SATA Express meets the '09 Mac Pro - Bootable NGFF PCIE SSD

[crjackson2134]

I'm fighting off the a upper respiratory virus as well. Lol. I had TrimEnabler running for legacy SSDs. That resulted with 10.10.3 not booting as it detected a unsigned driver.

I'd rather deal with the occasional option-r recovery mode terminal session than loose Trim.

Gotcha, I thought that's what you meant but I wanted to be certain. Hope you get over the URV soon. Thanks for your clarification.

 

[AndreeOnline]

I've used an OWC Accelsior_E2 up until now, but these adaptors for $10 are silly cheap. Ordered one for the fun of it.

What practical speed limits am I looking at here with SSUAX and SSUBX?

The OWC tops out around 680MB/s or so...

I like the idea of getting TRIM working..

 

[box185]

I've used an OWC Accelsior_E2 up until now, but these adaptors for $10 are silly cheap. Ordered one for the fun of it.

What practical speed limits am I looking at here with SSUAX and SSUBX?

The OWC tops out around 680MB/s or so...

I like the idea of getting TRIM working..

I have two SSUBX blades in a 2009 dual processor Mac Pro - one each in slots 3 and 4. These are configured as a RAID 0 array and share the PCIe 4x bus as reported elsewhere in this thread. The 2TB RAID 0 array yields 1400 MB/s writes and 1500MB/s reads - Black Magic Disk Speed Test numbers.

 

[mikeboss]

I have two SSUBX blades in a 2009 dual processor Mac Pro - one each in slots 3 and 4. These are configured as a RAID 0 array and share the PCIe 4x bus as reported elsewhere in this thread. The 2TB RAID 0 array yields 1400 MB/s writes and 1500MB/s reads - Black Magic Disk Speed Test numbers.

you are aware that slots 3 & 4 are sharing one single PCIe x4 connection to the northbridge? a RAID 0 consisting of two 1.0 TB Apple/SAMSUNG PCIe SSDs should deliver more or less 2 GB/Sec if one of the SSDs is placed in slot #2.

 

[AndreeOnline]

I have two SSUBX blades in a 2009 dual processor Mac Pro - one each in slots 3 and 4. These are configured as a RAID 0 array and share the PCIe 4x bus as reported elsewhere in this thread. The 2TB RAID 0 array yields 1400 MB/s writes and 1500MB/s reads - Black Magic Disk Speed Test numbers.

Even with mikeboss' remark below, those are sweet numbers.

At the same time, it pretty much confirms the OWC hard limit of around 700-750MB?

Do you know the speed pre RAID? Just one SSUBX as a single drive?

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Apple/SAMSUNG PCIe SSDs should deliver more or less 2 GB/Sec if one of the SSDs is placed in slot #2.

That.Would.Be.Sweet.

But I'm running out of slots. 2 gfx cards, 1 USB 3 card (hate to see that go...) and only one left...

 

[handheldgames]

Even with mikeboss' remark below, those are sweet numbers.

At the same time, it pretty much confirms the OWC hard limit of around 700-750MB?

Do you know the speed pre RAID? Just one SSUBX as a single drive?

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That.Would.Be.Sweet.

But I'm running out of slots. 2 gfx cards, 1 USB 3 card (hate to see that go...) and only one left...

Placing the SSUBX in slot 2 may drop it to a 2.5 GT/S speed, limiting the bandwidth to 800MB/S

The SSUBX has a 1500 MB/S maximum transfer speed for one stick R/W in Slot #3. FWIW, I have a XP941 in slot 4 and a SSUAX in slot 2 as one happy family. Something that the nMP can never accomplish... Perhaps as a "upgrade" to the nMP - Apple could place a 2nd PCIe slot on the video card where they initially intended to - or parallel to the original PCIe slot. One is not enough. Heck, 3 is not enough!

I'm still waiting for a dual blade x8 or a quad blade x16 board. Perhaps next year.

 

[AndreeOnline]

So you are saying… with the $10 adaptor I just ordered, no wait, make that $13 with shipping included… and a $680 1TB blade… I'll get 1TBs worth of 1500BM/s in slot 3?

 

[Loa]

So you are saying… with the $10 adaptor I just ordered, no wait, make that $13 with shipping included… and a $680 1TB blade… I'll get 1TBs worth of 1500BM/s in slot 3?

Yep. The RAID0 option is only useful if you need a single 2TB volume. Otherwise, you get the same speed with a single chip.

Loa

 

[AndreeOnline]

Yep. The RAID0 option is only useful if you need a single 2TB volume. Otherwise, you get the same speed with a single chip.

Loa

"I accept that" – SoA

 

[box185]

you are aware that slots 3 & 4 are sharing one single PCIe x4 connection to the northbridge? a RAID 0 consisting of two 1.0 TB Apple/SAMSUNG PCIe SSDs should deliver more or less 2 GB/Sec if one of the SSDs is placed in slot #2.

