Sonnet Tempo Vs. Apricorn Velocity DUO X2

rantingrich · Oct 3, 2014

Sonnet Tempo SSD PCIe card vs Apricorn Velocity DUO X2

I have been doing some reading on both of these cards and while they both have high reviews both have a small amount of very opinionated detractors.

I like to read reviews of products on Amazon and think its one of the best places to go for honest unbiased review.

What I want is a BOOTABLE card to put my Mercury EXTREME 6G in, in my MAC PRO 5,1 running 10.9.

While most tell me the Sonnet is plug and go, some have suggested that this is not true that one must first update the firmware associated with the sonnet card.

Any advice pro or con on either of both is appreciated!

crjackson2134 · Oct 3, 2014

Based on everythig I've read, I would get the Velocty Duo X2. I have the Solo X2 and it's a great card.

h9826790 · Oct 3, 2014

The Sonnet card should be plug and play OOTB, however, in some case, the card's firmware is not upgraded by the factory yet, so the user have to upgrade the firmware once before the card is bootable.

I am now using the Sonnet card, it fit my needs. I only have one SSD, the extra SATA 3 port can provide power to my USB 3.0 card. However, for a 5,1, this card may disable your boot manager (Hold option during boot). For me, it doesn't matter, my Mac Pro basically run 24/7 with OSX, just occasionally need windows for something like flash graphic card, and I can easily choose my boot disk in system preference. Also, Windows can see this card and the SSDs, but not boot from this card.

flowrider · Oct 3, 2014

I have two Apricorn Velocity Solo x2s and can't recommend them highly enough. I suspect the new Duo x2 will follow in it's footsteps.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1721573/

Lou

rantingrich · Oct 3, 2014

Slot?

Does it matter which PCI slot I install these PCIe SDD cards in?

flowrider · Oct 3, 2014

^^^^Not in a Mac Pro 4,1 or 5,1. Both cards require a slot with PCIe 2.0 and 2 lanes or better. All slots on the Mac Pro are PCIe 2.0, the bottom two are 16 Lane and the top 2 are 4 Lane. So any slot is good to go. My two are mounted in slots 2 and 3.

Lou

gugy · Oct 3, 2014

flowrider said:
I have two Apricorn Velocity Solo x2s and can't recommend them highly enough. I suspect the new Duo x2 will follow in it's footsteps.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1721573/

Lou

I heard the Duo X2 needs a power source if you combine 2 SSDs on the same card. Is that true? I have a MAcPro 5,1 and just one PCI being used.

I like the Duo X2 card because is so much cheaper than the Sonnet Tempo Pro Plus that holds two SSDs.

crjackson2134 · Oct 3, 2014

gugy said:
I heard the Duo X2 needs a power source if you combine 2 SSDs on the same card. Is that true? I have a MAcPro 5,1 and just one PCI being used.

I like the Duo X2 card because is so much cheaper than the Sonnet Tempo Pro Plus that holds two SSDs.

It's not true, where did you hear that. The Solo does but not the Duo.

gugy · Oct 3, 2014

crjackson2134 said:
It's not true, where did you hear that.

OK great.
Somewhere here on MR.
I guess I am going for the Apricorn then. It's half of the price of Sonnet.

By the way, what SSD would you recommend to use with the Apricorn? Something faster than the Samsung EVO if you know. Thanks!

crjackson2134 · Oct 3, 2014

gugy said:
OK great.
Somewhere here on MR.
I guess I am going for the Apricorn then. It's half of the price of Sonnet.

By the way, what SSD would you recommend to use with the Apricorn? Something faster than the Samsung EVO if you know. Thanks!

Samsung 840 pro or 850, but 2x EVOs will throttle that thing anyway. You'll neve see the speed difference (it's not that much) except on a bench mark.

gugy · Oct 3, 2014

crjackson2134 said:
Samsung 840 pro or 850, but 2x EVOs will throttle that thing anyway. You'll neve see the speed difference (it's not that much) except on a bench mark.

OK, great. Thanks for the info.
There is a $50 difference between the 840 pro and 850. Is that noticeable to justify pay more for the 850. I guess not.

crjackson2134 · Oct 3, 2014

gugy said:
OK, great. Thanks for the info.
There is a $50 difference between the 840 pro and 850. Is that noticeable to justify pay more for the 850. I guess not.

