Quad/DC G5 PCIe bifurcation?

[AdamBuker]

Does anyone know if the Late 2005 PowerMac G5s support PCIe bifurcation of any kind? The reason I ask is that I've read up on some of the other PCIe ACHI SSD solutions on this forum. The best I've seen is using a simple adapter to 4-lane PCIe card that would work, but I can't seem to find any compatible m2 ACHI blades in anything larger than 256GB. I have seen adapter cards with 4 m2 slots that could work on an x16 bifurcated slot, but I've not been able to find any information anywhere on whether or not the QC/DC PMG5 ever supported it. I'm a bit doubtful that they do or ever did, but if I'm wrong, then I might try using a PCIe card with 2 or 4 m2 slots and set them up in a soft raid. I don't need to boot from this disk as I would just use it for video editing.

 

[Amethyst1]

[…] I've read up on some of the other PCIe ACHI SSD solutions on this forum. The best I've seen is using a simple adapter to 4-lane PCIe card that would work, but I can't seem to find any compatible m2 ACHI blades in anything larger than 256GB.

They do exist though.

 

[joevt]

bifurcation - no.
But you could get a PCIe card with a PCIe bridge which allows connecting multiple PCIe M.2 devices. The G5 should support PCIe bridges but maybe not all of them work.

 

[AdamBuker]

They do exist though.

Ha! I didn't even think about checking the early intel threads. That would have saved me some time.

 

[AdamBuker]

bifurcation - no.
But you could get a PCIe card with a PCIe bridge which allows connecting multiple PCIe M.2 devices. The G5 should support PCIe bridges but maybe not all of them work.

That's what I figured on the bifurcation. I think my best bet will be with a simple 4x PCIe card with a single m2 SSD.

Unfortunately I haven't found much luck on finding cards with larger than 256 GB that are within my budget, so I'm just going to go that route instead. At least for 1080p editing, 256GB should be plenty for a fast scratch disk.

 

[Amethyst1]

I think my best bet will be with a simple 4x PCIe card with a single m2 SSD.

If your setup leaves you with more than one available PCIe slot you can get several of those and “stripe” them together or whatever.