Onboard RAID vs. RAID PCI Card

[xxshawn672xx]

Which is faster?
A built on Raid controller on a MSI board or a separate PCI Raid Controller ($50 range)?

Going for speed, striping @ RAID-0

edit: I'm talking about WD Raptors here, if it helps?

[j00fek]

most boards that are out offer raid0 onboard. id say onboard must be faster ;)

[Dark Prodigy]

Hardware RAID cards offer better performance and provide better recovery capabilities in the event of drive failure vs. software RAID controllers you find on many motherboards. Most desktop motherboard RAID solutions are software-based. The RAID controllers such as nVidia's MCP in the nForce 4 chipset are pretty much 'dumb' controllers that push RAID processing functions to the host CPU.

Hardware RAID cards have their own local RAID processor onboard, plus dedicated onboard cache for full hardware offloading of RAID-processing functions. The performance advantages of dedicated hardware resource for RAID functionality is and always has been obvious, it might be slightly overkill for average home users.

[drizzt81]

the OP is talking about RAID-0. I challenge anyone to show me a PCI (not express not extended) based controller that outperforms (in HDTach) the nVidia chipset implementation, especially with 2 or more raptors.


Note: this post is not trying to endorse RAID-0 on the desktop nor is it arguing that the PCI bottleneck is a factor that limits the desktop performance of a RAID-0 array.

[xxshawn672xx]

The reason I ask is because my motherboard does not support Raid, so I could either go with, PCI Raid Card or buy a newer mobo...

Going for performance, Raid 0

[drizzt81]

Let me ask you this, what applications are you running that you need to speed up? If you are a gamer, how much would you be willing to pay for what would be at most a 1-2% decrease in loading times?

[xxshawn672xx]

Yes I'm a gamer, BF2, etc.
Also running Photoshop CS2, Office 2003, etc.


Only 1-2% increase when running TWO Raptors in RAID-0????
Are you sure...

[Slartibartfast]

A basic cheap-o pci raid card is no better than onboad, and both are inferior to true hardware raid (as has been stated). Of course, true hardware raid comes at a pretty big price premium.

[drizzt81]

Yes I'm a gamer, BF2, etc.
Also running Photoshop CS2, Office 2003, etc.


Only 1-2% increase when running TWO Raptors in RAID-0????
Are you sure...
I am saying that the difference between running a PCI raid-card and a chipset attached raid solution will be ~1-2% in real-world situations. In HD-Tach it will make more of a difference.

Photoshop may benefit nicely form RAID-0, I am not entirely familiar with that application.

[DougLite]

Yes I'm a gamer, BF2, etc.
Also running Photoshop CS2, Office 2003, etc.


Only 1-2% increase when running TWO Raptors in RAID-0????
Are you sure...How about a decrease in titles like FarCry and WoW?

http://www.hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1028808616&postcount=1

Do the HDTach results you've seen of Raptors in RAID-0 issue random access requests to both drives simultanously? Does HDTach issue multi sector random access requests? Does HDTach test the buffer performance of drive(s)? Does HDTach account for locality?

No. No. No. No.

Do games load files larger than 128KB? (typically the largest block size available on a RAID-0 array) Do games randomly access both drives in a RAID-0 array? Does your drive's buffer read ahead other nearby files, guessing that they they may be needed? Are a game's files typically spread over a small portion of the physical disk area?

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

High linear transfer rates != high desktop application performance.

[xxshawn672xx]

How about a decrease in titles like FarCry and WoW?

http://www.hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1028808616&postcount=1

Do the HDTach results you've seen of Raptors in RAID-0 issue random access requests to both drives simultanously? Does HDTach issue multi sector random access requests? Does HDTach test the buffer performance of drive(s)? Does HDTach account for locality?

No. No. No. No.

Do games load files larger than 128KB? (typically the largest block size available on a RAID-0 array) Do games randomly access both drives in a RAID-0 array? Does your drive's buffer read ahead other nearby files, guessing that they they may be needed? Are a game's files typically spread over a small portion of the physical disk area?

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

High linear transfer rates != high desktop application performance.


Was there an answer in there somewhere??


Should I run:

1x Raptor
OR
2x Raptors in RAID-0 with come cheappy (sub $100) PCI Raid Controller
???


Thanks for the help!

[Lazn_Work]

Was there an answer in there somewhere??


Should I run:

1x Raptor
OR
2x Raptors in RAID-0 with come cheappy (sub $100) PCI Raid Controller
???


Thanks for the help!

I would run one Raptor with your OS and games that you play loaded on it, and one large storage drive.

Then make sure that any applications that made drive requests in the background are on the large drive not the Raptor that you are playing from. (eg: if you run bittorents have it run from and save to the large drive, that way it's writes will not affect your game)

==>Lazn

[UltimaParadox]

I would run one Raptor with your OS and games that you play loaded on it, and one large storage drive.

