Optimize 2009 Mac Pro for DP

[Elektroakoustika]

Hi everyone,

I have a 4,1->5,1 Mac Pro. I just did a CPU upgrade to make it a 12-Core 2.93GHZ. Here are the full specs:

- 12-Core 2.93GHZ
- macOS 10.12.5
- 32 GB (8x4GB sticks)
- nVidia GT640 1GB (flashed by MacVidCards.com)
- 32" BenQ 4K 60hz Monitor (running 1:1 pixels in full 4K (no scaling)
- MX300 512GB SSD as Boot Drive in regular SATA II port
- MX300 512GB SSD as a Sample Drive in regular SATA II port
- Transcend 480GB SSD as a Sample Drive in regular SATA II port
- Samsung 850 EVO 500GB SSD mounted on a PCIe OWC Accelsior S as my "fast" Sample Drive

I am working with several orchestral samples (the entire Berlin series, most of Spitfire's orchestral libraries, CSS, CineSamples stuff, etc). I have different sections of the orchestra on different SSD's. I use DP 9 with a virtual Vienna Ensemble Pro server running several instances of Kontakt.

So what do you think I should upgrade internally on the Mac? I don't want to pour a ton of money into it, so I'm trying to figure out the best bang for my buck. Here are my possible ideas (with some questions).

1. Upgrade RAM to 1333Mhz 48GB (6x8GB) to make most of the triple channel system. My question is how much of a change do others notice when full utilizing triple-channel?
2. Put in an NVMe SSD and use the driver found on MacVidCards.com. This would be used as a sample drive to improve performance on my projects.
3. Upgrade Graphics Card to something a little better for UI and to help smooth out the 4k experience (I have noticed occasional UI slow-down when running 4K). This is not at all bad right now and I don't really do a lot of graphics work. But I also don't want to spend a lot of money here (max $150). Was thinking of an nVidia 1050 with the Pascal Driver but a little worried about the stability/performance from others' stories.
4. USB 3.1 PCIe Card. Heard mixed things here. I don't want to interfere with my bluetooth. Anyone found a good card for cheap? I also already use a 3TB USB 3.0 Time Machine External HD.
5. Anything else?

With my CPU upgrade I don't have any issues CPU-wise. But I feel like I could use faster latency on the SSD's.

Thanks for your thoughts!

[mikehalloran]

...
2. Put in an NVMe SSD and use the driver found on MacVidCards.com. This would be used as a sample drive to improve performance on my projects...

Thanks for your thoughts!

Bad idea. You are dependent on third party support every time Apple updates the OS. Apple doesn't support NVMe on older Macs and has no plans to. This is a known problem.

It's ok if you're a hobbyist but if you make your living from this Mac, stick to what is known to work consistently.

[mikehalloran]

Upgrade RAM? Probably a good idea. Not enough can throttle performance. OTOH, if you have enough, more will not improve anything. When I went from 20G to 32G, it made a difference—any more would not (I'm not implying that 32G is enough for you as I don't use sample libraries to the extent that you do).

You complain about "sample latency" but your boot drive is not on the fastest bus. Your drives are all faster than SATA II — there's your bottleneck. You have a bunch of small SSDs for samples. That was a performance advantage on the G4 and ATA — SSDs and SATA made that a non-issue. Having the fastest sample drive in the universe can't help you if you booted from SATA II.

Max out that OWC Accelsior to 960G. Make it your boot and applications drive. If you have a good chunk of room, load some of your sample libraries up to 75% of the capacity.

Enable TRIM if you've not done so already sudo trimforce enable in Terminal.

If you have a spare PCIe slot, find a SATA III controller and run your other drives from it. This will let them run at max throughput. Even better, get another Accelsior 960. From your description, I suspect that everything will fit — if not, your lowest latency libraries should go onto a remaining SSD on an SATA bus.

Now the bad news. Although doing the above will improve overall performance, don't expect miracles.

[buzzsmith]

Following!


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[mikehalloran]

There are a number of ways to guesstimate if you have enough RAM. If a task gets slower without another explanation do one or both of the following:

a) Run sudo purge in Terminal. This frees up cached RAM but not as much as a reboot or b) Reboot.

If running the task again is now faster, it is likely that adding RAM will help.

[Elektroakoustika]

Thanks for the recommendations Mike!

I've got a question though and it may have to do with the way I phrased it or just simple ignorance on my part.

When I was talking about latency, I was talking about the latency for how fast Kontakt can direct-from-disk stream samples from my sample drives. From what I've read, regular SSD's running on any SATA ports don't have as good of a latency as faster NVMe drives or certain other SSD's Look at this graph for what I'm talking about: http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph10833/84521.png. I'm not talking about regular read/write speeds. So how would making my boot drive the fastest drive be beneficial to improve the speed in which Kontakt can stream those samples from a drive that contains those samples?

And yes relying on third party tools can be a gamble (still not opposed to it though). And I do have TRIM enabled on all the drives.

