2019 Mac Pro vs Mac Studio M1 Ultra: USB Speed Differs with many things, such as OWC Envoy Pro EX 8TB USB-C SSD

2022-07-14 • SEND FEEDBACK |
Related: 2019 Mac Pro, Apple, Apple Mac Studio, Apple Silicon, Mac Pro, Other World Computing, OWC Envoy Pro, OWC Envoy Pro EX, SSD, USB, USB-C

re: OWC Envoy Pro EX 8TB USB-C SSD: 8TB of Maxed-Out Speed

It is a curious fact that USB speed on the Apple Mac Studio is not necessarily better than older Intel-based Macs. No, I’m not referring to the front ports on the Apple Mac Studio M1 Max, which are only USB-C.

Here, the Apple Mac Studio M1 Ultra is clearly inferior to the 2019 Mac Pro

The top red and green lines are the 2019 Mac Pro. The USB-C bus is maxed-out or nearly so, which is exactly what you hope for.

The orange line and choppy green lines are the Apple Mac Studio M1 Ultra. The Mac Pro is 7.4% faster on writes, and 10% faster on reads, and with far more consistent performance. Same drive, same cable! This does not seem to be related to the drive, but to some foible of M1 Macs.

          2019 Mac Pro: 1048/1032 write/read MB/sec
Mac Studio M1 Ultra: 976/936 write/read MB/sec

8TB OWC Envoy Pro EX USB-C SSD tested using the fill-volume command of diglloydTools Disktester.

CLICK TO VIEW: OWC SSD Storage

Vertical axis MB/sec. Horizontal axis shows % of volume capacity, e.g., 50% of 8TB volume is 4TB into capacity.

Sustained write and read speed for 320GB OWC Atlas Pro Ultra CFExpress Type B camera card