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Sata PCI card or sata/pata adapter comparison

Certificate of Excellence

Certificate of Excellence

macrumors 65816
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Feb 9, 2021
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A few weeks ago some of us were chatting about adapters vs sata pci cards in the "what have you done with PowerPC" thread as some were considering the "upgrade". I flashed a couple sil3512 this morning so I took the time to run some quick comparisons and a benchmark between a flashed SIL3512 (wiebetech firmware) and a cheap-o $3-4 PRC red sata/pata adapter Like this one.I was surprised by the results actually. Firstup here are the sil3512 and below the adapter benchmarks I ran in Xbench. The drive was a 128gb Orico ssd.
sil3512 Sata ssd .jpg
PRC red satapata adapter ssd .jpg

So while the PCI card as expected did beat the PATA/SATA adapter, it really only did so by 7.91 points. I thought assuredly this would be more. Now better data transfer performance is what it is and I think we all expected this honestly given the limitations of ATA66/100 on the Graphite I'm using. What has always bugged me about my pci sata cards in my Powermacs is how long they take to boot into macos vs the adapters do. In this comparison, the adapter was up and running from chime in 42.04 seconds where as the Sil3512 chugged along taking 1.01 minutes so a difference of 17.97 seconds. So for me, is the 7.91 increase in throughput worth that hideous boot up?

Nope, it is not LOL. That slow boot up has always bugged me. I Considered it may be the sil3512 cards I have and I dont have a sil3112, so I ordered one and have it coming on the slow boat from PRC, so I expect to see it in a week or so. When I get it flashed, I will see if that improves performance, more specifically boot up. Anyways, I thought this was a fun comparison and illustrates in a measurable way for myself anyways, why I moved away from pci cards and towards cheap adapters for my PPC macs.
 
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Certificate of Excellence said:
A few weeks ago some of us were chatting about adapters vs sata pci cards in the "what have you done with PowerPC" thread as some were considering the "upgrade". I flashed a couple sil3512 this morning so I took the time to run some quick comparisons and a benchmark between a flashed SIL3512 (wiebetech firmware) and a cheap-o $3-4 PRC red sata/pata adapter Like this one.I was surprised by the results actually. Firstup here are the sil3512 and below the adapter benchmarks I ran in Xbench. The drive was a 128gb Orico ssd.
View attachment 2492563 View attachment 2492564
So while the PCI card as expected did beat the PATA/SATA adapter, it really only did so by 7.91 points. I thought assuredly this would be more. Now better data transfer performance is what it is and I think we all expected this honestly given the limitations of ATA66 on the Graphite I'm using. What has always bugged me about my pci sata cards in my Powermacs is how long they take to boot into macos vs the adapters do. In this comparison, the adapter was up and running from chime in 42.04 seconds where as the Sil3512 chugged along taking 1.01 minutes so a difference of 17.97 seconds. So for me, is the 7.91 increase in throughput worth that hideous boot up?

Yeah, it is LOL. That slow boot up has always bugged me. I Considered it may be the sil3512 cards I have and I dont have a sil3112, so I ordered one and have it coming on the slow boat from PRC, so I expect to see it in a week or so. When I get it flashed, I will see if that improves performance, more specifically boot up. Anyways, I thought this was a fun comparison and illustrates in a measurable way for myself anyways, why I moved away from pci cards and towards cheap adapters for my PPC macs.
Click to expand...
I'm the opposite (Really? Imagine that! :D ). I don't have a bias against adapters, but in my mind they seem less 'permanent' if that makes any sense. It's always seems more solid to me to plunk a card into a slot. That's just my thinking. Additionally, a SATA card (or at least the ones I tend to use) can have four slots for four drives, which I usually fill. You want to go the adapter route, you're buying four adapters.

Now, they cost less so no big deal, but I'd argue they take up more space. Which isn't such a big thing with a desktop Mac of course, but if you're moving things around, you have to account for that.

Finally, as to speeds…a minute or more for boot times I do not recall being a thing with my Macs. However, the first card I flashed was a 3112. The rest have been Mac compatible and one actual Sonnet Tempo. So, yeah. I'd see what your tests reveal when your next card shows up.

