Sonnet Tempo SSD Pro vs OWC Accelsior (benchmarks)

[hfg]

Thanks for the information.

I did originally perform a clean install of OS X 10.8.3 followed by a data migration from a system disk to the RAID-0 SSDs on the PCIe card. I currently have the SSDs removed from the Sonnet card and installed in the normal drive bays, and it is running fine and the startup boot-selection screen is again working.

At your suggestion, I will now repeat the clean install and migration while the SSDs are mounted in the standard MP disk trays, and then transplant the drives back to the Sonnet PCIe card and see if that solves the problem.

Would you know if it is possible, while booting/running OS X from the Sonnet RAID-0 based PCIe (external) system, to install bootable Windows using any of the popular methods on a separate SSD mounted to preferably a PCIe card (Velocity x2 - seen as external), or a tray mounted SSD, and have it seen by the boot-manager? Here again, it may make a difference if I do the installation locally from backplane mounted drives and then transplant the drives to the PCIe cards.

Just to clarify ... the RAID-0 array works great either on the Sonnet card or on the Mac Pro backplane (of course it is much faster on the Sonnet card). It is only the startup boot-manager which can't be seen with the Sonnet card, but which works normally when installed to the normal blackplane.


Thanks for your help,
-howard

UPDATE: I passed this information on to Sonnet Support and they suggested several solutions to no avail. I also received a replacement card which exhibited the same behavior. However, I recently received an email from Sonnet Technical Support indicating that they were able to duplicate the problem in their lab, and had opened a Trouble Ticket to engineering which they hoped would result in a firmware update to remedy the problem.

I wonder if this is a issue with just the 2012 Mac Pro models, since others don't seem to have the problem (and I didn't when mine was installed in a 2008 Mac Pro).

 

[rjtiedeman]

Thank You

I was just getting ready to splurge on the Sonnet Tempo SSD Pro and 2 SSDs. I am now putting it off until the smoke clears. The time I would save having one can't come close to the time wasted on the experiment.

Thank You again.
Bob

 

[hfg]

Here are some DiskTest results I am seeing with the Sonnet Tempo Pro. It does work great, other than the boot menu issue I am having with a 2012 Mac Pro:

Left is with a pair of Crucial M4 512GB SSD in RAID-0
Right is a single Samsung 840 Pro 512GB SSD


-howard
..

 

[Killerbob]

Pretty impressive Read speeds. I have the Accelsior PCIe card installed in my MP3,1, and though I am happy with the Write speeds, I wonder why the Read speeds are "low"???

 

[phpmaven]

Scott, thanks for all of this great info! Unfortunately, I read it a all bit too late. I just ordered a 960gb accelsior and a 480gb accelsior from OWC. They will likely be in here in the next day or two. Did you have to pay the 15% restocking fee to OWC?

Also, do you think that the Accelsior may have been slower than the Sonnet Tempo config because it was busy running your OS as well as a disk test?

I have the Accelsior and it is screaming wicked fast, sure these bench marks may show that this setup is a bit faster, but I seriously doubt that you would notice any real world difference. It's really just benchmark bragging rights once you get up into these speeds. If you have money to burn you can return them, but I think it's a waste of money. I honestly doubt you could tell the difference in day to day use.

 

[scottrichardson]

Sorry I have been away from my studio a bit the past few days so I didn't notice the recent posts in here.

I too had gone through the process of contacting Sonnet Support - by phone, all the way from over here in Australia. And they told me they too had been able to replicate the issue with not being able to install OS X while running the disks off the PCI card - that's when they advised that I swap my RAIDED disks to the backplane to install OS X then move back to the PCI card.

To be honest - after I ordered my original Accelsior, I had no plans whatsoever of returning it and buying a Sonnet. I expected it to be fully faster than my existing 240GB Mercury Pro SATA 2 SSD. But, in all honesty, it wasn't. For very small file sizes (4k, 8k, 16k blocks), the 960GB Accelsior was slower and I DEFINITELY DID notice it when doing things like loading my iTunes library and waiting for all my album covers to load, or doing the same kind of thing when loading my several thousand fonts in Font Case (I run a design house). In general, I saw a slight sluggishness that I could perceive in day to day use. Mind you, as soon as I poked the Accelsior with some heavy lifting like large file transfers, big photoshop document work etc, it was clearly faster than my existing SATA2 SSD..... but this wasn't good enough for me. Given I was spending in excess of $1600 (landed in Aus), I wanted EVERY thing to be faster. Hence why I quickly returned my Accelsior and went the Sonnet route.

My 2009 machine screams now (and yes, it affects all Mac Pro's it seems).

