G5 Dual 2 Gig with eSATA PCI card

[guitoffee]

I have a G5 Dual 2.0 with 16x DVD-ROM and regular PCI slots. The only reason why I bought this machine is because the folks over at UA recommended this box. I have 4 UAD cards in a AVID SDS PCI box {works great!} I then decided to purchase the SSL Duende for some additional flavoring; it's cool, except it doesn't work with Firewire drives at all {FW400/800}...

So, I thought, \"fine\", For additional drives I'll go eSATA PCI.... Maybe not.

After doing some research on the web, it turns out that the Dual 2.0 gig G5 has crappy PCI performance.... Worse than a B/W G3.... Therefore, I won't be able to take advantage of the speeds of an external eSATA drive. One report stated that the speeds/ xfer rates were half of that of FW400...

You are probably wondering about the second internal drive. I have this drive reserved for sampler instruments' samples and loops. Having to stream audio and loops off one drive is pretty hard on the drive... I also like having the head room of using two drives.

So, has any other Dual 2.0 gig, pci plain, 16xs DVD-rom, 4 memory slot G5 owners ventured into eSATA PCI cards? If so, what has been your experience?

 

[mattFort]

i have the same setup as you. I just put in a 4 x 300GB Internal SATA RAID. I'll post results when I get back to my studio next week to try it.

I recently tried a FW800 raid by OWC and it didn't work out at all.

 

[guitoffee]

I was comteplating getting the eSata PCI card and sticking it in the Avid sbs PCI extention box with the cards.... I seem to notice that when I moved my cards out of the G5 and into the external box, I got better performance out of the cards. {Less pops and clicks during mixdown} Perhaps it's a power thing, and the internal PCI slots in the G5 suck up too much juice to adequately operate....

 

[LGK_Dude]

I dont have anything new to add, but PLEASE keep us updated as things progress on your end. Have you posted this question in other forums? If so, may I ask which ones so I may follow them as well?

I'm quickly running out of room on my 2nd SATA HD \"sample drive\" in my Dual 2.5GHz G5, and was researching the best external solution for running large sample libs. Until I read your post, I was all ready to go eSATA, but now you have me 2nd guessing myself. I'd love to hear how things work out for you, and hope someone can point you (and thus me too in the right direction.

Best of luck!

 

[guitoffee]

I dont have anything new to add, but PLEASE keep us updated as things progress on your end. Have you posted this question in other forums? If so, may I ask which ones so I may follow them as well?

I'm quickly running out of room on my 2nd SATA HD "sample drive" in my Dual 2.5GHz G5, and was researching the best external solution for running large sample libs. Until I read your post, I was all ready to go eSATA, but now you have me 2nd guessing myself. I'd love to hear how things work out for you, and hope someone can point you (and thus me too in the right direction.

Best of luck!

If you have a Duial 2.5 machine you should be cool with eSATA. It's just those of us with a Dual 2 gig with plain PCI slots. This particular dual 2.0 gig machine has particularly lame performace when it come to the PCI bus. Works fine with the UAD cards but, not much else.... This was the G5 UA was recommending to purchase for a while.

 

[jimmymio]

[/quote]

If you have a Duial 2.5 machine you should be cool with eSATA. It's just those of us with a Dual 2 gig with plain PCI slots. This particular dual 2.0 gig machine has particularly lame performace when it come to the PCI bus. Works fine with the UAD cards but, not much else.... This was the G5 UA was recommending to purchase for a while.[/quote]

FWIW I have a G5 daul 2 gig and i use an OWC FW 800 PCI card to record my audio files to an external drive and it seems to work fine. Shouldn't PCI to SATA cards also work well?
JP

 

[defsound]

hd setup

I have a new 500gb seagate barracuda SATA as the second drive for audio, and a Lacie 150 gb HD via firewire for samples. I use tons on EXS 24s and the recent song I am working on has 60+ tracks no problem, as well as Tonntracks drumkit of 2gb in RAM, loads of virtual synths,. My only issue is I have to freeze all the time because of the UAD plugs. I have 3 cards in the computer, but with all these Neve plugs I need more card power badly. Soundcard is a firewire mertic hahol mobile i/o. Computer is the step down from yours - dual 1.8 G5 PCI w/4gb RAM.

 

[LGK_Dude]

Thank you for the update. Much appreciated!

