Anybody have the Mercury Accelsior_E2?

xWhiplash said:

Since we won't be getting a upgrade using the same old case design, I want to get some SATA 3 like drives in my system. For storage, I am fine with using the SATA 2.

Has anybody used the Accelsior from OWC? I feel like my SSD is a bit slow and sluggish in OS X. It is the same model I have for Windows 8, and it performs MUCH better in Windows 8 than it does in OS X.

Here is the drive: http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/PCIe/OWC/Mercury_Accelsior/RAID

I would like to hear some thoughts for those that have used this (if anyone has).

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OTHER WORLD COMPUTING said:

The Accelsior_E2 utilizes the PCIe slot (the fastest data interface available) in Mac Pros and PC towers to deliver blistering performance up to 820MB/s in PCs and up to 688MB/s in Mac Pro. That's over 2x faster than a SSD equipped Mac Pro 3Gb/s drive bay, and even faster than 6Gb/s drive speeds.

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I contacted OWC via online chat and asked why it's faster on a PC than a MAC. They told me that the PC speed is based on PCIe 3.0 and Mac speed is based on PCIe 2.0. If you are running WIN8 on the same physical machine as OSX, I would think they would run at the same speed. Perhaps it has something to do with the way the kernel addresses the PCIe buss.

It is annoying none the less.

xWhiplash said:

I want to get some SATA 3 like drives in my system.

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What is a SATA 3 like drive? A drive is either SATA 3 or it isn't.

crjackson2134 said:

They told me that the PC speed is based on PCIe 3.0 and Mac speed is based on PCIe 2.0. If you are running WIN8 on the same physical machine as OSX, I would think they would run at the same speed. Perhaps it has something to do with the way the kernel addresses the PCIe buss.

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It isn't the kernel. It is primary because the Mac Pro is running 2009 era CPU+chipset. It can't do PCI-e 3.0 even if it wanted to.

On the other hand there are gobs of Core iX v2 (Ivy Bridge) boxes out there with PCI-e slots in them that do have PCI-e v3.0. Also a not so insignificant number of boxes that have Xeon E5 v1 (Sandy Bridge ) workstations out there have about 3 times as many PCI-e v3.0 lanes in them that work better too.


New Mac Pro ..... zero exported PCI-e v3.0 lanes. ( external Thunderbolt PCI-e expander boxes will have same limitation PCI-e v2.0 )


Hopefully the internal PCI-e SSD can latch onto some.

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brand said:

What is a SATA 3 like drive? A drive is either SATA 3 or it isn't.

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Since it is a PCI-e card it doesn't necessary need to use SATA. Just needs to present at SATA 6G/s ( i.e., III / 3 ) speeds or better.

two SATA 3Gb/s in raid 0 could also approximate that.

A SATA 6Gb/s drive certainly could.