Scott

 

[khollister]

a couple questions:

1 Can you run one of these as 2 drive volumes rather than RAID 0? One bootable and one not?

2 Assuming that configuration, is there any performance advantage to the Pro model, or is it just faster at the RAID processing?

 

[Ino]

a couple questions:

1 Can you run one of these as 2 drive volumes rather than RAID 0? One bootable and one not?

2 Assuming that configuration, is there any performance advantage to the Pro model, or is it just faster at the RAID processing?

Based on derrick1051's post where he RAIDed 3 SSDs on 2 cards together it doesn't seem like the Pro model requires you to configure RAID 0 pairs of SSDs. Just speculation on my part, but it sounds like you would be able to set up 2 SSDs on the Sonnet Tempo SSD Pro as 2 independent volumes.

That said I'm also curious about your second question...for users who aren't interested in RAID 0 but want 2 SSDs at SATA III speeds in a Mac Pro (with the PCI slots to spare, of course), it seems like the options are:

1. 2 independent volumes on 1 Sonnet Tempo SSD Pro card (most expensive, but possibly overkill)
2. 2 independent volumes on 1 Sonnet Tempo SSD Non-Pro card (least expensive, but there might be a performance bottleneck when moving data between the 2 volumes)
3. 2 independent volumes on 2 Sonnet Tempo SSD Non-Pro cards (since 2 Non-Pro cards are cheaper than 1 Pro card, could this possibly be the ideal solution for non-RAID users?)

Hoping someone with actual hands-on experience can enlighten us...!

 

[Executor]

a couple questions:

1 Can you run one of these as 2 drive volumes rather than RAID 0? One bootable and one not?

2 Assuming that configuration, is there any performance advantage to the Pro model, or is it just faster at the RAID processing?

I have the pro model and you can indeed have two independent volumes. You do not have to use them as raid.
I cannot answer your second query since I do not have the non pro model nor have I run any benchmarks comparing the two cards. But If I was a betting man I would assume the performance differences would be minimal at best.

 

[hfg]

As mentioned above, the disks appear as separate volumes to OS X. Any form of RAID is created in Disk Utility with software RAID. I think I read here that there was a hardware RAID controller on the card, but it is not used. I think it was also mentioned that the Pro had a faster SATA controller than the previous models, allowing faster transfer speeds.

 

[pertusis1]

Sorry I have been away from my studio a bit the past few days so I didn't notice the recent posts in here.

I too had gone through the process of contacting Sonnet Support - by phone, all the way from over here in Australia. And they told me they too had been able to replicate the issue with not being able to install OS X while running the disks off the PCI card - that's when they advised that I swap my RAIDED disks to the backplane to install OS X then move back to the PCI card.

To be honest - after I ordered my original Accelsior, I had no plans whatsoever of returning it and buying a Sonnet. I expected it to be fully faster than my existing 240GB Mercury Pro SATA 2 SSD. But, in all honesty, it wasn't. For very small file sizes (4k, 8k, 16k blocks), the 960GB Accelsior was slower and I DEFINITELY DID notice it when doing things like loading my iTunes library and waiting for all my album covers to load, or doing the same kind of thing when loading my several thousand fonts in Font Case (I run a design house). In general, I saw a slight sluggishness that I could perceive in day to day use. Mind you, as soon as I poked the Accelsior with some heavy lifting like large file transfers, big photoshop document work etc, it was clearly faster than my existing SATA2 SSD..... but this wasn't good enough for me. Given I was spending in excess of $1600 (landed in Aus), I wanted EVERY thing to be faster. Hence why I quickly returned my Accelsior and went the Sonnet route.

My 2009 machine screams now (and yes, it affects all Mac Pro's it seems).

Scott

Thanks so much for the fantastic thread. Has anyone been able to confirm the firmware update? I would love to Sonnet card, but not If I Have To Do Too Much Fiddling around with Moving the Drive around.

 

[pullman]

Sorry to dig up an old thread but where in Europe can one buy these Sonnet cards?

 

[gsloan]

Tried an Apricorn X1 and a RocketRAID 642L - This kills 'em both

Cliff's Notes: The Syba SD-PEX40068 uses the Marvell 88SE9230 chip (Superior to the RocketRAID 640L, 642L, 644L's 9235 chip), runs at PCIe 2.0 x4 speeds, doesn't slow down boot time, and requires no driver. Sleep works with it!

