PCIe SSD drive is VERY fast in Mac Pro

[goldensteve808]

Hi All,

I have been experimenting with disks in a Mac Pro, and found the results v interesting hence I thought I would share.

TL;DR PCIe SSD is 4x faster than a SATA connected SSD, and 12x faster than a regular hard drive.

Details below.

Mac Disk Experiments in 12-Core 5,1

256Gb SSD Angelbird (In chassis SATA slot 1)
1Tb Western Digital Black (In chassis SATA slot 2)
2x Seagate Barracuda 7200rpm in software RAID 0 (In chassis SATA slots 3+4)
Kingston HyperX Predator in PCIe slot 2 (x16)

Test Results:

Write > Read (Mb/s)

258 > 271
103 > 104
140 > 150
644 > 1295

[Timeline]

How about the Kingston HyperX Predator
SSD in the chassis?

[goldensteve808]

(Hoping it's not only me that finds this sort of thing interesting and useful!)

I switched the PCIe card into an 8-Core Mac Pro 3,1 that is temporarily not deployed, and has a Seagate Constellation 1Tb drive on the SATA bus. This actually gave me 2 interesting results:

1. The Predator is just as fast in the older MacPro - 644 and 1307 MB/s on the screen as I type this.
2. The Seagate Constellation is notably faster than my other drives, coming in at about 180/180 MB/s

[goldensteve808]

How about the Kingston HyperX Predator
SSD in the chassis?

Hi Timeline,

There isn't a way of doing that (that I know of anyway). The Predator that I have is in the M.2 interface format, and it has an adaptor card (a shape adaptor really) that lets you plug it into a regular PCIe slot. I do not believe that a SATA controller can get the data onto the bus as fast.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/HyperX-Predator ... yperx+pcie

[HCMarkus]

Raw numbers (specific test unknown) are interesting, but how does the user experience while working with DP compare?

PS: Barefeats has been doing this stuff regularly…

http://barefeats.com/hard203.html
http://barefeats.com/hard200.html
http://barefeats.com/hard183.html

I like this older one, too:

http://barefeats.com/tube16.html

[mikehalloran]

The Angelbird is a mediocre performer in most tests but, since the Mac Pro SATA bus is 3G SATA II, brand shouldn't matter – any fresh SSD should perform the same. The Angelbird does fool the OS into thinking it's an Apple SSD so Trim is enabled by default which is good and, for many, justifies the premium price.

It would be interesting to see the performance of that same drive connected via eSATA to a PCIe card that supports SATA III. I'm not suggesting you spend money on something you don't need – just saying that it would be interesting.

[Michael Canavan]

PCIe is the way to go for sure.
The two fastest solutions for SSDs currently are the Intel 1.2TB PCIe card and the Samsung SM941 512GB M.2 card. New Egg has the Samsung currently for $399, significantly cheaper than the $1200 for the Intel. The 951 is reported to hits speeds of 1600mbs, blisteringly fast!

Compare that to the Mac Pros internal SATA at 300mbs!
It's a great time to like huge sample libraries for sure!

[Michael Canavan]

FYI the precursor Samsung XP941 in my Mac Pro hits or exceeds its 1100mbs write speed so I'm confident the 951is at least close to 1600!

[Steve Steele]

I'm doing another 2009 - 2010 MacPro CPU swap (this time I'm filming it), and I'm installing a Kingston HyperX Predator PCIe SSD. I plan on testing with synthetic as well as real-world (DP and VEP!) benchmarks. Look for it sometime early September.

Here's my old video, although it's an after-the-fact images with commentary video.

https://youtu.be/6KXoYAHrtWQ

That MP has an OWC Accelsior, but I fully expect the HyperX Predator PCIe SSD to blow it away!

Steve