If I had more RAM, I would definitely use it. Before I did my processor upgrade, the CPU was my bottleneck for having so many instances of Kontakt open. Now that I have that taken care of, I could create larger templates without worrying about the CPU. I've heard read that, because of triple-channel RAM on the Mac Pro, using 6 sticks of RAM instead of 8 also helps the speed of the RAM (plus I'd be moving to 1333Mhz RAM). The performance may not be huge, but might help in certain situations.

The Accelsior 960 is cool, but also very expensive. But I'll agree that it is definitely a safer option than some of the others.

And trust me, I'm not expecting miracles. I will say though that upgrading the CPU's was one of the best things I've done to this computer. I had an 8-Core 2.26 before and this thing smokes those old CPU's. I'm just trying to optimize the system I have without breaking the bank.

Does anyone have any experience with a SATA III controller? I looked at a couple but they seem like a lot of separate parts that have to be put together just right to make it work.

Thanks again!

[mikehalloran]

That graph assumes a buss fast enough for it to matter. Streaming VIs is not the same as moving huge data files. You probably wouldn't notice much of a difference even if you went with that slow Crucial at the bottom of the pile—of course, you don't want that one.

There is no chance that NVMe is faster than the Acelsior on that machine. Apple does support NVMe on certain newer hardware. There are others who can weigh in on the problems.

If you want to keep costs down, make the Acelsior your Boot drive. I would still upgrade the SSD on it to 960.

[Elektroakoustika]

If you want to keep costs down, make the Acelsior your Boot drive. I would still upgrade the SSD on it to 960.

Can you still explain why using the Accelsior as a boot is better than having my heaviest sample libraries on it? Thanks.

[Elektroakoustika]

There is no chance that NVMe is faster than the Acelsior on that machine. Apple does support NVMe on certain newer hardware. There are others who can weigh in on the problems.
.

There are several people on other forums who are achieving 1500 MB/s using a NVMe drive in these Mac Pros. The Accelsior S caps out at SATA III speeds (max 600 MB/s)

[mikehalloran]

An SATA III controller is no big thing but it's easiest to use your SSDs outside the box. Otherwise, you are running internal cables—yikes! The Mac doesn't care if it's SATA (internal) or eSATA (external). You can get an inexpensive eSATA dock. To minimize clutter and additional docks, use a single 2T SSD instead of all of those half-T drives.

You do not need to do this all at once. During my transition, I moved everything to a 2T eSATA dock and ran everything from it. After a year, I moved it inside. Recently, I reconnected the eSATA dock and added another SSD.

[mikehalloran]

If you want to keep costs down, make the Acelsior your Boot drive. I would still upgrade the SSD on it to 960.

Can you still explain why using the Accelsior as a boot is better than having my heaviest sample libraries on it? Thanks.

I already did. SATA II is your bottleneck. All of your SSDs are faster and the one on the fastest buss can't stream to an app processed by a system on a slower buss any faster than that. You can't stream into an app any faster than that app can handle it.

Boot from that Acelsior running DP. Put Komplete on the same drive. That's the fastest way to run Kontakt.

Let me give you an extreme example. It is technically possible to load my VIs onto an SSD that can be read by my G4. How much faster does that make DP 5.13? Not a bit. Same reason — DP 5 is on an HHD on a EIDE (PATA) buss rated at 1/15th the speed of SATA, 1/30 SATA II, 1/60 SATA III. Now, if I booted from an SSD, DP 5 would run faster but streaming cannot. USB 2 and Firewire are actually faster than the EIDE buss. Like your Mac Pro, it is technically possible to bypass EIDE and access the full speed of the PCI buss — DP will still run faster but only those libraries inside on PCI could access DP on that new speed. So I reverse it and put the libraries on the PCI bus like you have but the system is on an EIDE drive. If that's all there is, the EDIE bus is the hurdle that must be jumped before DP 5 could do anything about it. BTW, PCI and PCIe busses ran at PCI 1 back then, much slower than PCI 2 introduced with the Mac Pro 3.1.

[zandurian]

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Me too - I plan on upgrading my 2009 soon but a little daunting for someone who is, let's say, A little challenged when it comes to hardware.


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[HCMarkus]

When I was talking about latency, I was talking about the latency for how fast Kontakt can direct-from-disk stream samples from my sample drives.

RAM is in the range of one or two orders of magnitude faster than the chips used in SSDs, be they SATA or PCIe attached. As such, having enough RAM and using it to the fullest are critical to system performance.

Take a look at your preferences for sample-based libraries and maximize the amount of RAM used to pre-load samples. This will allow your system to serve samples more efficiently. As explained at https://impactsoundworks.com/optimizing ... low-part-2:

By default, Kontakt loads only a small portion of each sample into RAM. The rest is kept on the hard drive and streamed via “DFD” (direct-from-disk). DFD settings can be changed to adjust this ratio. More memory will allow you to (a) load more samples simultaneously, and/or (b) conserve CPU by loading more of the sample into RAM! In fact, with enough RAM (16, 32, 64gb or more) it is even possible to disable DFD entirely for a big performance gain.

When we were running 32 bit systems, it was advantageous to preload the smallest possible portion of samples to conserve precious RAM space. Now, at 64 bits (and assuming adequate RAM), we are best served by maximizing preload and minimizing drive calls.