PCIe SSD on Mac Pro 1.1 (First Gen) ... faster than SATA SSD?

This is very good information. Thank you!

I was planning on getting the DT-120 for my Mac Pro 5,1 and I have another 1,1 that I want to upgrade and give a friend as a gift and was wondering if the same card would work for the 1,1.

The performance is indeed quite nice.

your system does not benefit on any system much at all from SATA III, and booting from a PCIe SSD is hard to come by and not supported.

PCIe SSD are great for : scratch, graphic libraries like Aperture and iPhoto or Lightroom

Your 8x PCIe slot is what I use in mine, just not for system.

Samsung 840 EVO 120GB $89 or 250GB $160 will make booting and loading apps fast and best $100 investment I ever spent.

While it's not clear if this is the PCIe SSD setup you're using, OWC gives some compatibility info on how their card will perform in various Mac Pro's and the 1,1 is at a definite disadvantage.

A system on PCIe in 1,1 as I said will not work.

Speed that YOU can see? no. benchmarks are meaningless, so even if it looks and tests "faster" for booting system, no real world improvement.

SATA II - again, is fine for the system.

Yes Apple's SATA II is pitiful and limited - not even "idenpendent" 300MB/sec PER drive bay but instead as all motherboards, they share a single controller, one which offers less than 800MB/sec total. Luckily you have two more SATA II ports.

So you won't ever get more than 275MB/sec reads from an SSD, meaning you won't see the 450MB/sec if using a SATA III 6G controller, it just does not seem to matter one iota in real world.

PCIe does matter when used for scratch or data.

I already said and pointed to Samsung 840s. And for audio, a Sonnet Tempo PRO and one or two 500-750-1000GB SSD would do very very well. Sonnet does not support their cheaper card in Mac Pro 1,1. And if 500GB is enough for your audio, then go iwth it. I don't think you need two or to do an array, you could. Or you could use a 2nd SSD for something else.

The nice thing is the Tempo allows you to have your system on one of the 4 drive bays, or one of the two ODD ports.

All hard drives in Mac Pro even thru 2012 all share SATA controller bandwidth. And all are SATA II. One reason also for separating system and data on different drives.

RE: PCIe Bus speed in Bytes/sec

--courtesy netkas.org

I think OWC says their card is an x2 card.

Hello Apple community,

Maybe someone experienced the same issue with PCIe configuration on MAC PRO's 1.1.

I got MAC PRO 1.1 with 2 x Quad-core x5355 and updated firmware to 2.1, and I try to install PCIe controller Apricorn Velocity 2x Duo with 2 SATA SSD's. The speed of both SSD's is around 160 MB/s.

My problem is: MAC PRO is selecting speed for PCIe only as x1 but card is x2.

I manually changed in Expansion utility configuration for slot x4, but I still see only x1 speed in System profile.

Is anyway to reset PCIe configuration and configured again for MAC PRO.

Thanks

Dear stas_xpulse:

I'd rather install your PCIe controller card on the top slot (slot 4) of your MacPro1,1, which is x8 by default.

Anyway, you can change your PCIe lane allocation using the application /System/Library/CoreServices/Expansion Slot Utility.

Here's a picture of this application:

However, I must say that it is known and proven that some PCIe controller cards (like some OWC cards) cannot be configured either way (no more than x1, no matter where you install it or what you tell the Expansion Slot Utility, due to the fact that we have PCIe 1.0).

In addition, and only FYI, I tell you that your current card "Velocity Duo x2" does not support booting on a MacPro1,1 due to the EFI32 issue.

After a bit of further research (and my apologies for posting so many times), I bring new information to this issue:

- Those "some PCIe controller cards" that I referred to in my previous post are more cards than we think. Those cards have problems when "negotiating" x2 lanes with the PCIe 1.0 MacPros.

- Therefore, the only way to make them run at more than x1 is by installing them on the slots 1 or 2 (neither 3 nor 4 will work) and choosing a lane allocation of x8 and x8 for those slots (options 3 and 4 of the utility).

- This obviously means that we can't use our gfx card in x16 mode anymore.

BUT

- There are certain cards that are branded as "able" to negotiate those necessary lanes with any slot of the MacPros.

- Unfortunatelly, not all manufacturers provide us with such detailed information.

I still don't know whether a x4 card would work on a 4-slot-x4/x8 configuration. Anyone?

Thank you TheTraveller9 for your explanation. Looks like is there is no workaround to get more than 1x for pcie cards on Mac Pro 1.1

Sure. I actually think that a x4 PCIe card would work great in our MacPro1,1, though it'd be almost impossible to boot from it.

The problem lies in the x2 feature of your card (and most cards, I'm afraid). It MUST be x4 or just work as an x1 card.

In my opinion, any x1 card or any card working as an x1 card is not worth it (see the speed rate table posted above by Grant Bennet-Alder).

I'm on the same ship, man. Looking for the right PCIe card. I've found some (x4), but I'm still looking for a bootable one.

thetraveller9 wrote:

Sure. I actually think that a x4 PCIe card would work great in our MacPro1,1, though it'd be almost impossible to boot from it.

The problem lies in the x2 feature of your card (and most cards, I'm afraid). It MUST be x4 or just work as an x1 card.

In my opinion, any x1 card or any card working as an x1 card is not worth it (see the speed rate table posted above by Grant Bennet-Alder).

I'm on the same ship, man. Looking for the right PCIe card. I've found some (x4), but I'm still looking for a bootable one.

I think I have what you need:

• Lycom DT-120 M.2 PCIE - Supports PCIE 1.x, 2.x and 3.x and bootable on Mac Pro 1.1 and 2.1
• Samsung XP941 - works with the Lycom adapter on the old Mac Pros and fairly speedy

I have an old Mac Pro 1.1 that I swapped Xeons and Wifi/Bluetooth card / Vid Card updated so still quite the workhorse.

I was able to get the above combo to work as the boot drive for my setup and though hampered by the PCI 1.1 bus, the x4 SSD Performance is nothing to sneeze at.

The only issue (if you can call it that) is that the system thinks the PCIE/SSD combo is an External Drive rather than an Internal one.

As you can see from the screenshot it sits in Slot-4, runs at x4, bootable, and gives me a respectable 524.9MBs / 678.5 MBs:

(direct link to larger image)

If you want the PCle SSD to show as internal see:

PCIe SSD Showing as External Drive?

lllaass wrote:

If you want the PCle SSD to show as internal see:

PCIe SSD Showing as External Drive?

It's a minor inconvenience that's somewhat alleviated with custom icons and not worth reducing security by disabling SIP for unsigned kernel extensions IMHO. The only other thing gained from doing it that way would be switching the list it fits under and removal of the eject button, but all drives internal or external are unmountable anyway.