I've never heard of anything that severe in the articles discussing this. Source?
Edit: I found one, Intel X25 is in that ballpark for write, that's pretty bad, worse than I thought it was. Still nowhere near the diagrams on OWC's site.
If you intend to fill your drive once, and then just use it for reads, as with a drive devoted to music or video, that works great. Otherwise, it's a problem.
But drives with Sandforce controllers have less of a problem with this. Apple does have some trim in the OS now, but it doesn't work. Hopefully updates with the new computers will include trim.
I'm surprised the 5870 option is not the "Eyefinity-6" edition card. I had figured Apple would use the one with six mini-DisplayPorts.
Apple doesn't work that way. They figure pros will use two monitors, and that's what they will supply. The Eyefinity is mostly for crazed gamers. I haven't found much about it on professional sites, but plenty on gamer sites. How many gamers do you think would buy a Mac Pro because of that board?
FW 3200 isn't yet available, and won't be until the end of the year, or thereabouts.
SATA 3 is nice, but Apple has four SATA busses inside, and that's more than enough. The only thing that SATA3 is good for now is RAID from one E-SATA 3 port, where you're using port multiplexing. Look it up.
While USB 3 is out, there isn't much of anything available for it now, and won't be for some time. You can always add a board for $30 or so if you really need it.
What we are running into is transfer times for large video projects are painful. Sometimes we get a drive from the client and they want to start working right away. We won't work off of a client drive (not safe if something goes wrong) so the copying begins. Even if they wait until later in the day we still spend a lot of time copying files around. Once to my archive server where I stage files before writing to LTO4 for safety. Then to the system that is going to be doing the work. Maybe even to another system if more than one editor or designer needs the media. We got a drive for some Nikon work the other day and it was almost 600 gigs of material.
eSATA would be great, but some of my systems don't have room for an eSATA extender or host card. Plus adding unproven cards to a system with a Kona 3 and a Fibre Channel card makes me nervous. I don't like experimenting with a profit center. I would have been nice to see one of the faster bus interfaces on this batch of Mac Pros.
What we are running into is transfer times for large video projects are painful. Sometimes we get a drive from the client and they want to start working right away. We won't work off of a client drive (not safe if something goes wrong) so the copying begins. Even if they wait until later in the day we still spend a lot of time copying files around. Once to my archive server where I stage files before writing to LTO4 for safety. Then to the system that is going to be doing the work. Maybe even to another system if more than one editor or designer needs the media. We got a drive for some Nikon work the other day and it was almost 600 gigs of material.
eSATA would be great, but some of my systems don't have room for an eSATA extender or host card. Plus adding unproven cards to a system with a Kona 3 and a Fibre Channel card makes me nervous. I don't like experimenting with a profit center. I would have been nice to see one of the faster bus interfaces on this batch of Mac Pros.
I understand your problems as I had a commercial photo lab here in NYC for many years, and we did a fair amount of video projects as well.
But you can buy E-SATA 3 cards now. Yes, I did read what you said, but still... I bought a NewerTech MAXpower 2 port Raid card recently for $79 from OWC, here:
This works very well. If you don't need Raid, then the less expensive model might be exactly what you need, if you have the slot, because it's natively supported, and so needs no driver. The system sees it the same way it sees Apple's own SATA slots, though it's coming from an Express slot of course, and labels it as what it is. It's also E-SATA 3.
On the other hand, if you're not needing all four internal drives, or you don't need the second optical slot, there are adapters to bring some out through the rear with an adapter.
I've never heard of anything that severe in the articles discussing this. Source?
Edit: I found one, Intel X25 is in that ballpark for write, that's pretty bad, worse than I thought it was. Still nowhere near the diagrams on OWC's site.
If you go with an iMac with an HDD and SSD you can easily set it so your OS is on the SSD and your User accounts are on the HDD. This is how I have my MBP set up and it's been working great. Also, I have yet to noticed any drop in performance from SSD.
Quote:
Originally Posted by melgross
I'm not going to look up articles up now, but you can find them on Anandtech, Diglloyd, and others. Without trim, writes drop to HDD levels.
As I recall it was still much faster than any HDD, even Velociraptors, but was severely crippled compared to it's original state.
If you go with an iMac with an HDD and SSD you can easily set it so your OS is on the SSD and your User accounts are on the HDD. This is how I have my MBP set up and it's been working great. Also, I have yet to noticed any drop in performance from SSD.
