Thunderbolt 3 vs Thunderbolt 2 Drive Throughput

[1957GT]

I just bought the latest 5k iMac. For a drive that I will be connecting to it, I was looking at the Promise Pegasus3 R6 (Thunderbolt 3) but found the Promise Pegasus2 (Thunderbolt 2) for about $1000 less. Would I see any advantage from a Thunderbolt 3 version than the Thunderbolt 2 version? Isn’t the limit the drive speed, not Thunderbolt?

I read that 5k monitors need Thunderbolt 3 speeds, but this doesn’t apply here since the iMac is both computer and monitor… this would only in matter if I wanted connect an external 5k monitor to the Pegasus, correct?

Thanks!

 

[Tyranicus]

I doubt you would see much, if any, increase in throughput using Thunderbolt 3 over Thunderbolt 2 for this. Even in a RAID, I don’t believe you’re going to get drive read and write speeds fast enough to saturate the bus. You’re correct about monitor support. That only matters if you are daisychaining a 5K monitor to the enclosure. Even if you did have a monitor to connect, you can just plug it into the other port in the iMac.

 

[Commodus]

Unless the new drive is so fast that you'd saturate Thunderbolt 2, you probably won't need the newer model. You'll need an adapter, but otherwise you should be fine. I would only get a TB3 drive if I expected to daisy chain other devices off of it (and thus want more headroom) or saw a significant performance boost from the newer model.