Queries over SATA 1 and SATA 2 controller cards

naro · 31 Dec 2006 at 14:04

hey guys,

i'm researching about SATA controller cards.

Are those PCI-X controller cards really better than PCI controller cards? Will the performance for the PCI controller cards be poor?

thanks

naro · 3 Jan 2007 at 07:10

anyone can help??

semi-pro waster · 3 Jan 2007 at 09:47

PCI-X is designed to be used in servers generally and isn't commonly available, your motherboard doesn't have it for instance. Perhaps you mean PCI-E (PCI-Express)? Which your motherboard does support.

If so then a PCI-E controller card has more bandwidth available (250mb/s per lane) to it than the original PCI standard (I think it was up to 133mb/s max) but whether you would max out the bandwidth available on the original PCI standard depends on a) how fast your hard drive(s) were and b) what else you had relying on the PCI bus.

If you have PCI-E slot(s) free and and want a controller card then it makes sense to get a PCI-E one, if you don't but have PCI slots free then get one of the PCI versions and don't worry about it too much.

Quick Wikipedia link if you want to read a bit more as it goes into more depth than I can.

naro · 5 Jan 2007 at 05:13

i'm intending use my AOpen i915Ga-HFS as my server. its main aim is to act as a file server where i can stream my music and movies from.

THe mobo has 1 x PCIe-x16 slot and 3 x PCI slots. May i know whats the price difference between PCIe SATA controller cards and PCI cards?

semi-pro waster · 5 Jan 2007 at 11:05

On OcUK it appears to be about £5 extra for a 2 port card and roughly £10 extra for the 4 port card to go for the PCI-E version. If you are going for the 4 port card and will be filling all ports on the card (or already have a bit on the PCI bus) then I'd imagine it is worth getting the PCI-E version because it has more potential bandwidth but this is just (vaguely) educated guesswork.

rpstewart · 5 Jan 2007 at 11:56

The PCIe cards are certainly worth looking at as a way round the bottleneck of the PCI bus, a 1x card (the 2 port one) can run up to 250Mb/s whereas the 4 port card is 4x and hence can go to 1Gb/s. The problem with the 4x card is that naro would have to use the 16x PCIe slot thereby removing the possibility of having PCIe graphics although for a server the onboard stuff should be fine. There is another slot on the board which looks like a 1x PCIe slot but it's not mentioned in any of the documentation. If it is PCIe then it should happily take one of the 2 port cards.

michael baxter · 5 Jan 2007 at 12:05

The bottleneck of any hard disk subsystem are the drives themselves, I would be surprized if there is any performance benefit between the PCI and PCIe interfaces in this case.

If you want improved bandwidth, you may be better going the RAID 0 route, and get yourself 2 or more identical drives.

I'm using a 4 drive RAID 0 setup with a gigabit NIC in my domestic media server, and it provides lightning performance. In fact, faster than a single locally attached drive!

Best wishes,

Michael

rpstewart · 5 Jan 2007 at 12:46

michael baxter said:
If you want improved bandwidth, you may be better going the RAID 0 route, and get yourself 2 or more identical drives.

Agreed, RAID0 will give you better bandwidth from the disks but that is wasted if the controller is strangled by the bus it is connected to. If, like the OP, you don't have onboard RAID support then you're limited to using add-in cards which mean bus limitations. PCIe not only provides more bandwidth but is a more futureproof solution in a world where PCI slots may soon be a thing of the past.

michael baxter · 5 Jan 2007 at 12:55

Hi RPStewart,

I wouldn't disagree with your points, but my 4x HD RAID 0 setup is on a PCI card (RocketRAID404) and I get a smidge short of a 4x bandwidth improvement over an identical single drive. However, the drives are about 3 years old, so for the latest drives your point may be true.

Sure, the PCI is on it's way out, I wouldn't disagree. But does it matter in this case?

Happy New Year to you!

Michael

naro · 5 Jan 2007 at 14:28

rpstewart said:
The PCIe cards are certainly worth looking at as a way round the bottleneck of the PCI bus, a 1x card (the 2 port one) can run up to 250Mb/s whereas the 4 port card is 4x and hence can go to 1Gb/s. The problem with the 4x card is that naro would have to use the 16x PCIe slot thereby removing the possibility of having PCIe graphics although for a server the onboard stuff should be fine. There is another slot on the board which looks like a 1x PCIe slot but it's not mentioned in any of the documentation. If it is PCIe then it should happily take one of the 2 port cards.

yup, you're right. There is actually a PCIe-x1 slot, but there was a manufacturing fault and the x1 slot could not be fitted in when the motherboard is inside the casing. Therefore, the PCIe-x1 slot is useless.

i dun mind using the onboard gfx because that is what i intend to do. However, I read that the actual performance of PCIe SATA controller cards and PCI SATA controller cards are limited by the hdd. Hence, even if i use PCIe cards, the performance would not be that much better.