One other thing. The disparity between the two is also not an issue for me simply because I rarely shut down. Shutdown, restart, bootup is a process I hate and when you're using patched systems can sometimes be filled with anxiety. But primarily, my systems are left on because I don't wish to wait - however short that time is. Hit the spacebar to wake screens, apps are open, let's go. That's me.
 
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Yeah Erik I totally get that. Everyone’s use case & preferences are different. I am hopeful that the 3112 will be faster on boot up. You know one other thing I noticed was I had the idea to use the sil3512 for large drive support only but with the adapter connecting the boot drive, the PCI card would confuse the Mac and it would not find any drive. Works fine with one or the other but together, party was over. There is a two pin jumper on the sil3512. Maybe the correct jumper config would allow it to be used as large drive support and not a boot device with both playing ball.
I’ll mess with that a bit more later. One other bonus of not having that slot filled is I now have a space for an incoming siig FW800 card.

I would love to get ahold of an actual sonnet pci sata card for not stupid obscene money lol. One of these days :D
 
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Certificate of Excellence said:
I would love to get ahold of an actual sonnet pci sata card for not stupid obscene money lol. One of these days :D
Click to expand...
I was very fortunate some years ago that James, @jbarley graciously offered up his card to me for my G3 back in November 2017. James (last I heard) is an elderly gentleman who used to be quite active in the PowerPC forums. I have not heard from him in quite some time.

Wherever you may be James, thank you again!
 
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The 64-bit PCI cards like the 3124 or marvel based, can easily beat the IDE port. But I have not found one that can be used reliably as the boot drive.

Certificate of Excellence said:
I had the idea to use the sil3512 for large drive support only but with the adapter connecting the boot drive
Click to expand...

This approach works well with the fast PCI cards that are not bootable. This thread has some good info:

forums.macrumors.com/threads/post-your-ssd-cf-sata-pata-powerpc-benchmark-results.2063361/
 
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Haemoglobin said:
Isn't there also an issue of capacity, I was thinking of placing the three IDE drives I have with two SATA, 1xSSD for booting, 1x500gb spinning rust for storage, itunes music library, photo's

My understanding is the onboard IDE wouldn't recognise drives over 128gb
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Most of the early G4s do not recognize over 128GB, yes. I believe the MDDs are the only ones that do, but I've never had one so IDK.

Anyway, that's one of the reasons for using a PCI-SATA card. You get both SATA and you can ignore the 128GB limit.

You can also ignore it using IDE if you are willing to install a third party driver. Intech Speedtools ATA HiCap driver. You can find that for free on macintoshgarden.org. You'll need to install it under OS X, but it does support OS9.
 
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Haemoglobin said:
Isn't there also an issue of capacity, I was thinking of placing the three IDE drives I have with two SATA, 1xSSD for booting, 1x500gb spinning rust for storage, itunes music library, photo's

My understanding is the onboard IDE wouldn't recognise drives over 128gb
Click to expand...
Correct … well technically, it’s 137gb but yeah it’s a very low ceiling. I’ve always wanted to do a raid-0 Tiger bootdrive in my B&W and run the 3512 for large drive support as it’s mildly squirrelly as a boot drive on its own (occasional kPs etc) … actually rummaging through all my drives to see if I can put that together. I think that would be a cool B&W setup.
 
Certificate of Excellence said:
Correct … well technically, it’s 137gb but yeah it’s a very low ceiling. I’ve always wanted to do a raid-0 Tiger bootdrive in my B&W and run the 3512 for large drive support as it’s mildly squirrelly as a boot drive on its own (occasional kPs etc) … actually rummaging through all my drives to see if I can put that together. I think that would be a cool B&W setup.
Click to expand...
I took the time to clone my B&W Tiger install over to some old pata drives (2000-2003ish production dates) I had as I thought it would be fun to see a comparison between SSD and RAID-0 in the B&W. Created the array and cloned over completely fine from my boot drive however I could not get the B&W to boot. It complained bitterly with all sorts of bizarre OF behavior that frankly I have never seen before LOL :D I should have taken some pics of the OF gibberish it spit out but did not. Anyways, I did find an extra 500gb sata hdd for storage and backing up the B&W to while on the hunt for some suitably matched pata drives - so that was nice. Anyways, since I was in there I did run some benchmarks on the Sata SSD and Hdd. Surprisingly the sil3512/B&W behaved absolutely flawlessly which on some days it certainly does not. :)