First off, my system specs:
2009 Mac Pro -> Mid 2010 FW
Xeon W3690 @ 3.46GHz - Hex Core
24GB Corsair 1333MHz ECC Registered
GeForce 680 GTX with EFI FW - 2GB
Sandisk Extreme SSD 240GB and Intel 80GB 3G SSD on Syba SD-PEX40068
2 Western Digital Red 2.0TB 3.5" drives in internal slots
IOGear Bluetooth 4.0 USB dongle
Orico PFU3-2P Dual Port USB 3.0 adapter (working with Generic UHCI kext)

OSes:
Mountain Lion 10.8.4 (Sandisk)
Windows 7 x64 Ultimate (Intel)

I've tried an Apricorn X1, which worked, but was crashy with my system setup - Read speeds were limited right at 300MB/second, and it only supported one drive. And froze my system. A lot.

I tried a RocketRAID 642L - This required me to reflash the firmware to an EFI 64 one in Windows, meaning I had to boot Boot Camp/Win7 first. Also, OS X needed a driver installed prior to being able to boot to it, meaning you could not install the OS to it - It just doesn't see the controller prior to the driver being installed. With my Sandisk in the internal bay, I had roughly 2.5 load icon spins while booting. After the RocketRAID, I had over 12 spins before it loaded. Once it did load, speeds were good, but it wasn't a very good solution.

Enter the Syba SD-PEX40068 - A no-name brand that's sold on Amazon but produces some good cards. This card uses a Marvel 88SE9230 HARDWARE RAID chip, unlike the 9235 in the RocketRAID. Here are the benefits:
1) Mount 2 2.5" SSDs on-board - with 2 internal SATA 6G ports that you can run elsewhere or convert to eSATA - Your call.
2) Does not delay OS X boot - Only get 1/2 of a load icon spin now vs 2.5 internally, and system doesn't sit at a black screen forever. Maybe about 8 seconds.
3) If Boot Camp volume is connected to the controller, changing your boot volume in either OS works. Have not tried mixing it up.
4) No driver needed in OS X. OS X sees the drives immediately, even when booting from the OS USB Key/Disc
5) No driver needed for Windows, but one comes with it, with a RAID utility.
6) Oh yes. Sleep WORKS. Have tried it multiple times without any failures.
7)$43.60 at Amazon! - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00BG0NMNA/ref=oh_details_o02_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Bad:
1) Takes 2 PCIe slots. I put an eSATA 2-port connector beside it, so I'm making use of my "useless" slot.
2) Needs a floppy power connector. So I used the Monoprice cable here, and plugged it into a free internal drive bay's power - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005E2XQQY/ref=oh_details_o09_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
3) It's not free?

Unknowns:
I have yet to try it in SW or HW RAID-0 configurations. Evidently, you need Windows installed to set up a HW RAID, and I may end up doing that later. If I do, expect benchmarks here.

Ordered a Samsung 840 Pro 256GB drive that I'm going to run on it when it arrives, and will update with benchmarks. Then may pick up another and run HW RAID-0 on it and see how it runs. My old Sandisk isn't the fastest drive in the world, but I was getting ~278MB reads internally, ~300MB reads with the Crapricorn X1, and ~440 with the RocketRAID 642L (At $100 without any provisions for mounting SSDs)

I've also only had it in my system for a few hours. We'll see how it works over the upcoming weeks/months.

Hope this helps some of you guys out there who want to spruce up your Mac Pro on the cheap.

Cheers,
Geoff

P.S. - Below is a bench with my Sandisk Extreme 240. Will update with the Samsung when it arrives.

 

[AppleMac1987]

Sorry to dig up an old thread but where in Europe can one buy these Sonnet cards?

http://www.mac4us.nl/advanced_search_result.php?keywords=SONNET+Tempo+SSD+PCIe+kaart&x=33&y=6

Prices are inclusive 21% VAT from The Netherlands (inside EU)

 

[pullman]

Thanks!

 

[Killerbob]

But the price from Mac4us is €300 vs. $288 (€221) from MacSales. Shipping is insignificant, and there is no reason to get "locally". Of course you may need to pay import duty (if the package is checked), but Denmark has the highest VAT, and that's "only" 25%

 

[pullman]

But the price from Mac4us is €300 vs. $288 (€221) from MacSales. Shipping is insignificant, and there is no reason to get "locally". Of course you may need to pay import duty (if the package is checked), but Denmark has the highest VAT, and that's "only" 25%

I know. I have bought from the US several times before (OWC) and have been both lucky and unlucky, so to speak, re import duty. I might to take the chance again but what might stop me from doing so is not having a local focal point if something goes wrong. I've had to send back several RAM sticks and SSDs to OWC (won't touch their kit ever again) and the hassle and shipping costs have outweighed any lower price due to the equipment possibly passing unscathed through customs.