If you don't update programs, the OS, or a million other things that the OS itself isn't updating constantly, then you'l be fine. But I'll bet your speed is below what it started with, but that you just haven't noticed yet. At some point, you will.
Quote:
As I recall it was still much faster than any HDD, even Velociraptors, but was severely crippled compared to it's original state.
Most drop to write speeds that are lower than other fast HDDs.
But, you know, most people don't realize at what speeds their machine is running. If you cut the speed down by half, they still wouldn't notice.
If you don't update programs, the OS, or a million other things that the OS itself isn't updating constantly, then you'l be fine. But I'll bet your speed is below what it started with, but that you just haven't noticed yet. At some point, you will.
Most drop to write speeds that are lower than other fast HDDs.
But, you know, most people don't realize at what speeds their machine is running. If you cut the speed down by half, they still wouldn't notice.
I'll see if I still have my benchmarks on file from when I installed it. If I do I'll run them again and post the data.
Unless you have a drive like the OWC Mercury Extreme that has extra space and built-in garbage collection that is OS independent.
I had an original Intel 80 GB SSD before the whole no free-flash cell = dismal write performance thing was well understood, and experienced it myself. I have had my OWC SSD for almost six months and it's performed flawlessly - no speed issues and no need for TRIM.
Not that it wouldn't be nice to not have to pay for extra space that I will hopefully be able to reclaim via a firmware update if OSX ever supports TRIM
If you don't update programs, the OS, or a million other things that the OS itself isn't updating constantly, then you'l be fine. But I'll bet your speed is below what it started with, but that you just haven't noticed yet. At some point, you will.
Most drop to write speeds that are lower than other fast HDDs.
But, you know, most people don't realize at what speeds their machine is running. If you cut the speed down by half, they still wouldn't notice.
The first two are from May 5th after I installed my 80GB MLC Intel X25 and 500GB @7200RPM WD HDD. The next two are from just prior to this posting. All tests use the same version of Xbench, but the newer tests have 10.6.4 installed.
Code:
System Versiont10.6.3 (10D2125)
Physical RAMt4096 MB
ModeltMacBookPro7,1
Drive TypetINTEL SSDSA2M080G2GC
Sequential
Uncached Write 83.99 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 77.93 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read27.17 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read195.13 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random
Uncached Write73.79 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write80.58 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read10.66 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read170.63 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Drive TypetST9500420AS
Sequential
Uncached Write78.70 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write78.73 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read17.62 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read82.58 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random30.61
Uncached Write1.02 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write44.35 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read0.57 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read26.06 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Code:
System Versiont10.6.4 (10F569)
Physical RAMt4096 MB
ModeltMacBookPro7,1
Drive TypetINTEL SSDSA2M080G2GC
Sequential
Uncached Write88.01 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write78.29 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read29.80 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read201.82 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random
Uncached Write44.21 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write53.77 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read11.69 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read177.44 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Drive TypetST9500420AS
Sequential
Uncached Write78.62 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write69.18 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read18.02 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read81.78 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random
Uncached Write0.70 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write38.97 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read0.28 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read15.10 MB/sec [256K blocks]
After 3 months of heavy useas my only PC there is certainly an effect on Random Writes but nothing that even comes close to making me regret my decision.
As Apple moves to SSD's this needs to be addressed. TRIM would be nice to have in the next upgrade in OS X, but I understand that this might not be of help to those who have already made the commitment to SSD in the MBA and MBP's using Apple's supplied SSD's--bummer
Comments
I've never heard of anything that severe in the articles discussing this. Source?
Edit: I found one, Intel X25 is in that ballpark, that's pretty bad.
I'm not going to look up articles up now, but you can find them on Anandtech, Diglloyd, and others. Without trim, writes drop to HDD levels.
I've never heard of anything that severe in the articles discussing this. Source?
Edit: I found one, Intel X25 is in that ballpark for write, that's pretty bad, worse than I thought it was. Still nowhere near the diagrams on OWC's site.
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/sto...ce-and-trim/13
If you intend to fill your drive once, and then just use it for reads, as with a drive devoted to music or video, that works great. Otherwise, it's a problem.
But drives with Sandforce controllers have less of a problem with this. Apple does have some trim in the OS now, but it doesn't work. Hopefully updates with the new computers will include trim.
