 

[sammyman]

Actually this is incorrect. I have tested and guarantee that the only way to double speed via RAID-0 is to use slot 2 & 3.

Isn't it pointless to use RAID 0 with an Apple SSD? I thought I read there is no speed increase.

 

[sammyman]

Retire the Intel's to system backup images.

Have you ever studied http://www.macperformanceguide.com tips on optimizing for Photoshop etc?

If you had something from Samsung 830 era, Crucial or SATA III units, then "maybe" give them something to do.

I have a Kingston HyperX 3k 240GB drive that does about 250MBs. Looks like it is rated at 500MBs.

My scratch disk is a Intel X25-M 120 GB. That one is quite a bit slower.

I have read up on Mac Performance Guide but can't find much about these Apple SSD drives and how to set them up. I'll refresh myself on that site tonight.

 

[MacVidCards]

Isn't it pointless to use RAID 0 with an Apple SSD? I thought I read there is no speed increase.

Yes, no speed increase if you use 3 & 4 because they share PCIE lanes.

But if you use 2 & 3 then you get an increase, but only if you don't put one of the new SSUBX in slot 2.

And before someone asks or wants to argue, I have done it. I think Barefeats did it too when the XP941 blades first came out.

Here it is:

http://barefeats.com/hard183.html

 

[sammyman]

Yes, no speed increase if you use 3 & 4 because they share PCIE lanes.

But if you use 2 & 3 then you get an increase, but only if you don't put one of the new SSUBX in slot 2.

And before someone asks or wants to argue, I have done it. I think Barefeats did it too when the XP941 blades first came out.

Here it is:

http://barefeats.com/hard183.html

Wow, those are some impressive numbers! If I could only justify 2 x 1tb Apple SSD.

 

[MacVidCards]

Wow, those are some impressive numbers! If I could only justify 2 x 1tb Apple SSD.

Yep, beats the pants off anything you can do internally with nMP. I suppose you could try to catch up with a couple TB enclosures but you would use up 2/3 of available TB and wouldn't quite catch up.

Not to mention $400 for TB enclosures, all to be slower.

Someone remind me, why was it so desperately crucial to replace the slots with TB ports?

 

[crjackson2134]

Yep, beats the pants off anything you can do internally with nMP. I suppose you could try to catch up with a couple TB enclosures but you would use up 2/3 of available TB and wouldn't quite catch up.

Not to mention $400 for TB enclosures, all to be slower.

Someone remind me, why was it so desperately crucial to replace the slots with TB ports?

I installed one of the ssubx 512gb parts in my cMP slot 3 and I'm getting about 1500 in BM. My only complaint is the cold boot times are well over a minute. I guess I'll just have to avoid cold booting. This thing is really fast.

 

[sammyman]

Does it make sense to create a partition for the scratch drive if you plan on solely using a new Apple SSD? Or do you just put everything, the applications, the catalog, the scratch on the same drive with the same partition?

I'm guessing it makes no difference to make a scratch drive partition.