 

[LGK_Dude]

Re: hd setup

I have a new 500gb seagate barracuda SATA as the second drive for audio, and a Lacie 150 gb HD via firewire for samples. I use tons on EXS 24s and the recent song I am working on has 60+ tracks no problem, as well as Tonntracks drumkit of 2gb in RAM, loads of virtual synths,. My only issue is I have to freeze all the time because of the UAD plugs. I have 3 cards in the computer, but with all these Neve plugs I need more card power badly. Soundcard is a firewire mertic hahol mobile i/o. Computer is the step down from yours - dual 1.8 G5 PCI w/4gb RAM.

Wow, thats AMAZING!! How do you do it? What kind of EXS24 instruments are you running/type of music do you write? How much are you running on your external vs your internal? Do you have to freeze any EXS tracks? Do you experience much latency when inputing?

I try to do symphonic/orchestral student film scores using VSL Opus 1+2 in EXS24 with 4.5GB ram and start running into problems around 40 or so. I'd love to squeeze a few more out of my system. Perhaps I'll try moving some samples from my 2nd internal onto my external and see what happens.

BTW, what settings do you use in logic for your EXS, audio prefs, etc? Just curious if there's something more I can learn. THANKS!

 

[guitoffee]

Re: hd setup

I have a new 500gb seagate barracuda SATA as the second drive for audio, and a Lacie 150 gb HD via firewire for samples. I use tons on EXS 24s and the recent song I am working on has 60+ tracks no problem, as well as Tonntracks drumkit of 2gb in RAM, loads of virtual synths,. My only issue is I have to freeze all the time because of the UAD plugs. I have 3 cards in the computer, but with all these Neve plugs I need more card power badly. Soundcard is a firewire mertic hahol mobile i/o. Computer is the step down from yours - dual 1.8 G5 PCI w/4gb RAM.

Again, I am only talking about the dual 2.0 machines with plain PCI slots. Apparantly, this machine is a little bit different from the others. Also, since I moved my cards out of my G5 and into an PCI extention box, I get better performance from the cards. I would totally recommend it. Also, you can pick up a forth used card cheap of evilbay and take advantage of the UA promo... just a thought.

Now to get back onto the topic, G5 dual 2.0 with plain PCI slots..... Does anyone have this specific machine and have run into performance problems with trying to utilize eSATA PCI card to run external SATA or RAID setups for audio/ samples.... Anyone?

grassy-ass.

 

[guitoffee]

I went out and purchased an external eSATA Seagate drive from Fry's Electronics and so far so good. This drive cost me 225 and came with a PCI card plus a disk of drivers. The drive is 300 gigs with 16 meg buffer. It transfers pretty fast and my DAW seems to be happy; everbody playing nice. The only thing that bugs me about it is that it spins down when not in use and takes a bit of time to spin back up. Perhaps there is some energy saving mode I need to turn off. Also, some software doesn't like drives to spiin down. I am primarily using this drive to playback the sounds for my BFD plugin and the current version supports drives that spin down.

 

[jimmymio]

The only thing that bugs me about it is that it spins down when not in use and takes a bit of time to spin back up. Perhaps there is some energy saving mode I need to turn off. Also, some software doesn't like drives to spiin down. I am primarily using this drive to playback the sounds for my BFD plugin and the current version supports drives that spin down.

I have the same problem with an OWC external FW800 drive and i don't think you can change it through some setting. Better get used to it.
JP

 

[Babz]

Well, this is interesting. I was researching external drive solutions, and called Seagate tech support because I had heard this exact type of forum chatter about external drives spinning down when not in use. The tech specifically steered me towards eSATA saying that it was the one external format that DOESN'T spin down. I just installed the drive last night, and I'm about to install 12 DVDs of Scarbee Imperial Drums XL on it. I guess, we'll see... This is on a Windoze PeeCee, BTW... Don't know if the spin down issue is platform specific...

Babz

 

[Hoagie]

After doing some research on the web, it turns out that the Dual 2.0 gig G5 has crappy PCI performance.... Worse than a B/W G3.... Therefore, I won't be able to take advantage of the speeds of an external eSATA drive. One report stated that the speeds/ xfer rates were half of that of FW400...

Guitoffee, would you have handy any links to your research finding that the Dual 2GHz G5 has bad PCI performance? Apple produced (I think) three different 2x2 models between 2003 and 2005, not all with the same PCI specs (I don't recall the details). I have an early 2004 2x2 (PCI-X), so would be interested in learning whether your research applies to my model or not.

-- Hoagie

 

[mattFort]

If any of you guys are interested... I have an internal 4 part sata card and drive mounting kit that will put 4 more drives in your G5 for sale. I upgraded to a MAc Pro and yanked this from my G5. See this...http://www.maxupgrades.comistoreindex.c ... uct_ID=135