SATA and the joy of ProMac

When two MacPro's turned up at work thismorning i quickly got down to the joy of rigging them up and installing the necessary ram and cards... including a Tempo SATA E4P PCIe card from Sonnet. However as i quicly found out and confirmed on the sonnet website these cards don't currently work in the promacs! In the words of Sonnet:
Tempo SATA E4P is currently not compatible with Mac Pro computers. The current cards have been tested to be Mac Pro hardware-compatible. Sonnet is working urgently to post a Mac Pro software-compatible installer to our web site. Check this page for updates.


Im a little surprised by this, i expected the cards i'd been given to work. If the hardware is not an issue what is it that that is wrong for these cards to suddenly need software drivers?

Until Sonnet release these drivers i have two edit suites with promacs needing Sata Cards. If any of you who have ProMacs and are using SATA cards could give me a shout as to which cards you are using (if any?) that would be much appreciated.

Cheers

Josh

No Joy yet! Every SATA card manufacturer is waiting for Intel drives for the MacPro to be distributed. All as saying "about a month for now"

Your best bet for the time being is to use the drives internally and the Apple Disk Utility>RAID setup to turn three drives into a RAID 0, until the drivers come out.

BTW- Same thing happened when Apple went to PCI-Express. Three months or more until the SATA card vendors had PCI-Express cards for the Dual-Core G5's.

i was going to buy a mac pro yesterday, but it seems to me that unless you are working primarilly in the FCP suite of apps, and working off internal or firewire drives, you will experience either:

1. a BIG performance hit from non UB apps (and what im hearing is that it may be into 2007 before the adobe suite goes UB). ill, photoshop and ae DO indeed "run" in rosetta mode - but NOT particularly well...

2. various external hardware incompatabilities.

so i saved my money for the time being and just got me a little 1.8 intel mini to tide me over until there is more compelling uses for a big macpro.

if you can find a good deal (say $2100 or so) id advise anyone to get a quad G5 - ask good old grafix joe here on the forum, he seems to LOVE his!

Ah Jeeze, i knew it! Well thanks for the heads up.
Well i'll keep you guys posted on how they perform in the work house as it were. They're running FCP Studio and i doubt will be running much in the way of apps in the near future. Until i either put in internal drives and make a RAID for them, or we get some drivers for the SATA Cards then it looks like calling the old Firewire 800 Drives back into action! ... now of course comes the question as to the availability of PCIe Firewire expansion cards that work in these creates!

I'd agree mostly wayne although with many non UB apps people seem to report extremely good results. The hardware issues I'm sure are going to get ironed out - its early days, i just can't afford to have machines that don't pull weight!

When i get a chance I'm going to sit down with the G5 Quad and the ProMac and see who can do the most pushup's

This is the BIG reason why you research everything before you buy. Expecially with new hardware configurations. It isn't just a new tower, but a whole new architecture and programming language so things were bound to be different. A little research beforehand on Sonnet's site would have resulted in the information you found out later.

Tough lesson...but one I learned the hard way a while back too.

josh, the thing that killed ME on the macpro purchase for now was after effects. about 60% of my work has some degree (usually heavy) of after effects involved.

someone here on the forum did a side by side of a g5 (think it was a dual, not a quad) and a macpro in AE render and i think the g5 beat it by at least a third.

im running AE, ILL and PS on my little 1.8 intel mini and there is a fairly noticeable lag in general interface behavior, its not a deal breaker for day to day stuff. and i would imagine the macPRO to be a good bit better...

i just couldnt justify spending nearly 3grand right now on a machine that couldnt render AE even as fast as my existing dual G5

Quote
Shane Ross
This is the BIG reason why you research everything before you buy. Expecially with new hardware configurations. It isn't just a new tower, but a whole new architecture and programming language so things were bound to be different. A little research beforehand on Sonnet's site would have resulted in the information you found out later.

Absolutely Shane i couldn't agree more. Unfortunately however I'm not the guy that gets to buy the kit... or rather help choose what kit to buy. Im just the one who's asked to build it, fix it, explain why it isn't working before getting it working!

Wayne i totally understand, i was very interested by the results of AE running on the pro-macs and it obviously is being left in the dust still, compared to a decent G5. The fact i can't afford one aside, I wouldn't think of buying a new pro-mac until Adobe studio and AE goes UB - what's the point in spending so much money on a computer that isn't going to let you work any quicker! My reference was to much less heavy lifting apps etc that for many peoples day to day work can survive perfectly happy under emulation.

Guys just a quick heads up in case you hadn't allready seen this:

Caldigit have released a SATA Card that IS compatible (and working) with the new intel Pro Macs. the card is theFASTA-2e card

Cheers

Josh

Caldigit will be in the lobby at the next lafcpug meeting Sept 27. They have wicked fast drives and will be showing them off. Great people too.

Michael Horton
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indeed, i took a quick look at the range of products they offer earlier and it looks inpressive, especially when stacked up against similar products from G-Tech.