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USB 3.x PCIe Cards for Classic Mac Pro

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The first post of this thread is a WikiPost and can be edited by anyone with the appropiate permissions. Your edits will be public.
MyMac1976 said:
This is mildly OT but I'm looking to put an NEC chipset driven express card in my 17" dinosaur anyone have any long term issues?
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You might have better response asking in the laptop forums. This is the Mac Pro (desktop) forum.
 
ActionableMango said:
You might have better response asking in the laptop forums. This is the Mac Pro (desktop) forum.
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I know but you guy are the only one's expanding your Mac's. There are very few 17" types here and even fewer interested in USB 3 express card. Secondly the chipsets that work as PCI cards should also work as express cards.
 
MyMac1976 said:
I know but you guy are the only one's expanding your Mac's. There are very few 17" types here and even fewer interested in USB 3 express card. Secondly the chipsets that work as PCI cards should also work as express cards.
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In that case, assuming it works the same as the NEC-based PCIe cards, I would expect it to work but you'll need third party drivers. Because of that, before upgrading the OS you should probably check and wait for driver availability or face the possibility of losing USB 3 compatibility.

Last I checked, the NEC-based cards had OS X drivers that the vendors locked to their specific card, so to use an NEC card from a vendor doesn't supply the OS X driver themselves, I believe you'll have to use one of the hacked drivers out there that people have made to work generically with all cards. I admit I haven't looked into that in a long time, so my information might be out of date. Hopefully whatever card you are getting is supplied with an OS X driver.

If it were me, I'd look for an express card with Fresco Logic FL1009 chipset. These are supported natively in OS X, so there is significantly less driver drama.

Keep in mind you won't be able to boot from any of these solutions.
 
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ActionableMango said:
In that case, assuming it works the same as the NEC-based PCIe cards, I would expect it to work but you'll need third party drivers. Because of that, before upgrading the OS you should probably check and wait for driver availability or face the possibility of losing USB 3 compatibility.

Last I checked, the NEC-based cards had OS X drivers that the vendors locked to their specific card, so to use an NEC card from a vendor doesn't supply the OS X driver themselves, I believe you'll have to use one of the hacked drivers out there that people have made to work generically with all cards. I admit I haven't looked into that in a long time, so my information might be out of date. Hopefully whatever card you are getting is supplied with an OS X driver.

If it were me, I'd look for an express card with Fresco Logic FL1000 chipset. These are supported natively in OS X, so there is significantly less driver drama.

Keep in mind you won't be able to boot from any of these solutions.
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I'm not looking to boot from it it back up sits in my Mac Pro so I'd just boot it into taget disk mode and CCC it back from it's backup drive.

I haven't seen any frsco express cards and most of them for MP's require power which is likely the reason there isn't one in express card. I hadn't given much thought to USB 3 untill I had a SSD free it's self up so I thought I'd pop in and check.
 
It seems there are no straight answers in this thread at all. Most cards seem to be pretty sketchy or hit / miss. Is there anything for the MP (I have 4,1) that has decent reviews? Really on the edge here wanting to dump this thing and get a maxed out iMac or bend over for a new MP. My MBA feels snappier due to its USB3 and PCIe storage. Hard to justify throwing PCIe storage from OWC in here plus a USB3 card that may or may not work that great when I can get $2k for the machine on ebay currently and I'm not likely to gain any value from the hundreds of dollars in upgrades I might add.

It stills wins when I hit "render" compared to the iMac or MBA...but upgrading this thing is getting a little harder now that I'm hitting the I/O wall.
 
Nothing sketchy at all. Rather simple actually. If you only need USB 3.0 for storage Devices and you want the fastest possible transfer rate, get the one in my sig. If you want to use general purpose USB devices and don't mind bandwidth sharing amongst them, then get the Orico card, it uses the built in OSX drivers and has ZERO issues.

If you're just looking for an excuse to make a switch, just do it. USB 3.0 is NOT a problem on the Mac Pro.
 
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darkskies said:
No drivers necessary and my 2 Seagate Backup Plus his are getting 175mb/s transfer rates.
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Can you try copying from one drive to the other and see what the rates are like?

I know on the FL1009 the rates will plummet when more than one port is used simultaneously, but I forgot to test that when I had an FL1100 card installed like you do now.
 
In case anyone wanted to know, the RocketU 1144CM works perfectly with Mavericks. If you are doing an upgrade, no driver install is needed. I didn't do a clean install to a fresh drive, but I have no doubt that requires a driver install.
 
crjackson2134 said:
In case anyone wanted to know, the RocketU 1144CM works perfectly with Mavericks. If you are doing an upgrade, no driver install is needed. I didn't do a clean install to a fresh drive, but I have no doubt that requires a driver install.
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Good to hear, the eject on wake bug from the Fresco Logic chipsets is a pain to deal with. I'm seriously considering a RocketU.
 
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