Not for me it wouldn't be. As said, the controller is capable of 800 - 2 EVO's can already exceed that. It wouldn't matter if each ssd could deliver twice the EVO's, you won't see the speed because the interface card/buss now become the bottleneck.

gugy · Oct 3, 2014

crjackson2134 said:
Not for me it wouldn't be. As said, the controller is capable of 800 - 2 EVO's can already exceed that. It wouldn't matter if each ssd could deliver twice the EVO's, you won't see the speed because the interface card/buss now become the bottleneck.

I get it. Thanks.
While the OWC Accelsior reads 785mb second it costs more. I guess that's the trade of. I might go the Apricorn/EVO route and save money there but sacrificing speed but gaining more storage for less money.

Baunkjaer · Oct 4, 2014

crjackson2134 said:
Based on everythig I've read, I would get the Velocty Duo X2. I have the Solo X2 and it's a great card.

Agree. I´m happy with mine as well - not so happy with the OWC 6G, which isn´t as fast as the new SSD´s out there.

crjackson2134 · Oct 4, 2014

gugy said:
I get it. Thanks.
While the OWC Accelsior reads 785mb second it costs more. I guess that's the trade of. I might go the Apricorn/EVO route and save money there but sacrificing speed but gaining more storage for less money.

Well there's more to the story than that. The Accelsior achieves it's speed by running in Raid0 with 2 ssd blades (as I uderstand it). 2 EVO drives in Raid0 are just as fast, if not faster. Also, the the OWC uses a SandForce controller, which (according to what I've read) has reduced performance with regards to compressed data writes. This will effect you if you are working with video and images. I'm not sure if that would personally effect you or not.

Now, the difference in speed between the EVO and the 840 Pro while measureable with benchmarks, isn't likly to be noticed unless all you do is sit around and run benchmarks. I have an 840 Pro but not because of the Slight difference in measurable speed, but because it uses MLC NAND instead of TLC NAND. This affects longevity, and speed just happens to be a little better too.

Now, if you want to see a HUGE speed jump, then you can invest in a pure PCIe solution (as opposed to a PCIe/SATA interface). This will require getting the interface card and then a blade SSD like the one included in the nMP. For top speed you would need the Apple branded Sumsung 1TB blade (because it's a 4x part). You would probably have to buy that from eBay without warranty.

I guess what it boils down to is this... How much do you want to spend? If you want the best bang for your buck without sacrificing noticible performance, then the Apricorn Velocity & the Samsung EVO is the way to go (in my personal opinion, others may disagree). You can always throw more money into the mix if your goal is to have the untimate benchmarker, but don't expect much more than that unless you want to shift gears altogether and go to the PCIe / Blade SSD solution.

There's not much else I can add to this. There are MANY people on here with MUCH more knowledge about the subject that I, but you should have enough basic information by now to make a reasonably informed decesion. If you aren't sure still, just keep reading. The information is all here, you just have to probe around for it. Good luck.

gugy · Oct 4, 2014

crjackson2134 said:
Well there's more to be he story than that. The Accelsior achieves it's speed by running in Raid0 with 2 ssd blades (as I uderstand it). 2 EVO drives in Raid0 are just as fast, if not faster. Also, the the OWC uses a SandForce controller, which (according to what I've read) has reduced performance with regards to compressed data writes. This will effect you if you are working with video and images. I'm not sure if that would personally effect you or not.

Now, the difference in speed between the EVO and the 840 Pro while measureable with benchmarks, isn't likly to be noticed unless all you do is sit around and run benchmarks. I have an 840 Pro but not because of the Slight difference in measurable speed, but because it uses MLC NAND instead of TLC NAND. This affects longevity, and speed just happens to be a little better too.

Now, if you want to see a HUGE speed jump, then you can invest in a pure PCIe solution (as opposed to a PCIe/SATA interface). This will require getting the interface card and then a blade SSD like the one included in the nMP. For top speed you would need the Apple branded Sumsung 1TB blade (because it's a 4x part). You would probably have to buy that from eBay without warranty.