Then make sure that any applications that made drive requests in the background are on the large drive not the Raptor that you are playing from. (eg: if you run bittorents have it run from and save to the large drive, that way it's writes will not affect your game)

==>Lazn

I agree completely with this theory. It has been shown many times over that RAID-0 does not offer any real benefit in gaming, considering the increased cost and failure rate.

Article is getting dated now, but still relevant...
http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=2101&p=5

If you haven't gotten the hint by now, we'll spell it out for you: there is no place, and no need for a RAID-0 array on a desktop computer. The real world performance increases are negligible at best and the reduction in reliability, thanks to a halving of the mean time between failure, makes RAID-0 far from worth it on the desktop.

[drizzt81]

Was there an answer in there somewhere??


Should I run:

1x Raptor
OR
2x Raptors in RAID-0 with come cheappy (sub $100) PCI Raid Controller
???


Thanks for the help!

yes there was an answer in there:

Buy two raptors total (A + B)

A will have this:
WinXP
Photoshop
other apps.
Original Photo files, i.e. data source for PS.
a swapfile

B will have this:
A partition to be used as "scratchdisk" for PS (if that is possible) this partition will be at the beginning of the HDD
Games
a swapfile

[xxshawn672xx]

yes there was an answer in there:

Buy two raptors total (A + B)

A will have this:
WinXP
Photoshop
other apps.
Original Photo files, i.e. data source for PS.
a swapfile

B will have this:
A partition to be used as "scratchdisk" for PS (if that is possible) this partition will be at the beginning of the HDD
Games
a swapfile




Yeah that's actually a good idea! Thanks so much!!

[drizzt81]

Yeah that's actually a good idea! Thanks so much!!
not a problem, though I felt that my post was most likely wayyy off topic.

[electech98]

Or if you are going to put a controller card in your PC anyway, you could spring for a more expensive card that also does RAID5, and put 3 WD Raptor drives in there. That way, you have both speed AND data protection in case one of the drives fails.

Something like this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16816131003

But, as you can see, it is a pricier solution. That's what I hope to do one day, though.

[drizzt81]

Or if you are going to put a controller card in your PC anyway, you could spring for a more expensive card that also does RAID5, and put 3 WD Raptor drives in there. That way, you have both speed AND data protection in case one of the drives fails.

Something like this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16816131003

But, as you can see, it is a pricier solution. That's what I hope to do one day, though.
yes, but even that solution is quite likely slower than my proposal. Additionally, it'd be more expensive by a lot.

[zpert]

yes there was an answer in there:

Buy two raptors total (A + B)

A will have this:
WinXP
Photoshop
other apps.
Original Photo files, i.e. data source for PS.
a swapfile

B will have this:
A partition to be used as "scratchdisk" for PS (if that is possible) this partition will be at the beginning of the HDD
Games
a swapfile

Hey, I'm going to have 2 WD 150GB Raptors too, thanks for the advice to everyone and Drizz for the tips. I have a question tho. I've heard of a swapfile but I don't know what it is. Can you fill me in on what it is and what it does? Thanks a lot. Also, would it be wise to have WinXP on one partition by itself? I didn't know if that'd make it faster. Any other tips on partition sizes, how to partition them, as far as what sizes and what to put on each one, would be appreciated. I'm just not sure the pros and cons of partitioning, if it makes it perform better if you do it a certain way, or if it's just for security reasons. thanks guys.
-Paul

[drizzt81]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_memory#Windows_example
wiki with a bit of swap file info.
ARP on swap file optimization:
http://www.adriansrojakpot.com/Speed_Demonz/Swapfile_Optimization/Swapfile_Optimization_01.htm

I am not a big fan of partitioning, but mostly for no particular reason.

[zpert]

ok, thanks drizz... that's a pretty big article on rojakpot, i'm intimidated to start reading it, haha. would you mind giving me a real brief explaination? I read that the pagefile basically uses the hard drive as RAM if the computer runs out of physical RAM, but it's a lot slower. I'm getting 2GB of RAM, so I shouldn't need a swapfile then? thanks

[drizzt81]

ok, thanks drizz... that's a pretty big article on rojakpot, i'm intimidated to start reading it, haha. would you mind giving me a real brief explaination? I read that the pagefile basically uses the hard drive as RAM if the computer runs out of physical RAM, but it's a lot slower. I'm getting 2GB of RAM, so I shouldn't need a swapfile then? thanks
Since some things depends on a swapfile, it is generally a good idea to have one. The question is: with 2GB of RAM, there will be little swapping, so is it worth your time to try and optimize for those cases?