If i am buying, i would be buying 4-port PCI SATA cards because that would allow me to use add up to 12 additional hdds. Also, I would like to ask if the bandwidth of each single PCI slot is 133MB/s or all the 3 PCI slots' combined bandwidth is 133MB/s?

naro · 5 Jan 2007 at 14:30

michael baxter said:
The bottleneck of any hard disk subsystem are the drives themselves, I would be surprized if there is any performance benefit between the PCI and PCIe interfaces in this case.

If you want improved bandwidth, you may be better going the RAID 0 route, and get yourself 2 or more identical drives.

I'm using a 4 drive RAID 0 setup with a gigabit NIC in my domestic media server, and it provides lightning performance. In fact, faster than a single locally attached drive!

Best wishes,

Michael

did you do SATA Raid??

naro · 5 Jan 2007 at 14:34

michael baxter said:
Hi RPStewart,

I wouldn't disagree with your points, but my 4x HD RAID 0 setup is on a PCI card (RocketRAID404) and I get a smidge short of a 4x bandwidth improvement over an identical single drive. However, the drives are about 3 years old, so for the latest drives your point may be true.

Sure, the PCI is on it's way out, I wouldn't disagree. But does it matter in this case?

Happy New Year to you!

Michael

I would like to continue to use the Pentium M combo because it is low power consumption and would not add too much to the electricity bill when i run it 24x7.

So, i guess my only option would be to run PCI SATA cards. I would like to ask for PCI SATA Raid cards, the theoretical bandwidth is 133MB/s or 266MB/s? I know it depends on whether the card is 32bit or 64bit running at 33Mhz.

rpstewart · 5 Jan 2007 at 15:13

naro said:
Also, I would like to ask if the bandwidth of each single PCI slot is 133MB/s or all the 3 PCI slots' combined bandwidth is 133MB/s?

The 133Mb/s bandwidth is for the whole PCI bus. That is to say it's shared between the three slots AND any other onboard devices which are attached to the PCI bus.

naro · 5 Jan 2007 at 16:16

rpstewart said:
The 133Mb/s bandwidth is for the whole PCI bus. That is to say it's shared between the three slots AND any other onboard devices which are attached to the PCI bus.

oh darn.. that means it gonna be a big problem if i utilize all the PCI slots for SATA cards..

rpstewart · 5 Jan 2007 at 16:28

If you're only going to be using it as a media server then it's unlikely that you'll be pulling data at full speed off multiple drives so we might be splitting hairs here. There's nothing technically wrong with running a dozen HDDs all on the same PCI bus, it just there are now better ways of doing it if you need absolute performance.

naro · 5 Jan 2007 at 16:36

rpstewart said:
If you're only going to be using it as a media server then it's unlikely that you'll be pulling data at full speed off multiple drives so we might be splitting hairs here. There's nothing technically wrong with running a dozen HDDs all on the same PCI bus, it just there are now better ways of doing it if you need absolute performance.

i see.. cos i wanna use a low power consumption CPU. THe Pentium M 725 is only 25W TDP... and i dun think there are mobos which haf PCIe-x1 slots..

may i know what r the better ways of doing it?

michael baxter · 6 Jan 2007 at 00:24

Naro,

If you're after low-power and want to go for a plug in card, you may want to check it supports HD power-down, many of them don't.

By the way, the card I use is a PCI based card, which supports upto 8 PATA drives. I use 4 drives, with one on each IDE channel.

Out of interest, which OS are you going to be running on your media server?

Michael

naro · 6 Jan 2007 at 01:43

michael baxter said:
Naro,

If you're after low-power and want to go for a plug in card, you may want to check it supports HD power-down, many of them don't.

By the way, the card I use is a PCI based card, which supports upto 8 PATA drives. I use 4 drives, with one on each IDE channel.

Out of interest, which OS are you going to be running on your media server?

Michael

i'm using Win XP Pro because i'm more used to Windows and driver support is better. however, i would want to use Win2k3 Server..