I guess what it boils down to is this... How much do you want to spend? If you want the best bang for your buck without sacrificing noticible performance, then the Apricorn Velocity & the Samsung EVO is the way to go (in my personal opinion, others may disagree). You can always throw more money into the mix if your goal is to have the untimate benchmarker, but don't expect much more than that unless you want to shift gears altogether and go to the PCIe / Blade SSD solution.

There's not much else I can add to this. There are MANY people on here with MUCH more knowledge about the subject that I, but you should have enough basic information by now to make a reasonably informed decesion. If you aren't sure still, just keep reading. The information is all here, you just have to probe around for it. Good luck.

Thanks for the detailed explanation.
I don't want to pay too much and like you said the benefits of the Accelsior wouldn't be that great. The Apricorn and EVO sounds like a great option to my needs. Cheers

hythe · Apr 27, 2015

Sorry to bring back this old thread from the deep freeze, but I'm thinking about some late-life upgrades to my old Mac Pro 2,1, which I'm planning to take from Lion up to Yosemite with the help of Tiamo's famous EFI patch.

Obviously some more RAM is in order (it's still running only 3GB!), the video card (Radeon HD 5770) should be ok for what I want the machine to do, but now having SSDs in my laptops and a Fusion drive in my iMac, I'm keen to upgrade my storage speed / add SSD storage alongside my four HDDs.

Here's the question, finally - as I understand it, all my PCIe slots are 1.0, which surely limits things in terms of the speed I can achieve with a PCI-based solution, such as the Sonnet Tempo or Apricorn Velocity families, or for that matter the Addonics (or similar) 4x mSATA solution.

Am I right to presume that any of the above would be significantly quicker than installing a single SSD via a spare SATA II connector?

The Sonnet and Addonics solutions both state compatibility with PCIe 1.0, Apricorn's website seems to suggest that only the Solo X1 works with PCIe, and that the X2 and Duo both require PCIe 2.0 AND 64bit EFI (if you want to boot from them, which I do) - will the EFI patch also fool an X2/Duo into allowing me to boot?

h9826790 · Apr 27, 2015

hythe said:
Am I right to presume that any of the above would be significantly quicker than installing a single SSD via a spare SATA II connector?

It depends on what you are looking for from the SSD. For copying big files, yes, big difference, easy to achieve 2x faster on sequential read/write speed.

However, if you just use a single SSD for OS operation in order to benefit from the high IOPS. Most likely you won't feel any difference between the native SATA II port and the SATA III PCIe card.

IowaLynn · Apr 27, 2015

hythe said:
Sorry to bring back this old thread from the deep freeze, but I'm thinking about some late-life upgrades to my old Mac Pro 2,1, which I'm planning to take from Lion up to Yosemite with the help of Tiamo's famous EFI patch.

Obviously some more RAM is in order (it's still running only 3GB!), the video card (Radeon HD 5770) should be ok for what I want the machine to do, but now having SSDs in my laptops and a Fusion drive in my iMac, I'm keen to upgrade my storage speed / add SSD storage alongside my four HDDs.

Here's the question, finally - as I understand it, all my PCIe slots are 1.0, which surely limits things in terms of the speed I can achieve with a PCI-based solution, such as the Sonnet Tempo or Apricorn Velocity families, or for that matter the Addonics (or similar) 4x mSATA solution.

Am I right to presume that any of the above would be significantly quicker than installing a single SSD via a spare SATA II connector?

The Sonnet and Addonics solutions both state compatibility with PCIe 1.0, Apricorn's website seems to suggest that only the Solo X1 works with PCIe, and that the X2 and Duo both require PCIe 2.0 AND 64bit EFI (if you want to boot from them, which I do) - will the EFI patch also fool an X2/Duo into allowing me to boot?

The XP941 will work in any Classic Mac Pro, 1,1 up. Seamless, bootable and full support OCUe 1.0, just use the 4x or 8x slot and the 128GB is "only" 400MB/sec stores (700-800MB reads), the 256GB and up provide even more like 1100MB/sec and would be true of the Apple/Samsung blade

See the thread here:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1685821/

hythe · Apr 27, 2015

Thanks, guys - more to chew over...

jdryyz · Mar 9, 2016

I read elsewhere that another advantage with the Velocity Solo/Duo x2 is that it can boot your Bootcamp partition but the Amazon reviews would seem to suggest it is problematic.