I'm surprised the 5870 option is not the "Eyefinity-6" edition card. I had figured Apple would use the one with six mini-DisplayPorts.
Apple doesn't work that way. They figure pros will use two monitors, and that's what they will supply. The Eyefinity is mostly for crazed gamers. I haven't found much about it on professional sites, but plenty on gamer sites. How many gamers do you think would buy a Mac Pro because of that board?
FW 3200 isn't yet available, and won't be until the end of the year, or thereabouts.
SATA 3 is nice, but Apple has four SATA busses inside, and that's more than enough. The only thing that SATA3 is good for now is RAID from one E-SATA 3 port, where you're using port multiplexing. Look it up.
While USB 3 is out, there isn't much of anything available for it now, and won't be for some time. You can always add a board for $30 or so if you really need it.
What we are running into is transfer times for large video projects are painful. Sometimes we get a drive from the client and they want to start working right away. We won't work off of a client drive (not safe if something goes wrong) so the copying begins. Even if they wait until later in the day we still spend a lot of time copying files around. Once to my archive server where I stage files before writing to LTO4 for safety. Then to the system that is going to be doing the work. Maybe even to another system if more than one editor or designer needs the media. We got a drive for some Nikon work the other day and it was almost 600 gigs of material.
eSATA would be great, but some of my systems don't have room for an eSATA extender or host card. Plus adding unproven cards to a system with a Kona 3 and a Fibre Channel card makes me nervous. I don't like experimenting with a profit center. I would have been nice to see one of the faster bus interfaces on this batch of Mac Pros.
What we are running into is transfer times for large video projects are painful. Sometimes we get a drive from the client and they want to start working right away. We won't work off of a client drive (not safe if something goes wrong) so the copying begins. Even if they wait until later in the day we still spend a lot of time copying files around. Once to my archive server where I stage files before writing to LTO4 for safety. Then to the system that is going to be doing the work. Maybe even to another system if more than one editor or designer needs the media. We got a drive for some Nikon work the other day and it was almost 600 gigs of material.
eSATA would be great, but some of my systems don't have room for an eSATA extender or host card. Plus adding unproven cards to a system with a Kona 3 and a Fibre Channel card makes me nervous. I don't like experimenting with a profit center. I would have been nice to see one of the faster bus interfaces on this batch of Mac Pros.
I understand your problems as I had a commercial photo lab here in NYC for many years, and we did a fair amount of video projects as well.
But you can buy E-SATA 3 cards now. Yes, I did read what you said, but still... I bought a NewerTech MAXpower 2 port Raid card recently for $79 from OWC, here:
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Newer...gy/MXPCIE6GRS/
This works very well. If you don't need Raid, then the less expensive model might be exactly what you need, if you have the slot, because it's natively supported, and so needs no driver. The system sees it the same way it sees Apple's own SATA slots, though it's coming from an Express slot of course, and labels it as what it is. It's also E-SATA 3.
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Newer...gy/MXPCIE6GS2/
On the other hand, if you're not needing all four internal drives, or you don't need the second optical slot, there are adapters to bring some out through the rear with an adapter.
I've never heard of anything that severe in the articles discussing this. Source?
Edit: I found one, Intel X25 is in that ballpark for write, that's pretty bad, worse than I thought it was. Still nowhere near the diagrams on OWC's site.
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/sto...ce-and-trim/13
If you go with an iMac with an HDD and SSD you can easily set it so your OS is on the SSD and your User accounts are on the HDD. This is how I have my MBP set up and it's been working great. Also, I have yet to noticed any drop in performance from SSD.
I'm not going to look up articles up now, but you can find them on Anandtech, Diglloyd, and others. Without trim, writes drop to HDD levels.
As I recall it was still much faster than any HDD, even Velociraptors, but was severely crippled compared to it's original state.
If you go with an iMac with an HDD and SSD you can easily set it so your OS is on the SSD and your User accounts are on the HDD. This is how I have my MBP set up and it's been working great. Also, I have yet to noticed any drop in performance from SSD.
If you don't update programs, the OS, or a million other things that the OS itself isn't updating constantly, then you'l be fine. But I'll bet your speed is below what it started with, but that you just haven't noticed yet. At some point, you will.
