Sonnet M.2 4×4 PCIe Card
updated 1 month, 2 weeks ago 3 Members · 7
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So the new Sonnet M.2 4×4 PCIe Card – 4 NVMe SSDs promises concurrent data transfers/read and write speeds up to 12,000 MB/sec – I’m having a moment of blindness: If the architecture of a new mac supports 6000 MB/sec transfer speeds, how is what Sonnet claiming possible? They also claim speeds up to 6,000 MB/sec on 2012 macs with 3ghz architecture. I have a gap in my understanding can some one fill this in – Thanks in advance.
I have the Sonnet M.2 4X4 Silent SSD PCIe Card with 2 x Samsung 970 EVO Plus 2TB in a 2019 Mac Pro.
Top speeds average around 5200 across the board.
Not sure how to his the advertised mark.
So here’s sonnets response to my question about speeds – :
Hi Terry,
OWC connects 8 lanes to the PCIe slot (24-lane PCIe bridge chip). Sonnet connects 16 lanes to the PCIe slot (32 lane PCIe 3 bridge chip). If you are using a RAID 0 of 4 SSDs, The Sonnet is nominally twice as fast.
And by twice as fast I said I’d achieved 5700 with the OWC M2 – is it remotely possible they’re confused?
Hi there,
I have exactly the same configuration of m2, and I tried with both models, the original sonnet M2 card, and the new silent M2 card.
With both I’m getting around 6700 MB per second.
I think one thing is what the board can achieve natively, different thing please what the computer can deliver.
I know from other Sonnet products, that the very same product can achieve faster speeds on a Windows system than a Mac system.
II have to say that I’m very happy with the system, I have been able to edit a full feature movie using directly the original 5k RAW dmg’s of the camera like they were proxy HD ProRes files.
Cheers!
Hi you’re getting 6700 with the M2? I’m getting 5800 which is naturally beneath the 6 gig ceiling. I’m struggling to see how you’re getting over the governed limit. Have you applied any fixes? Also as I don’t use PC so does their internal architecture allow a different higher speed? I’d assume there must be some benefits to having a PC besides apparently being cheaper – but then friends with PC’s tell me that once you start tooling up to MAC standards, costs are about the same.
Hi Terry, I didn’t did any fix! just plug an play. I’m on hackintosh build my myself, using a Gigabyte Designare MB and I9-9900K CPU, I ran both Mojave and now Catalina, Performance on same hardware is a bit better on Catalina. I’m thinking to get an iMac M1 and try the M.2 mounted on a external enclosure and see what happens there.
Ah ok that’ll explain it because the mac 2019 architecture is governed at 6 gig (so the literature says), so a hackintosh may have different parameters. I have no experience with eiether windows or hacks – though of course given the prices that Tim Cook has brought in and the heinious system of tariffs on apple kit and software which walked away from the original intentions (though the signs were always there) I may one day go that route. I presume there are patches that do this and probably you need to know basic windows stuff. Plus it worries me that apple is going over to ARM chips fully (though as a Brit I should be proud of that but of tech) though that’s probably a fear based on too little knowledge.
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