I had the Solo x2 a while back for use in my Hackintosh system but could not get it to work reliably in Mac OS X or Windows. I just figured it was due to it not being used as intended. I ended up returning it. This was after first thinking I had a bad unit and then working with Apricorn to get a firmware update (that gave me a BIOS flash screen) but still resulted in lockups. Needless to say, I am concerned about getting another one even if it will be going into a real Mac.

Machines · Mar 9, 2016

jdryyz said:
I read elsewhere that another advantage with the Velocity Solo/Duo x2 is that it can boot your Bootcamp partition but the Amazon reviews would seem to suggest it is problematic.

I had the Solo x2 a while back for use in my Hackintosh system but could not get it to work reliably in Mac OS X or Windows. I just figured it was due to it not being used as intended. I ended up returning it. This was after first thinking I had a bad unit and then working with Apricorn to get a firmware update (that gave me a BIOS flash screen) but still resulted in lockups. Needless to say, I am concerned about getting another one even if it will be going into a real Mac.

I did a native installation of Windows 7 Pro 64 bit (not bootcamp) in a Nehalem Mac Pro with an Apricorn Velocity Duo x2 set up with two SSDs in a RAID 0 configuration . I had to prepare the drive to accept an OS in a RAID configuration in a PC first (Bios setup) and transfer it back into the Mac . Performance was respectable (about 800 MB/s sequentials as advertised ) , but it took a very long time to boot . Around a minute . I bought the card on sale for around a hundred bucks . Basically , a poor man's Tempo SSD Pro without the eSATA ports . Client was not interested in Mac OS X . He just liked Apple hardware .

jdryyz · Apr 13, 2016

So I picked up the Apricorn Solo X2 a while back. Read/Write Performance was fantastic with my Samsung 850 EVO and there were no boot delays after setting the default startup drive. I did not get to test Windows partition booting because I soon ran into something that concerned me more. The Option key to start the boot manager no longer worked with the Apricorn installed. When you press the key on boot, you are presented with a white screen and mouse cursor but no icons appear. I am forced to hit the power button. Some troubleshooting steps were recommended to me by Apricorn tech support but nothing helped. I discovered one user who even posted a "rant" about it on YouTube.

I have not given up on Apricorn yet. I opted for the Duo model instead because I have read more positive reports on it. No one mentioned anything about the Option key not working. Even though I have no need for the speed boost with RAID, it might be something I could take advantage of later. JBOD is enabled by default and that is exactly what I will start with.

jdryyz · Apr 24, 2016

Got the Duo and it solved the problem of the missing Boot manager. Phew! The two cards use a different chipset but I'm puzzled why the problem with the Solo is not more widespread. Wonder if my Mac Pro firmware update "hack" has anything to do with it. Oh well, it no longer matters. The Duo was not that much more and it also came with a nice rebate.

More good news is that I can boot from Windows either by separate drive on Port 1 of the card or by partition on the primary drive. I was not expecting this to work since per Apple, Bootcamp will not work from an "external" drive which is how any drive on the card is recognized. How then is it working fine for me? I'm not complaining.

I'm already curious on trying out the RAID option to double the transfer speed. Will have to get a like drive though.

jdryyz · Apr 25, 2016

Tying in with my RAID 0 curiosity, I see you mentioned needing to prepare this using a real PC. Why is that?

When I boot into Windows with my current JBOD setup, I can clearly see the Velocity Duo X2 splash screen appear where it indicates to press ctrl-m for options. I have not yet tried this but I assume it will take me to the RAID setup. Was this screen not showing up for you?

Machines said:
I did a native installation of Windows 7 Pro 64 bit (not bootcamp) in a Nehalem Mac Pro with an Apricorn Velocity Duo x2 set up with two SSDs in a RAID 0 configuration . I had to prepare the drive to accept an OS in a RAID configuration in a PC first (Bios setup) and transfer it back into the Mac . Performance was respectable (about 800 MB/s sequentials as advertised ) , but it took a very long time to boot . Around a minute . I bought the card on sale for around a hundred bucks . Basically , a poor man's Tempo SSD Pro without the eSATA ports . Client was not interested in Mac OS X . He just liked Apple hardware .

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