Yes, I am aware of that - having read most of this thread. For whatever reason, the SSUBX links at 2.5GT/s in slot 2 on my machine ( also reported by others here ) . . . yielding about 700-800 MB/s for a single blade. No advantage to have the SSUBX in slot 2 here.

Slots 3 and 4 independently yield twice that, but in RAID 0 the numbers are halved due to sharing and upped again due to RAID 0. I look at this as a something like a single 2TB solution on a PCIe x4 slot with some penalty for RAID overhead.

When I have some time, I intend to run a parallel test accessing the slot 3 and 4 blades as independent drives. That should slow each of them down as they share the PCIe x4 connection.

 

[mikeboss]

okay. I thought that this phenomenon of SSUBX linkspeed dropping to 2.5 GT/s was an isolated issue. very strange.

 

[handheldgames]

Yep. The RAID0 option is only useful if you need a single 2TB volume. Otherwise, you get the same speed with a single chip.

Loa

May be.. May be not. How are you qualifying the speed?

• If you are using BlackMagic, have you increased the file size to the maximum available?
• What is the stripe size for the Raid 0 Array?

It would be interesting to see how the performance scales across a round of Quickbench tests? I just ran a Quickbench Standard test on a 1TB SSUAX that's also the boot drive. Sequential Performance between the SSUAX and the SSUBX <= 32KBytes is steady. At 64KB transfer size, performance in the SSUBX takes off. @256KB, offers the greatest bang for the buck, at the sacrifice of disk space lost with smaller files.

 

[Loa]

How are you qualifying the speed?

Box185 was talking about two SSUBX. Seems to me that SSUBX is limited by the PCIe X4 bandwidth, and slots 3 & 4 can only share 4 lanes at most. We know from windows testing that they can go much faster than that.

Sure you can set-up a RAID0 set that would choke the volume with bad block size, but since you can't go beyond X4 speeds in any case, it doesn't matter what block size you choose; the upper limit will be the same. In any case, we don't set block size to hit a high benchmark; we set it according to what we need.

Maybe it's different with SSUAX like you tested, but with a couple of SSUBX, you won't get any significant performance gain by RAIDing them in slots 3 & 4.

Loa

 

[box185]

Box185 was talking about two SSUBX. Seems to me that SSUBX is limited by the PCIe X4 bandwidth, and slots 3 & 4 can only share 4 lanes at most. We know from windows testing that they can go much faster than that.

Sure you can set-up a RAID0 set that would choke the volume with bad block size, but since you can't go beyond X4 speeds in any case, it doesn't matter what block size you choose; the upper limit will be the same. In any case, we don't set block size to hit a high benchmark; we set it according to what we need.

Maybe it's different with SSUAX like you tested, but with a couple of SSUBX, you won't get any significant performance gain by RAIDing them in slots 3 & 4.

Loa

Is there something to be lost by RAIDing them in slots 3 & 4? With regard to performance - nothing gained and nothing lost. Otherwise, 1 x 2TB vs 2 x 1TB.

PS: The pair I have installed are not used as the boot drive.

 

[MacVidCards]

Raid over 2 & 3 with either 2 @ SSUAX or 1 "A" and 1 "B" and you'll get doubled speeds.

 

[soloact]

Hey gang, has anyone tried to run two late 2013 rMBP SSDs in one 2009 Mac Pro tower pcie slot/card?

It seems the only card that does is the one below, and I'm not finding much info other than the article below. I'd like to figure out how to buy one and use it, but I need to find out if it's actually been done. -- Thanks!


http://www.soliton.com.tw/modules.php?name=Products&op=viewarticle&artid=45

http://www.thessdreview.com/daily-n...ew-birds-eye-view-m-2-ngff-ssd-test-hardware/

http://www.thessdreview.com/our-rev...-0-worlds-smallest-ssd-combination-hits-2gbs/

 

[handheldgames]

Raid over 2 & 3 with either 2 @ SSUAX or 1 "A" and 1 "B" and you'll get doubled speeds.

Small file transfers take a huge hit in raid 0 between slots 2 & 3. Roughly 60% of single drive performance.

Large file transfers scale nicely. Not quite 2X the speed though. Here are some results from a Raid 0 striped at 32KB SSUAX and SSUBX. (128GB partition off the 1TB boot drive in PCIe2 and a SSUBX in PCIe3)

Pushing the Stripe size larger lowers top end performance. The larger the stripe, write bandwidth drops accordingly. As noted earlier, PCIe 3/4 is capped at 1500MB/s ish and small file performance suffers greatly. I would highly advise against a Raid 0 with these disks for booting in OS X and should be reserved for ludicrous large file transfers.

 

[Loa]

Is there something to be lost by RAIDing them in slots 3 & 4?

Not really, except for the odd chance that the RAID0 set fails and you lose data. Setting them as plain old JBOD (concatenation) would help with data recovery. But if you have a good back-up, then no biggie.

