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RAID - On-Board (955x) vs. Controller Card

B

BassKozz

Limp Gawd
Joined
Nov 10, 2005
Messages
311
I was planning on running a Raid Array w/ the following motherboard, using it's on board SATA Raid Support:
Intel BOXD955XBKLKR Socket T (LGA 775) Intel 955X ATX

I am also considering using a PCI-E SATA Raid Controller card

HARD DRIVES:
2 - Western Digital Raptor 74GB 10,000RPM For Operating System & Applications (Raid 1)
Start w/ 3 upgrade as funds are available to 4: Western Digital 250gb RE drives(5yr warrenty :D) drives For Media and File Server (Raid 5)



My question is, how much of a (performance) difference will I notice using a PCI, or PCI-E controller card vs. the on-board raid controller ?

Thanks for all the help,
-BassKozz
 
from what I understand, onboard RAID relies a little on the CPU, decreasing (slightly) performance in other tasks...
 
Cheaper controller cards also rely on the CPU as well, especially for RAID 5.

I'm guessing you'll run the 2 raptors off the sil controller, and the 250gbs off the intel one.

 
rayman2k2 said:
from what I understand, onboard RAID relies a little on the CPU, decreasing (slightly) performance in other tasks...
Click to expand...

Is there anyway to tell me how much "a little" is ? Is it something I should be concerned about?
Have there ever been tests ran on this sort of thing? (url's please)

IanG said:
Cheaper controller cards also rely on the CPU as well, especially for RAID 5.

I'm guessing you'll run the 2 raptors off the sil controller, and the 250gbs off the intel one.

Click to expand...
That is correct... because the intel one supports Raid 5&SATA II, and the other (SLi)doesn't (only raid 1 or 0, and SATA150)

Is it worth it to buy a controller?
How much would I have to spend on a controller to see a noticable difference ?

Thanks guys,
-BassKozz
 
Where to begin.

If you use a raid 0 or 1 array, it's not worth the extra expense for a controller. Raid 5 is the only kind with a significant CPU hit, and with well-written drivers it too can be negligible.

If you're building a raid 5 array to put music and movies and that kind of thing on, speed is really not a concern. Think about this. When do you ever need more than 10 MB/s? A single DVD is around 10 mbit, or about an eighth of that. So you'd need to be playing 10 DVDs at the same time before you'd start hitting bottlenecks. And software raid typically isn't even that slow - I get 30-40 MB/s on my array.

 
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