 

[iPadPublisher]

...As an example... today I duplicated a 1.68GB photoshop file, and it went so fast that the Finder didn't even have time to display the progress bar. Seriously cool stuff!

I'll be packing up the Accelsior and returning it tomorrow.

This is the beauty of this community... thanks, Scott, for the data. I've been on the Accelsior for a few days now, and the performance bump has been minimal to me. Boot time was actually slower than on an OWC SSD from late 2011, until someone pointed out I needed to reset NVRAM.

Anyhow, I'm thankful for your info. here. Definitely packing up my Accelsior as well. Sorry, OWC.

 

[Ino]

Quick post-purchase report...

I am successfully running 2 independent volumes from 2 SSDs off of 1 Tempo SSD Pro. Very easy to install, but I'd just like to share a couple of annoyances for others to consider.

1. Smaller annoyance: SSDs/volumes on the Sonnet card are seen by OS X as external/removable drives, so if you're running a separate volume such as a clone destination/mirror then it'll always appear on the desktop. There doesn't seem to be a way to hide a volume from a Sonnet card without also hiding all your other truly external drives...I'd really like to hide my backup volume while still having my truly external drives still appear, but Sonnet support confirmed that this isn't possible.

2. Bigger annoyance - installing the Tempo SSD Pro in a Mac Pro 5,1 will cause the OS X boot manager to stop working, as in no drives will appear when you hold down the option key during startup. You pretty much have to choose a startup disk from System Preferences before you shut down/restart. I also confirmed this with Sonnet support who advised me to monitor their site for a firmware update (link here: http://www.sonnettech.com/support/kb/kb.php?cat=457&expand=&action=a13#a13). The lone firmware release from January on that page sure doesn't make it look like we'll be getting a solution anytime soon.

These annoyances might not necessarily be deal-breakers considering the functionality you get from having the card in a Mac Pro, but I do wish I knew about them before I purchased.

 

[pullman]

2. Bigger annoyance - installing the Tempo SSD Pro in a Mac Pro 5,1 will cause the OS X boot manager to stop working, as in no drives will appear when you hold down the option key during startup. You pretty much have to choose a startup disk from System Preferences before you shut down/restart. I also confirmed this with Sonnet support who advised me to monitor their site for a firmware update (link here: http://www.sonnettech.com/support/kb/kb.php?cat=457&expand=&action=a13#a13). The lone firmware release from January on that page sure doesn't make it look like we'll be getting a solution anytime soon.

What if you install OS X while the SSDs in raid 0 config are installed on the backplane and then move them to the Sonnet?

 

[hfg]

2. Bigger annoyance - installing the Tempo SSD Pro in a Mac Pro 5,1 will cause the OS X boot manager to stop working, as in no drives will appear when you hold down the option key during startup. You pretty much have to choose a startup disk from System Preferences before you shut down/restart. I also confirmed this with Sonnet support who advised me to monitor their site for a firmware update (link here: http://www.sonnettech.com/support/kb/kb.php?cat=457&expand=&action=a13#a13).

I also had this problem with the OS X Boot Manager and the Tempo Pro when any bootable SSD was installed on the card (see my previous posts in this thread regarding this). Performing PRAM and SMC reset procedures had no effect. I am using a 2012 5,1 Mac Pro.

However, in the process of trying various configurations of drives, RAID-0 arrays, and PCIe cards ... suddenly the Boot Manager problem resolved itself and started working again. I have no idea what I did to cause this, and it is still working to this day. I have 2 bootable OS X drives in this Mac Pro, one is a RAID-0 SSD on the Tempo Pro card, and the other is a single SSD (now part of a DIY Fusion drive) located in one of the standard drive trays. I also have a bootable Windows SSD in the spare optical bay.


-howard

 

[TzunamiOSX]

I need some help ...

I installed a Sonnet Tempo SSD Pro in a new Mac Pro with 2 Crucial M4 512GB disks configured as RAID-0 and installed the current OS X on it. I also have the original 1TB disk in there with the same OS X installation on it. I was able to do the "Option" key on startup and see the bootable choices icons as expected.

I then added a Velocity 2 PCIe card with a Samsung 840 Pro on it and used WinClone to put a image of Windows 8 on it. I set the Startup Disk to the Windows installation and rebooted into Windows with no problems. I ran some Windows updates which rebooted with no issues.

However, now when I do the "Option" key startup to select the boot drive, all I get is a mouse pointer with no boot options. I have reinstalled both OS X images, and re-partitioned and formatted the Windows SSD with no changes to the boot options. I have done SMC and PRAM resets to no avail.

