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Mac Pro - USB 3.0 - Nikon D800

Daniel Schulz
I am thinking about upgrading our mac pros with a USB 3.0 card now that we have more and more shoots with D800s
USB 2.0 is really a bottleneck for the D800 files.

I know that it is runny nice and smooth on the latest macbook pro´s with USB 3.0 ports - but we do not want to do all our productions from now on with macbooks only.

So if you have any experience regarding USB 3.0 and the mac pro : Please share.

Please make sure to include things like
What cards do you use, what OS do you have installed, wether it works with all cables or only special ones, wether it worked with different drives/cameras etc etc.
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Comments

14 comments

Date Votes
  • Daniel Schulz
    Did really nobody try that so far?
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  • Paul Steunebrink
    Tip: have you done a search on this forum already? Not sure, but it might give you a quicker answer.
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  • Daniel Schulz
    [quote="Paul_E" wrote:
    Tip: have you done a search on this forum already? Not sure, but it might give you a quicker answer.


    Yes, of course.

    Search for Mac Pro + D800
    Search for D800 USB 3.0

    The only thread indicating that - was the one i created.
    Well - of course i did not flip to all 45 pages.

    But i guess this is an interesting topic for all D800 users.
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  • paolo111
    hi all,
    with my mac book pro 17 mid 2009 i use a sonnet card via express 34 port: it works randomly with card lexar reader and rugged la cie but no way to connect the d800.
    i hope it helps.

    nobody have experience with new mbp15 no retina with usb3 and d800?
    thanks in advance
    paolo
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  • Daniel Schulz
    Hi Paolo - as already said in the original post of the thread, the new USB 3.0 macbook pro´s (with/without retina) work flawless with a D800. The files rush in like i would love them in my mac pro´s.
    Unfortunately the 5dm3 on the other hand does not tether over the new macbook pros - but that for apparently we can blame apple this time.

    But seriously - did nobody try USB 3.0 cards with a D800 on a mac pro yet?
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  • paolo111
    thanks daniel, sorry for my double check!
    best
    paolo
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  • Daniel Schulz
    A couple tests later :

    We tried 3 different USB 3.0 cards (PCIe).

    High Point RocketU Quad USB 3.0 for Mac
    HighPoint RocketU 1144A (appears to be the same as the one above)
    Sonnet Allegro USB 3.0

    With the latest drivers we could get significant speed boosts over several tested USB 3.0 drives compared to USB 2.0. USB outsmarted even on a test with a lacie rugged (firewire 800 + USB 3.0) the firewire connection by about 10% copy speed wich is good news for backups to cheaper harddrives.

    All tested drives worked on the first two - on the third not all drives did appear.

    Tethered shooting - NO CHANCE
    On all 3 cards no D800 could be found - there was not even an attempted connection try.

    But on a very surprizing side effect - the cheapest cable connection (original nikon and a 10 Euro no name extension cable) where speeding up tethering a lot compared to the top range Lindy cables.

    Conclusion - USB 3 Cards (at least the ones from HighPoint will give you a nice addition for backups to external drives.. but no tethered shooting over USB 3.0 - on mac pro machines.

    Tested on 10.6/10.7/10.8 - C1pro 6.4.3/6.4.4
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  • paolo111
    thanks daniel!
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  • R_Weber
    I can echo Daniels issues with tethering a D800 with a usb 3.0 PCIe board.

    Setup:
    10.7.4- C1Pro 6.4.3+4
    mid-2010 Mac Pro
    Sonnet USB 3.0 PCIe card- latest drivers installed
    Nikon D800- Firmware A; 1.00 B; 1.01, L; 1.004

    I can get USB 3 drives (Lacie Rugged and thumb drives) to read in the board without issue. When I try to tether there is no attempt to connect, nothing. The camera is recognized in the system profiler under USB devices.
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  • Daniel Schulz
    Is your system stable after the installation?
    I had so many breakdowns and stalling system crashes on the tested pro mac that i did return all three tested cards right away.
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  • R_Weber
    It's our main shoot station and we haven't had any system crashes with the board installed, however we don't use a lot of USB 3 peripherals with it. We mainly tether Leaf and Hasselblads over FW and haven't had any issues with stability. Besides the compatibility issues with some DSLRs both Nikon and Canon work well over USB 2.0.

    I just got done testing a D800, 6.4.4 and a 2.6 ghz i7 (latest model) MBP running 10.8.2 with various USB 3 extension cables. No issues with tethering, I was able to shoot about a frame a second.
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  • dale11833
    "I was able to shoot about a frame a second."

    Is that any faster than using the camera with USB 2.0?
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  • R_Weber
    It's significantly faster. The "frame a second" comment will sort of vary with how I ran my test. What I did was I held down the shutter for 60 seconds in Continuous High mode. After 60 seconds I let go of the shutter and let anything in the buffer finish transmitting, then counted the # of images shot. Each cable I ran the test five times, then averaged the # of images for the final.

    Tethertools USB 3.0 repeater- 56.8 frames
    Belkin USB 2.0 repeater- 31 frames

    Weber
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  • dale11833
    Excellent info, and much appreciated Daniel. thank you! Why canon did not upgrade to USB 3.0 is a mystery to me.
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