Sil3512 > Netac 120gb ssd
B&W Netac 120gb ssd 3512.jpg

Sil3512 > 500gb Seagate HDD
Seagate 500GB hdd 3512.jpg


I really do wish I could stick some RAID-0 scores up here. Maybe I'll try another day with another more mellow Mac like my QS - trusty ol gal.
 
Since I was in my a1117 DC 2.0Ghz PMG5, I thought a benchmark of native Sata support+SSD in a Powermac would be fun. :)

a1117 PMG5+120gb Netac SSD..jpg

Not too shabby :apple:
 
I found the RAID-0 Xbench benchmark I did in my a1117 back around 2019. IIRC the array was two Maxtor 80GB 7200 sata spinners.
RAID0 A1117 PMG5 XBENCH 2019.jpg

Make sense that it is roughly twice that of the single spinner above but the SSD still just crushes it. Well, the array sounded SO good. The sound of two spinners humming along just oozed nostalgia for me.

FUN :D
 
By sheer chance, I had reason to try a spare SATA card I have, I bought two on ebay a few years back bother had been flashed for Mac. The first one has 1x internal 1xexternal sata port. The second has 2xinternal ports. The first card found it's way in my B&W, while the second sat in a drawer as a backup. I dragged it out last night andmy Quicksilver refuses to boot with the card installed. Spoke to my friend and he said the QS are picky about voltages, was just wondering what generic cards DO work in the QS. I can post a photo of the card I have here if anyone wants to take a look at it.
 
Haemoglobin said:
By sheer chance, I had reason to try a spare SATA card I have, I bought two on ebay a few years back bother had been flashed for Mac. The first one has 1x internal 1xexternal sata port. The second has 2xinternal ports. The first card found it's way in my B&W, while the second sat in a drawer as a backup. I dragged it out last night andmy Quicksilver refuses to boot with the card installed. Spoke to my friend and he said the QS are picky about voltages, was just wondering what generic cards DO work in the QS. I can post a photo of the card I have here if anyone wants to take a look at it.
Click to expand...
I never had any issue with the PCI-SATA cards I dropped into my Quicksilver. The first was a $10 generic PC flashed 3112, others were cards simply labeled as 'Mac compatible'. I never tried a Sonnet Tempo in there (I have one), but I assume that would work too.
 
Certificate of Excellence said:
Nope, it is not LOL. That slow boot up has always bugged me. I Considered it may be the sil3512 cards I have and I dont have a sil3112, so I ordered one and have it coming on the slow boat from PRC, so I expect to see it in a week or so. When I get it flashed, I will see if that improves performance, more specifically boot up.
Click to expand...
It won't. The Mac boot process has to probe for and initialise additional hardware. That will include the bios for the SATA card you have inserted, hence the extra boot up time. A minute seems to be about the average bootup time, depending upon hardware. If you have ever put a SCSI or similar card in a PC with its more informative boot up feedback, you will know you have to be a bit more patient.

Another strike against IDE is that you are limited to four primary partitions, which is probably a bigger issue on PCs when you want a multi-OS set up and Windows demands to be on the first of those.
 
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weckart said:
Another strike against IDE is that you are limited to four primary partitions, which is probably a bigger issue on PCs when you want a multi-OS set up and Windows demands to be on the first of those.
Click to expand...
4 primary partitions is a MBR limit (partition table).

HDs in Power Macs are formatted with APM (Apple partition Map) which doesn't have that limit.

I don't think Windows is limited to the first primary partition. A partition in the MBR is marked as active and that's the partition that will boot.
 
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