PCI in new board vs pci-x in older for RAID

[Justintime]

Bit of a query, have 2 six port Adaptec PCI-X cards (2610SA) that need to be put in a 20 SATA 4U array, problem is i only currently have a dual PIII server board with PCI-X slots as i'm using the opteron board on another project. Was going to put those two 6 port cards along with a 965p DS3 with SIX onboard plus a 2 port SATA card for 20. The drives will mostly be operating JBOD with software mirroring between pairs (or possibly RAID1 between pairs if the card supports it) and accessed infrequently, monthly or every two weeks for a backup. Will running the 2 PCI-X cards on a 32-bit PCI on a much much newer platform (though still old PCI) hamper them much and will the older PIII PCI-X slots be faster?

TIA!

 

[rpstewart]

You'll get more bandwidth from the PCI-X slots.

Regular 32bit PCI will give you 133MB/s shared between the slots, you could saturate that with 2 drives, let alone 12. Depending on the architecture of the PIII board the PCI-X slots will give at least double that and maybe four times if the slots are 66MHz (the card will support 33MHz or 66MHz busses). If you're really lucky then you may have multiple PCI-X busses which would mean you would mean not having to share bandwidth between the controllers.

 

[Justintime]

Yep, they're independant 64 bit 66Mhz slots, looks like this will be a fair bit faster! Cheers.