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Which built in RAID controller is better

dvsman

dvsman

2[H]4U
Joined
Dec 2, 2009
Messages
3,628
Hi everyone,

I am putting the finishing touches on my current build (see sig) and am wondering which RAID controller would be better to do for my main raid / boot setup - the intel or the marvell?

I was originally going to hang a RAID 0 off of each, 2x Solid3 SSDs (/120gbs) and 2x Velociraptor HD (/450gbs) but through some trial and error have found that this mobo doesn't seem to support having 2 (SATA III/6gb) raids connected at the same time - which sucks but what can you do?

I'm going to leave the Velociraptors as separate drives and just use them for storage on the other Sata III controller but does anyone have any advice on which controller to put the boot RAID 0 SSD array on - I.E. which would perform better?
 
The intel ports, the SATA3_0_1 ports on that board for 6gb/s or SATA_2_3_4_5 for 3gb/s, not the SATA_6_7 ports which are the marvell controller ports.
 
I would put the two RAID0 on Intel ports, it should work.
 
Thanks guys! Right now I've got the 2x Solid 3 SSDs on the intel Sata III and the 2x Velociraptors on the Marvell Sata III (since they are Sata III capable). I'm not running anything off of the Sata II ports (my optical drive is an external USB). Unfortunately, there are only 2x intel Sata III ports - the rest are all Sata II, so if I want my velociraptor's on Sata III they have to go on the Marvell ports.

Any suggestions on benchmarks I should hit up? I tried Crystal Disk mark but the results were not as impressive as I had hoped for a raid 0 Sata III setup.
 
Marvell SATA3 is slower than Intel SATA2. And hard drives don't benefit from SATA3 anyway.
 
dvsman said:
Thanks guys! Right now I've got the 2x Solid 3 SSDs on the intel Sata III and the 2x Velociraptors on the Marvell Sata III (since they are Sata III capable). I'm not running anything off of the Sata II ports (my optical drive is an external USB). Unfortunately, there are only 2x intel Sata III ports - the rest are all Sata II, so if I want my velociraptor's on Sata III they have to go on the Marvell ports.

Any suggestions on benchmarks I should hit up? I tried Crystal Disk mark but the results were not as impressive as I had hoped for a raid 0 Sata III setup.
Click to expand...

Pull the vraptors off the marvell sata3 and put it on the intel sata2. Even the vrapts in r0 won't saturate a sata2 connection, and you will be using a stable, on die controller vs a flakey pciex1 probably connected controller.
 
Thanks for the advice mwroobel - did just that and it does seem more stable. Plus it works as a raid0 array.
 
OK - after some overnight testing ... good news and bad. Works and seems more stable, plus quicker (gut feel) but unstable with 2 raids - even one Sata III and one on Sata II. Tried with Intel RST and without, seemed to work slightly longer without but still eventually crashed - this is with CPU OC'ed only to about 3.9/4.0 ghz

Now back to 1 raid0 on intel sataIII and 2 single HDs on intel sataII. Seems to be the quickest and most stable of all the combinations.
 
Yep - noob mistake on me :-P

Had some problems with the windows temp / virtual mem file (kept resetting at each boot) but seems to be straightened out now.

Back to the drawing board on the OC though. Only got this thing put together a few days ago so still tweaking it. Any thoughts / advice / pointers would be appreciated!
 
dvsman said:
C'mon - where's the fun in that :-P
Click to expand...
Unfortunately nowhere. :D

OCing doesn't seem to hurt RAID0 arrays but I guess a Matrix array is a little too much to ask for an onboard chipset.

Now, if ya wanted to run with the big boy's PCIe cards you may have a chance. :)
 
Hey, if you are overclocking, check your PCIe bus speed - maybe it is too high? It may be possible to keep it at a constant 100 MHz when overclocking. Maybe you even need to increase the voltage of the northbridge or southbridge (I forget which one ICH is on) to regain RAID stability? It'll be fun running QuickPar on your array to see which settings work! :D

Interesting Trivia: Did you know that if you increase the busclk frequency that it'll change the refresh rate of your videocard? At least on my Geforce 260, if I increase from 100 MHz to 101 MHz, the refresh rate also increases slightly! This makes it a nightmare to do custom resolutions with precise framerate for 23.976 hz and 59.94 hz! :p
 
Rectal Prolapse said:
Interesting Trivia: Did you know that if you increase the busclk frequency that it'll change the refresh rate of your videocard? At least on my Geforce 260, if I increase from 100 MHz to 101 MHz, the refresh rate also increases slightly! This makes it a nightmare to do custom resolutions with precise framerate for 23.976 hz and 59.94 hz! :p
Click to expand...

Rectal - that is because everything is a derivative of base expected frequencies. Even if you have a board which doesn't let you manually clock the bus, you can use Powerstrip to compensate.
 
Powerstrip doesn't work properly with the newer NVIDIA cards (after the 7000 series). It's not a big deal though as I can spend (waste) an hour fiddling with custom resolutions as long as I keep BCLK at 100.
 
Rectal Prolapse said:
Powerstrip doesn't work properly with the newer NVIDIA cards (after the 7000 series). It's not a big deal though as I can spend (waste) an hour fiddling with custom resolutions as long as I keep BCLK at 100.
Click to expand...

Rec- Powerstrip works fine with newer cards, I have a 9800 in a HTPC connected to a 9" Gun CRT Projection 65" Display. Took really fucked up settings to the thousandth of a Hz to get it right at 1920x1080 but is a GREAT picture.
 
Actually - it doesn't for my Geforce 260, and was flaky on the 8800GT (but better - oh an dthe 9800 basically the same as the 8800 but faster clock). The NVIDIA driver would periodically reset the refresh rate to its default - usually within an hour.

The author of powerstrip himself said it doesn't work properly...I know, I asked him!

Anyhow, to get back on topic - usually the Intel SATA 3 is the best to use from what I read. I remember early benchmarks on the Marvells where they didn't perform any better than SATA2s with the SSDs, but that could have been driver problems.
 
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