Loa

 

[handheldgames]

Not really, except for the odd chance that the RAID0 set fails and you lose data. Setting them as plain old JBOD (concatenation) would help with data recovery. But if you have a good back-up, then no biggie.

Loa

In my tests last evening, Small file performance tanks in Raid 0 and I would highly suggest against it. JBOD looses about 10% performance. This is a JBOD between a x2 SSUAX 512 and a x4 SSUBX 512. Clearly it's filling the SSUBX first.

 

[Loa]

Hello,

There are too many variables in your last test (to begin with: which slots, which drives, which block size) for it to be meaningful for other setups. My comments/answers were directed at box185 who uses 2 SSUBX in slots 3 & 4. I don't know if they generalize.

But to know the effects of RAID0 and JBOD using a mix of SSUAX and SSUBX (and possibly others) SSDs, we need a lot more tests and results all side by side using the same system and benchmark app. I don't have all the tests results you've done handy, so I can't know which is the most performance choking scenario.

Loa

 

[IowaLynn]

I haven't found a clear answer so here's my questions.

Will a PCIe drive work in a 2006 Mac Pro 1,1? Will it perform better than on SATA? What version of PCIe is in Mac Pro 1,1 and is there a recomended firmware update to enable better PCIe performance?

Basically I'm looking to improve the performance of the 1,1 with SSD but it isn't clear what path I should take w/o just buying and trying.
Robin

I know this is an old post, forgive me, but I have a 1,1 using XP941 in 8x slot to boot from and very pleased. I was testing the water mostly and went with the 128GB. If I could do it again I might get the 256GB but that was twice as much $$.

Plug and play and fully bootable.

 

[handheldgames]

Haha.. Too many tests.. Too many reboots & PRAM resets to piss off OS X with a mix of trim enabler and nvidia web drivers to render OS X to a point where a reinstall of the base OS was necessary..

Whilst I could report back on each and every test I run, I'm sampling across a wide variety of hardware and configurations to get the "broad brushstrokes" at this point, VS exact numbers. Please feel free to post your findings as well.

FWIW.. IMO.. YMMV... Observations across many test sets - not guesstimations.
Irrespective of slot configuration, PCIe SSD's see a major degradation of small file transfers when in Raid 0 Stripe. Raid 0 JBOD looses +/- 10% for the overhead.
With PCIe Slot 2 & 3, Large file transfers scale with Raid 0 > 1500 MB/S +
With PCIe Slot 3 &4, Large file transfers cap at 1500 MB/S +
In Raid 0, maximum write speeds scale lower in max transfer whilst increasing block size > 32kb.

Every system is different and is every configuration. Take this and everything here with a grain of salt.

Hello,

There are too many variables in your last test (to begin with: which slots, which drives, which block size) for it to be meaningful for other setups. My comments/answers were directed at box185 who uses 2 SSUBX in slots 3 & 4. I don't know if they generalize.

But to know the effects of RAID0 and JBOD using a mix of SSUAX and SSUBX (and possibly others) SSDs, we need a lot more tests and results all side by side using the same system and benchmark app. I don't have all the tests results you've done handy, so I can't know which is the most performance choking scenario.

Loa

 

[TheStork]

Where are you finding/getting the SSUBX? All I've seen on eBay are SSUAX models.

 

[soloact]

Repeating question below. Thanks in advance for any help.

Hey gang, has anyone tried to run two late 2013 rMBP SSDs in one 2009 Mac Pro tower pcie slot/card?

It seems the only card that does is the one below, and I'm not finding much info other than the article below. I'd like to figure out how to buy one and use it, but I need to find out if it's actually been done. -- Thanks!


http://www.soliton.com.tw/modules.php?name=Products&op=viewarticle&artid=45

http://www.thessdreview.com/daily-n...ew-birds-eye-view-m-2-ngff-ssd-test-hardware/

http://www.thessdreview.com/our-rev...-0-worlds-smallest-ssd-combination-hits-2gbs/

 

[handheldgames]

I know this is an old post, forgive me, but I have a 1,1 using XP941 in 8x slot to boot from and very pleased. I was testing the water mostly and went with the 128GB. If I could do it again I might get the 256GB but that was twice as much $$.

Plug and play and fully bootable.

Great to hear the 128GB XP941 is working out for you as well. Early on, it was the only option and I've never regretted the performance, just the free space.

Repeating question below. Thanks in advance for any help.

I'm definitely up for testing the cMP with that platform. Availability is the question as it's the only place it's ever shown up in the media is on Les Toker's desk.

Here are two benchmarks with that adapter. A single XP941 512gb and a dual XP941 512gb on the above adapter. 4K performance on the single blade is higher, where 512K performance on the Raid is higher.

(from the TheSSDReview.Com)
Single XP941

Dual XP941

Shown on the board