Solo X2 vs Solo X1

[rdsii64]

I have been looking a velocity Solo PCIe cards because I am about to put an SSD in my 3.1 Mac Pro. the x2 is basically $100.00 and the x1 is about $50.00. The x2 is the faster card. My question is whether or not there will be any real world difference in a 3.1 mac pro.

 

[flowrider]

Short answer - Yes.

But, on a 3,1 Mac Pro, it would need to be installed in PCIe Slot 2 (the one just above the double wide graphics card slot. The reason is that in the 3,1 slots 3 and 4 while being wide enough with 4 lanes, are only PCIe spec 1, and will throttle down the Solo x2. Slots 1 and 2 are 16 lane PCIe spec 2 slots.

So if your planning on installing your card in slots 3 or 4 the x1 will be fine, if you plan on using slot 2 than the x2 card will be faster.

Lou

 

[hfg]

While disk testing benchmarks will certainly show a difference, in actual use running OS X I have found no perceptible difference with the SSD on a Solo X2 vs. running the SSD in one of the SATA-II drive bays.

I do find that very large photo files in my photo library do show a performance improvement with not only SSD SATA-III installation, but further in RAID-0 on a PCIe Sonnet Pro SATA-III card.

So ... it depends on what you are using the SSD for ...


-howard

 

[pastrychef]

I agree with hfg.

Also, I see little value in the Velocity Solo X1. On Apricorn's site, they show that the X1 is limited to 400MB/s reads and writes. The onboard SATA 2 of the Mac Pros are specced at 300MB/s. Not worth it, in my opinion.

 

[rdsii64]

While disk testing benchmarks will certainly show a difference, in actual use running OS X I have found no perceptible difference with the SSD on a Solo X2 vs. running the SSD in one of the SATA-II drive bays.

I do find that very large photo files in my photo library do show a performance improvement with not only SSD SATA-III installation, but further in RAID-0 on a PCIe Sonnet Pro SATA-III card.

So ... it depends on what you are using the SSD for ...


-howard

So far the plan is to use an SSD for my OS and apps. Later I may get another one for a scratch drive If I find it might make a difference.