As I recall it was still much faster than any HDD, even Velociraptors, but was severely crippled compared to it's original state.
Most drop to write speeds that are lower than other fast HDDs.
But, you know, most people don't realize at what speeds their machine is running. If you cut the speed down by half, they still wouldn't notice.
Seems like a speed bump for entry level mac pro. Don't need SSD since e first time.
OF NOTE DUDE THE SSD is always ON
AND all hard spinning drives do die
SSD don't die because no moving parts
i think
9
OF NOTE DUDE THE SSD is always ON
AND all hard spinning drives do die
SSD don't die because no moving parts
i think
9
So far, SSDs have had a higher failure rate than HDDs.
Maybe the high end laptops are closing in on the desk tops
Maybe in the future 3 mini's with one as a server will replace these
low end MB DESK TOPS desk tops .
??WHAT is e-sata ??
9
So far, SSDs have had a higher failure rate than HDDs.
WOW shut my mouth .
I tote the SSD to all my apple minion who think i know what i am talking about .
w0w
9
If you don't update programs, the OS, or a million other things that the OS itself isn't updating constantly, then you'l be fine. But I'll bet your speed is below what it started with, but that you just haven't noticed yet. At some point, you will.
Most drop to write speeds that are lower than other fast HDDs.
But, you know, most people don't realize at what speeds their machine is running. If you cut the speed down by half, they still wouldn't notice.
I'll see if I still have my benchmarks on file from when I installed it. If I do I'll run them again and post the data.
However Mac support for third party SSDs is incomplete at present (no TRIM...or have they added that now?)
OWC Mercury Extreme. No TRIM support needed to maintain top performance).
and people have reported being unable to install the OS directly to the SSD (clone from the HD instead).
Huh? That makes no sense at all. You can install or clone - I've done both.
Without trim, writes drop to HDD levels.
Unless you have a drive like the OWC Mercury Extreme that has extra space and built-in garbage collection that is OS independent.
I had an original Intel 80 GB SSD before the whole no free-flash cell = dismal write performance thing was well understood, and experienced it myself. I have had my OWC SSD for almost six months and it's performed flawlessly - no speed issues and no need for TRIM.
Not that it wouldn't be nice to not have to pay for extra space that I will hopefully be able to reclaim via a firmware update if OSX ever supports TRIM
If you don't update programs, the OS, or a million other things that the OS itself isn't updating constantly, then you'l be fine. But I'll bet your speed is below what it started with, but that you just haven't noticed yet. At some point, you will.
Most drop to write speeds that are lower than other fast HDDs.
But, you know, most people don't realize at what speeds their machine is running. If you cut the speed down by half, they still wouldn't notice.
The first two are from May 5th after I installed my 80GB MLC Intel X25 and 500GB @7200RPM WD HDD. The next two are from just prior to this posting. All tests use the same version of Xbench, but the newer tests have 10.6.4 installed.
System Version
Physical RAM
Model
Drive Type
Sequential
Uncached Write 83.99 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 77.93 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read27.17 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read195.13 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random
Uncached Write73.79 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write80.58 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read10.66 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read170.63 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Drive Type
Sequential
Uncached Write78.70 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write78.73 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read17.62 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read82.58 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random30.61
Uncached Write1.02 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write44.35 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read0.57 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read26.06 MB/sec [256K blocks]
System Version
Physical RAM
Model
Drive Type
Sequential
Uncached Write88.01 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write78.29 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read29.80 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read201.82 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random
Uncached Write44.21 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write53.77 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read11.69 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read177.44 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Drive Type
Sequential
Uncached Write78.62 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write69.18 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read18.02 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read81.78 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random
Uncached Write0.70 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write38.97 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read0.28 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read15.10 MB/sec [256K blocks]
After 3 months of heavy useas my only PC there is certainly an effect on Random Writes but nothing that even comes close to making me regret my decision.
That's one hell of a price increase.
We thinketh it's tine for osx86 a 6 core and for half the price.
$5000 for 12 cores??? The ProSumer mRket is tripple the the pro market yet Apple continues tonavoid this segment.
More like a 75% drop in write speed.
As Apple moves to SSD's this needs to be addressed. TRIM would be nice to have in the next upgrade in OS X, but I understand that this might not be of help to those who have already made the commitment to SSD in the MBA and MBP's using Apple's supplied SSD's--bummer