Cheap SATA controller that will not bottleneck?

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valorouswon

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Hello again,

Thanks again for all the help with my current LSI adapter. I'm going to return it since my IOPs are bottlenecked. I'm wondering if any of you have experience with another controller that will definitely not bottleneck my SSD's IOPs.
I need something for only JBOD, and with good drivers. This is the only thing I could find. My budget is $200.

SUPERMICRO AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 PCI-Express 2.0 x8 SATA / SAS 8-Port Controller Card - Newegg.ca

Here is my current LSI, that's giving me shit IOPs at sata 2 speeds, and for some reason my 840/850 evos are out performing my 840 PROs. All firmware/software is up to date with my LSI and SSDs.

New IT Mode LSI 9211-8i SAS SATA 8-port PCI-E 6Gb/s Controller Card

Specs:

3930k
GA UD5 x79
64gb Gskill 1600
10 new ssds
 
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I say there is not a better controller card than the LSI ones. However if you can use Intel motherboard ports the Intel ports will have the lowest latency.
 
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I only have two SATA 3 ports reserved for my OS and another SSD with intense samples, the rest are SATA 2 and crappy outdated Marvel ports. I've also read it's better to split up my SSDs for the type of work I do, that was all these huge samples are not fighting to get through the master bus. Sometimes I wish I just made beats so I could buy a laptop and call it a day:

 
What CPU and RAM type do you have? It may be cheaper and easier to just replace your motherboard with a newer one compatible with your current technology as a drop in replacement to get the additional SATA3 motherboard ports, or sell your board, CPU and RAM and upgrade. You are already considering spending several hundred dollars, you will get far more by these upgrades than with a new HBA.
 
No one need LSI 9300 for SATA drives. The SAS2008 chipset can do 350k iops and up to 3200MB/s
 
Yeah, a newer platform could also give you an upgrade path to m.2, which supports transfer rates of 32Gbps.

And even barring that, you still get massive amounts of SATA 6 ports.
 
Specs:

3930k
GA UD5 X79
Gskill 1600mz 64gb cas 10

I would upgrade my chipset and rig, but the new haswell or broadwell cpu's are pathetic in terms or performance boost, since AMD fell off these new CPU's are barely better than my 3930k. There was a revamped version of my gigabyte mobo, but it still didn't have any more SATA 3 ports. The marvel ports are advertised as 6gb but it's fall advertisement, they really have sata 2 speeds.

I'm wondering if this will give me better results:

Brand New LSI MegaRAID 9261-8i PCI-E 8-port 6Gb/s SATA/SAS RAID Controller Card
 
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diizzy said:
That board is based on a very old Marvell controller, the M1015 (LSI 2008) is much faster but it's getting dated.

LSI SAS 9207-8i Storage controller- 600 MBps

LSI SAS 9300-4i Storage controller- 4800 MBps

9300-4i is using a faster chipset but it also "only" carries 4-ports, keep in mind that compatibility is an issue with LSI/Avago cards.
Click to expand...


I just bought the LSI 9211 8i and the benches are giving me SATA 2 speeds with IOPs, disappointing going to return it.

What about this?

Brand New LSI MegaRAID 9261-8i PCI-E 8-port 6Gb/s SATA/SAS RAID Controller Card
 
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TBH, I think I won't see high IOPs unless I get a SAS 3.0 card, and those are too expensive.
 
valorouswon said:
Specs:

3930k
GA UD5 X79
Gskill 1600mz 64gb cas 10

I would upgrade my chipset and rig, but the new haswell or broadwell cpu's are pathetic in terms or performance boost, since AMD fell off these new CPU's are barely better than my 3930k. There was a revamped version of my gigabyte mobo, but it still didn't have any more SATA 3 ports. The marvel ports are advertised as 6gb but it's fall advertisement, they really have sata 2 speeds.

I'm wondering if this will give me better results:

Brand New LSI MegaRAID 9261-8i PCI-E 8-port 6Gb/s SATA/SAS RAID Controller Card
Click to expand...

Yeah, that was a bad time to buy E-series, they just really didn't try with x79.

You're screwed no matter what. Sell your system and get a new x99 board?>
 
As I mentioned above and defaultuser reiterated, you are kind of screwed with x79/LGA2011 (only 2x Intel/CPU SATA3 ports). You can keep trying with other HBA's, but the best bet is to replace your hardware with x99 (which in this particular case and for your particular purpose will most likely give you the lowest latency/most thruput) and enjoy the marginal CPU speed improvement and power savings.
 
Ahhh I just bought 64gb of DDR3 last year, lower cas is good and a new chipset would be too expensive with little benefits. Right now read IOPs are most important with my work, and I'm averaging around 70k with this LSI and 40k in SATA 2 ports. LSI writes are lower at 40-60k.

mwroobel said:
As I mentioned above and defaultuser reiterated, you are kind of screwed with x79/LGA2011 (only 2x Intel/CPU SATA3 ports). You can keep trying with other HBA's, but the best bet is to replace your hardware with x99 (which in this particular case and for your particular purpose will most likely give you the lowest latency/most thruput) and enjoy the marginal CPU speed improvement and power savings.
Click to expand...
 
Well, since nobody except Intel takes IOPs seriously, you'd better give x99 a serious consideration, or suck it up and stop bitching.

You invested in an outdated platform, you deal with it. You can get a 5820k motherboard combo plus 64GB DDR4 ram for under $700 at Microcenter, so we're not talking "break the bank."

Micro Center - Computers and Electronics

That also allows you an upgrade path to PCIe m.2, which has even lower latency than SATA 6 = higher potential IOPs.

Everyone else making high-end SATA controllers is targeting hard drive RAID.

Or if speed was so important, why did you go with SATA SSDs? You could have gotten any of the many PCIe slot SSDs.
 
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Why not Broadwell-E if I'm going to upgrade? Or wait for this mysterious Skylake-E if that's even a thing. I'm alright for now, my music software is running very nicely, I would probably not notice much of a difference with higher IOPs. The point is I paid for something and wanted better results, there's always some bottleneck bullshit that conflicts advertised speeds, just like my marvel 6gb ports on this motherboard that are a lie. However I do like the idea of having my OS in a SATA 3 port, and not having my 9 SSDs all fighting through the SATA bay - the inside of my case is also a lot neater.

PCIe might be overkill at this point, not sure the software can even use this power to its full potential, just like it can't use a 10core chip 100% efficiently. Also multiple PCIe SSDs will be too expensive.



defaultluser said:
Well, since nobody except Intel takes IOPs seriously, you'd better give x99 a serious consideration, or suck it up and stop bitching.

You invested in an outdated platform, you deal with it. You can get a 5820k motherboard combo plus 64GB DDR4 ram for under $700 at Microcenter, so we're not talking "break the bank."

Micro Center - Computers and Electronics

That also allows you an upgrade path to PCIe m.2, which has even lower latency than SATA 6 = higher potential IOPs.

Everyone else making high-end SATA controllers is targeting hard drive RAID.

Or if speed was so important, why did you go with SATA SSDs? You could have gotten any of the many PCIe slot SSDs.
Click to expand...
 
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