Is Intel or Nforce chipset better for RAID

[Padawan420]

i want to do RAID 5 in the new system i am building. i am wondering what chipset is better for raid. is either known to out perform the other? I know i could just get a raid card, but i really do not want to spend over $200 which leaves me with not many options. i have also read some reviews saying that on board raid works just as well, if not better, than the raid cards under $200.

also... would it be better to put my operating system on the raid 5 or on a separate drive? i do alot of web design, graphics, movies, music, basically a lot of files that are precious to me, so i want them on the raid 5 and backed up as well. so would you recommend putting the OS on the raid as well, or seperate?

thanks

 

[Farva]

i would put the OS on a seperate drive. as far as your work stuff goes, i would buy a decent raid card (unless you use linux, then software raid is good for you).

 

[Lamont Cranston]

I wouldnt put your OS on the Raid5 either. That would actually slow down your performance. Raid 5 is more for major storage in which you will need atleast 3 hard drives.

 

[Brothernod]

How does windows xp's software raid5 compare to intel and nvidia raid5?

Also, unless you know linux I really wouldn't reccomend linux software raid. You have a lot less recovery options when something goes bad than you would with a windows based raid.

 

[Padawan420]

thanks for the replies so far. i will be putting the OS on a seperate drive.

brothernod, i dont want to use windows xp raid. I am wondering if I was to do software raid provided by the motherboard, which chipset it better, intel or nvidia?

 

[drizzt81]

How does windows xp's software raid5 compare to intel and nvidia raid5?

XP does not come with software RAID5, you will need server for that. And yes, I am aware that there is an unsupported hack that replaces some system files for this. I just think that hacking the OS (and likely violating the EULA in the process) in order to activate a feature that ought to make a system more stable is quite backwards.

 

[Lazn_Work]

I have not seen a review for some time, but the Intel RAID 5 used to be better.

http://techreport.com/reviews/2005q4/chipset-raid/index.x?pg=26

 

[Padawan420]

thanks for that link lazn.

I was originally going to buy this high point rocket raid card http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/918/1/page_1_introduction/index.html

i saw benchmarks that showed intel and nvidia were better for raid then this card... and even saw that nvidia was better for raid 0.

is it possible for intel to be better at raid 5 and nvidia raid 0?

 

[drizzt81]

thanks for that link lazn.

I was originally going to buy this high point rocket raid card http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/918/1/page_1_introduction/index.html

i saw benchmarks that showed intel and nvidia were better for raid then this card... and even saw that nvidia was better for raid 0.

is it possible for intel to be better at raid 5 and nvidia raid 0?

For every testing configuration, we used RAID 0 with NCQ enabled for a level playing field.

I would say that most people would consider buying an add-in RAID card for R5, not R0. Also, ncq is detrimental to performance in most desktop scenarios, as evidenced by almost all of SR's benchmarks.

Here's a comparison of the Intel ICH7R vs the bigger brother 2320
http://tweakers.net/benchdb/testcom...1&TestcomboIDs[977]=1&DB=Nieuws&Query=Keyword

 

[swatbat]

I would say that most people would consider buying an add-in RAID card for R5, not R0. Also, ncq is detrimental to performance in most desktop scenarios, as evidenced by almost all of SR's benchmarks.

Pretty much. One real nice thing about an addon card though is if you have a raid controller fail it is usually less of a pain to find another card then the same motherboard. On the smaller small business servers we deploy where they don't have raid 5(just raid 1) we always run it off a seperate card just for that reason. Most of are servers though are raid 5 running off a card. We will also from time to time run raid 1 on the os drives and run raid 5 for data although most of the time we just put a partition on the raid 5 for the os.