Any idea how to get my boot manager working properly again?



Thanks,
-howard

Exactly the same problem here, with Sonnet Tempo SSD, Caldigit USB+SATA, 680 GTX

Have the same Problem with only Sonnet and 680 GTX installed. Bootmenu comes when I start my external RAID pluged on the Caldigit.

 

[hfg]

Exactly the same problem here, with Sonnet Tempo SSD, Caldigit USB+SATA, 680 GTX

Have the same Problem with only Sonnet and 680 GTX installed. Bootmenu comes when I start my external RAID pluged on the Caldigit.

See my update post immediately above (#47) where the boot manager mysteriously started working again ... and continues to work to this day.

I have the same TempoPro SSD, Caldigit USB+SATA, and 680GTX running in my 2012 Mac Pro 5,1 12-core.

 

[Ino]

Revisiting the boot manager issue again, since I've been trying to diagnose an issue with my MP.

I've been getting some hard crashes where my whole system just stops responding. As in no beachball, no kernel panic, nothing in the console logs, no mouse movement, no keyboard input (can't force quit, brightness/volume/playback buttons don't work), time in menubar stops advancing, just a hard stop. Only thing that *is* working is the caps lock light on the keyboard still toggles on and off, and only thing left to do at that point is to hold down the power button on the MP to power off.

It happens pretty infrequently, about once in every 1-2 weeks. I'm suspecting some kind of hardware issue, but neither Apple Hardware Test (DVD that came with MP) or Apple Service Diagnostic (USB drive) will boot without the boot manager. Interestingly, I'm also unable to boot into the AHT or ASD even when I set either as the Startup Disk manually in System Preferences before I restart. Booting into these utilities usually hangs at a completely grey screen or with the Apple on the screen, and that's after giving it a good half hour+ of wait time.

Unfortunately I'm not as lucky as hfg in that my boot manager hasn't decided to mysteriously start working again.

I also reached out to Sonnet again about the boot manager but have not received a response.

Ideas and suggestions on how to get the boot manager working would be most welcome...

 

[3dworks]

Revisiting the boot manager issue again, since I've been trying to diagnose an issue with my MP.

I've been getting some hard crashes where my whole system just stops responding. As in no beachball, no kernel panic, nothing in the console logs, no mouse movement, no keyboard input (can't force quit, brightness/volume/playback buttons don't work), time in menubar stops advancing, just a hard stop. Only thing that *is* working is the caps lock light on the keyboard still toggles on and off, and only thing left to do at that point is to hold down the power button on the MP to power off.

It happens pretty infrequently, about once in every 1-2 weeks. I'm suspecting some kind of hardware issue, but neither Apple Hardware Test (DVD that came with MP) or Apple Service Diagnostic (USB drive) will boot without the boot manager. Interestingly, I'm also unable to boot into the AHT or ASD even when I set either as the Startup Disk manually in System Preferences before I restart. Booting into these utilities usually hangs at a completely grey screen or with the Apple on the screen, and that's after giving it a good half hour+ of wait time.

Unfortunately I'm not as lucky as hfg in that my boot manager hasn't decided to mysteriously start working again.

I also reached out to Sonnet again about the boot manager but have not received a response.

Ideas and suggestions on how to get the boot manager working would be most welcome...

i installed a tempo pro SSD based striped RAID boot recently into a mac pro 5,1 and i'm having the same issue with the machine becoming unresponsive. i can force this by running a heavy 3d rendering and at the same time opening up a few other applications using memory and boot volume in an intense way like photoshop or mail. after 5 - 7 hours i'm getting exactly the same symptoms as you described.

i tried to follow all the tips on this forum when installing the SSD volume. first of all, i updated firmware of the 2 OWC mercury 6G 120 drives involved to the latest one - same for the tempo card. then i put the two SSD's in 2 of the direct mac pro connections for drives to format and create the RAID. then i installed them back onto the tempo card and finally transferred all data of my working boot volume (this one one located on another single SSD and working perfectly) via carbon copy cloner with checksum verify on.

in every day use you will not get a hang soon, but when setting up a heavy work load scenario, as already described, the problem will appear in short time. no traces of this in console, as you described, really weird.

not dealing with boot manager issues as i'm using a 4G nvidia gtx 680 card (not the mac version) - which makes the boot process bypass volume selection anyway.

any tip how to resolve this problem? i'm gonna contact sonnet next week to see if this can be fixed, otherwise i will try to get the money back and buy into the OWC solution.

cheers

markus