Help with raid-5 setup please

[JKEEZO]

Alright so here goes...

I have an asus p5w-dh deluxe with 3 74gb raptors, 1 for xp, 1 for games, and 1 for itunes/music (I know this last one is probably excessive but I really don't like the apple software on my main drive for some reason). I also have a Seagate 320gb 7200.10 for storage that is running out of space quickly at the moment.

I want to buy 2 or 3 more 7200.10's and set them up in a raid 5 array. So I'm looking into buying a raid card to set up the raid 5 on but I have a slight problem. I have 2x x1900xt's in crossfire which leaves 2 pci slots and 1 pci-e x1 slot accessable. I really want to go hardware raid but I can't find anything that is hardware for pci or pci-e x1.

The best options I have found are
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?item=N82E16816118015
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16816102080
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115029&Tpk=rocketraid%2b2300

LSI 1504064 PCI, Promise FastTrak TX4310 PCI , and HighPoint RocketRAID 2300 PCI-E x1

The big question I have is will the software raid affect me a lot because I'm going to be using raid-5? I have a core2 E6600 running at 3.5ghz with 2gigs of corsair.

If anyone has suggestions on which one of the cards would be best or another card that I have missed it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

 

[JKEEZO]

On second look I see that the LSI has an Integrated I/O processor and 64 MB of integrated ECC SDRAM memory. I'm guessing this is just partial hardware raid. Would this one be easier on my processor? It's not Sata II but I don't think that should make a difference.

 

[unhappy_mage]

Cross the Promise off your list.

The Highpoint is software raid, but it's plenty fast and fairly light on CPU usage. The LSI is full hardware raid, but it's twice as expensive. You could get a 8-port Highpoint for very close to that price, and it'll expand the raid 5 volume for you if you need more space - put another disk on it, tell it to expand, come back in a day.

 

[JKEEZO]

Cross the Promise off your list.

The Highpoint is software raid, but it's plenty fast and fairly light on CPU usage. The LSI is full hardware raid, but it's twice as expensive. You could get a 8-port Highpoint for very close to that price, and it'll expand the raid 5 volume for you if you need more space - put another disk on it, tell it to expand, come back in a day.

Why do you say to cross the promise off the list? I'm going to go for 3x500gb seagates to start. I was going to match the 320 but I'll match that one and give it to my sister (she needs raid-1 for her work).