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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Rocket and R380

Stephen Lovett

Stephen Lovett

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Hi,

Like a number of you out there, I too am using an Atto R380 based raid array on my edit machine, and it's currently housed in the second 16x PCIe slot of a current generation MacPro.

My Rocket showed today, and I'm puzzling through the best reallocation of cards and equipment between the various MacPros.

It sucks to put that R380 in a 4x slot, but it looks like that's my only choice, for those of you using an R380 based system that moved it a 4x slot how bad was the performance hit, and has it been stable. (Atto's manual states it needs an 8x slot)

Don't get me started on PCIe connectivity on the Mac... grump grump.

Thanks in advance,

Steve
 
Steve,

Dealing with R3D and Prores4444, DPX and uncompressed 10-bit, R380 in the x4 slot won't really be bad. If you are used to fast copying on the finder and stuff, then you have to get used to a little.

I actually have Red Rocket connected to Mac Book Pro via Magma and reading and converting through 1gb ethernet storage by SmallTree. This way my Mac Pros can stay what they are and my MacPros are connected via 10gb Ethernet so it can even playback 10-bit uncompressed.
 
I get with the R380 installed in a 4x slot connected to a fibrenetix pixi extreme about 500MB/s sustained data rate... thats enough for the moment.... :)
 
Ughhh

Ughhh

Thanks folks,

I did the install this morning and my experience is about the same as Rainer's.

I'm seeing about 500MBs write and 600 MBs read :-(

That's down about 200MBs.

That sucks.

I hope the next MacPro provides for better PCIe speeds.

Thanks again,

Steve
 
R380 works just fine in a 4X slot. But it does restrict bandwidth to the card to a max 1.1GB/s or so, which in turn means lower real-world numbers. Stephen is spot on with that.

you could always put the Rocket in a 4X slot, but then you may run into a bottleneck when transcoding 4K footage and even more so later on with 5K.

I'm really surprised that RED didn't make the Rocket a PCI-E 2.0 compliant card. Then it could have run at full speed in a 2.0 4X.

ATTO has new PCI-E 2.0 RAID controllers coming out, but they have been long delayed for some reason. I'm not sure what the delay is, their 6xx series PCI-E 2.0 6Gbps HBAs are just plain awesome.

I guess you could try it with the Rocket in a 4X slot and run some benchmark tests, then try it with the Rocket in the 16X slot and run benchmarks that way. If your video card is a single slot-width card, you could always place it in one of the 4X slots and leave your ATTO card and Rocket in the two 16X slots...

On the current Intel chipset, there are 40 PCI-E lanes to divide up. Apple chose to give us 4 slots, 2 X16 and 2 X4. This is great for most configurations, but it would be nice if we had the ability to configure lane assignments as we did with the '06 Mac Pros. Then we could give ourselves on 16X slot and three 8X if we wanted.
 
stephen, 500MB/s I can see with the AJA benchmark test with very small spikes. 2k DPXs playback fine in realtime...

there is one PCI slot missing anyway in the macpros.... would be great to have one more in and if it is a single link to put a tempo esata card in. i also dont want to put in a double height graphics card below the rocket. think the graphic card could produce a lot of heat and the fan of it is very close then to the rocket.... and then there is the thing that the blanket slot is used.... more room for extension cards in the macpros....
 
Simon Blackledge said:
which models (macpro) up did we get 2 16's and 2 4x's?
Click to expand...

The 2008 and 2009 Mac Pros have this configuration. In the '08 Pros, the X16 slots are PCI-E 2.0 and the X4 slots are v1.1 compliant. All 4 slots are v2.0 compliant in the '09 Mac Pros. In my last post, I was pretty much discussing slot configurations from the perspective of using an '09 Mac Pro.

Rainer,

Nothing wrong with placing a double height graphics card below the Rocket. Most of them manage heat very well as they have their own air circulation channel via the use of the extended slot. My RAID and Kona cards generate far more internal heat in the case than the GTX285 or ATI 4870 cards do. And lots of options for running the Rocket's two little mini coax SDI cables out of the Mac Pro without wasting that precious extension slot on them.

IMO, Apple should have used a dual north-bridge implementation for a secondary PCI-E bus. Some PC workstation and server boards are doing this. Then they could have given us 80 lanes divided across maybe 6 slots -- Four X16 and two X8 would have been mighty sexy.

The number of PCI-E slots is by far the biggest, most often-voiced complaint over the Mac Pro systems on just about every pro user forum of any kind. Hopefully Apple listens, but somehow I doubt they will.
 
If heat circulation is not blown to the rocket card and going out of the blanket slot, then it would be an option to drill this two holes for the rocket sdi connectors into the back side. Jeff, probably I'm asking you as hundreds of redusers here did before, but would you suggest an ATI or Nvidia doubleslot card?

thx rainer
 
Tony Bacak said:
kaku ito
please let me know what 10gb ethernet you use on your
mac pro.
thank you
tony
Click to expand...

Hello Tony,

It's Small Tree's GraniteSTOR ST with 2 10gb Ethernet configuration and 1gb Ethernet connections via switch.
 
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