Raid question...

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FIDDYOWNZ

Gawd
Joined
Dec 10, 2006
Messages
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Okay so I'm gonna setup RAID for my new pc (See sig) and I wanted to stripe it, since it speeds up load times. I don't care if I lose all my data ( Q_Q ) cause it's just a quick windows reload. and I decided to take advantage of the onboard raid controller...

So say I have 2 drives that work at the same time, if I had 4 would it be faster? Since all drives can work at the same time?

these are the drives...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822144415 - (x2, or x4 if I decide to do four...)
 
I think Angry Games (DFI-Street) did some extensive testing with multiple drives on RAID-0.

From what I remember the sweet spot was 3 drives for RAID-0. Adding a fourth or more drives gave very little improvement.
 
Okay so maybe I'll go 3 120's with the onbooard RAID controller. Oh, btw should I get an addon RAID contoller card? I heard the onboard ones wheren't so hot...
 
I've always used on-board RAID controllers and have had very good luck with them. Many times the on-board controllers are the very same chips the add-on controllers are based on. I did have an add-on Highpoint ATA RAID controller, and it worked fine as well (still running it in my old server), but no better than the on-board controllers IMHO.

I'm currently running RAID-0 on the on-board DS3 JMicron controller. Many seem to not like it, but it's been running fine for me. I think some people just get confused on how to create RAID arrays and loading the controller drivers properly.
 
Tempest said:
Here's a SATA PCI-E raid controller that blows the doors off of onboard raid controllers:

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

Basically it has the advantage of using the PCI-E bus instead of the SATA interface on the motherboard.
Click to expand...
I've heard great things about that brand of card, but how much faster can it be if the drives themselves attach via the SATA interface that has no affect on drive performance anyways? I understand they have their own processors which would be superior to using your CPU. Also, doesn't the PCIe bus have to interface at the chipset, which is where the onboard controller already resides and so therefore, how could it(onboard) be any slower?
 
I've heard great things about that brand of card, but how much faster can it be if the drives themselves attach via the SATA interface that has no affect on drive performance anyways? I understand they have their own processors which would be superior to using your CPU. Also, doesn't the PCIe bus have to interface at the chipset, which is where the onboard controller already resides and so therefore, how could it(onboard) be any slower?
Click to expand...

Great question!

Correct me if i'm wrong, but i'm pretty sure the SATA interface on the motherboard still utilizes the PCI bus. According to the below article....using the PCI-Express bus gives 3-4 times the performance of a standard 32-bit PCI based RAID controller. This article is dated from 2005, however, it should shed some light on the answers you seek:

http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_content.asp?id=arecapcie&page=1
 
Tempest said:
Great question!

Correct me if i'm wrong,
Click to expand...
You are wrong. The 590SLI chipset most certainly has southbridge integrated SATA ports. The areca card may offer performance improvements due to its onboard cache.
 
I personally don't know of any SATA controllers included in a chipset that reside on the PCI bus. Add-on on controllers such as the Promise chip on my old Asus A8V Deluxe was on the PCI bus and therefore it was always better to use the VIA controller integrated into the chipset to avoid the PCI bus limitation. NF2 and NF4 boards are also chipset integrated and aren't on the PCI bus. I'd still love to hear how such a card provides conclusive benefits over onboard controllers from anyone with detailed info.
 
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